MSI 990FXA-GD65 990FX or Asus SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0

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Hello there folks! I hope you've had a great day/night so far.

So I'm about to buy a new motherboard due to I want to be able to overclock correctly, without my motherboard sinking me down. Right now I have the MSI 760GM-E51 and I can manage to get to around 3.8GHz with my 965BE w/o bluescreens. Although I'd like to get to 4.2GHz.

I've made two threads before and the most recent one was about the voltage on my CPU(without changes in bios) was quite high, which was concerning me. That's one of the reasons I'd like to get a new board since with that voltage I should be able to get up to around 4.0-4.2GHz which I can't right now on my current one.

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So first of all: Do YOU guys think I will reach higher clocks with a new board, or will it just be a waste of money?

And second: Which of these boards would be the best to get in that case?
1: MSI 990FXA-GD65 990FX(cheapest)
2: Asus SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0(few more bucks)

Ofc I rather pay as little as I can, but I can go with the second choice if that's better. You can find my speccs down in my signature as usual.

Sincerely,
Jimmy.

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Balyn, you should be able to do 4.2 with either of those boards, with the proper cooling. I had my 955be with a Hyper 212+ on it in a really good case and it struggled to get above 4.1 due to heat. You may be able to get there but it will probably be close. I'm sketchy with MSI motherboards because of known VRM failures they had, on some of their AMD boards. You may also want to consider the Gigabyte 990fxa UD3. The Asus M5A99X EVO is a nice board also, it's the one I have my 955be on, It works well for that chip. Though, if you are planning on upgrading in the near future to a FX 6xxx or 8xxx series and plan on overclocking, the board may limit your abilities to do so.

Right now we have about the 10th AMD MSI board user and he is struggling with an FX processor. We just have no real idea as to what the boards will do compared to a good board like that Asus Sabertooth R2.0 you mention. Take out the 965BE and put in an FX processor and REAL good cooling and the board is not holding you back. Do so with the G65 and well you may have a lot of trial and error on your own.
RGone...

Mandrake4565 said:

Balyn, you should be able to do 4.2 with either of those boards, with the proper cooling. I had my 955be with a Hyper 212+ on it in a really good case and it struggled to get above 4.1 due to heat. You may be able to get there but it will probably be close. I'm sketchy with MSI motherboards because of known VRM failures they had, on some of their AMD boards. You may also want to consider the Gigabyte 990fxa UD3. The Asus M5A99X EVO is a nice board also, it's the one I have my 955be on, It works well for that chip. Though, if you are planning on upgrading in the near future to a FX 6xxx or 8xxx series and plan on overclocking, the board may limit your abilities to do so.

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Yeah I've heard MSI having troubles as well and the Gigabyte 990fxa UD3 is about in the middle of those 2 motherboards I said in the original post.

RGone said:

Right now we have about the 10th AMD MSI board user and he is struggling with an FX processor. We just have no real idea as to what the boards will do compared to a good board like that Asus Sabertooth R2.0 you mention. Take out the 965BE and put in an FX processor and REAL good cooling and the board is not holding you back. Do so with the G65 and well you may have a lot of trial and error on your own.
RGone...

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I may just be really tired or so, but are you suggesting I get a new CPU with new cooling, buy a board to get a bunch of errors and such?

You must be really tired. I suggested that once you finished with the 965BE and you had a good board already for FX, then you could go FX and a less than stellar board would not be holding the FX back.
RGone...

Well my plan is to keep the 965BE for some time more and instead upgrading the board for supporting FX.

I may or I may not upgrade CPU in a few months. I guess It's all up for the time to show
However, which board would you recommend for a good FX cpu?

and which FX cpu do you recommend that's better than my 965, but not "UBER HARDCORE IMA FIRIN MAH LAZER"- highend cpu.

Personally I'd go with the Sabretooth, from experience I know that "if" an upgrade may be in your future, the sabretooth will do you well. I purchased an ASUS M5A 99fx Pro and an FX8350. The pro now holds my 965 and does a great job with it but it was holding me back with th FX chip.

Okay, cool!
I may buy the Sabertooth then.

What FX cpu would you recommend that's quite cheap but at least better than my 965? Just for future plans I mean
I'm a gamer btw, if that matters.

balyn said:

Okay, cool!
I may buy the Sabertooth then.

What FX cpu would you recommend that's quite cheap but at least better than my 965? Just for future plans I mean
I'm a gamer btw, if that matters.

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Better how? Your 965 is a great chip and does well for games. I got the 8350 to work on video and it's a beast when it comes to that. Far better than the 965 ever was! Probably the 6300 would do you well less heat to fight with compared to the 8 core.

Well I guess I'm gonna update my CPU in the future at some point, so It's never wrong to have a plan.

But thank you for your answer.

I actually had deja vu reading this thread because it was so close to the same flow of conversation as one I posted about the same general consideration with the exact same processors and boards when I first joined here if I recall.

I ended up dumping one of my 965's that was stable at 4.5ghz for anything but folding (4.3ghz there) and decided to skip on the Sabertooth to save the cost for the time being, running it on the Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0 that I have two of at the moment. I am very glad that I grabbed the piledriver chip, but even more glad that I didn't go spend the money for a Sabertooth instead of elsewhere on my systems. It might turn out that the 990FX Pro R2.0 is going to be limited to a lower ceiling than the Sabertooth if I ever use extreme cooling for benching and pushing the OC past air limits, but on a normal cooling setup, I challenge anyone to show me they can do better with their board given the same variables at all the other key spots. I've got to 5ghz with the 8350 on air and beat water cooled guys in some friendly benching competitions around the start of the year. I don't think anyone is going to say I could have gone any further with the Sabertooth, and there are unusually mixed opinions of its overclocking bona-fides when I was really digging for detailed reviews prior to purchase. If you don't want to spend the cash on the Crosshair model, I don't think I can speak more highly of an option than I do of the 'FX Pro platform.

Do hold onto the 965 if you upgrade, because it really is an amazing cpu compared to even the piledriver in some uses, but it's definitely going to be nearing its realistic time being considered viable for performance systems soon enough. Threaded programs are becoming more and more expected and hardware intended to be the driving reason for that, so the places where the 965 is so strong (single core performance on a non-threaded bench like superpi for example) are all going to become less and less common to find yourself using....

OCMusicJunkie as is the normal thing, there are exceptions. Glad for you having an exceptional rig. However no one can plan on their falling in the list of exceptionals. We have had two that remain and help out daily with users and their "how do I overclock my stuff" and each of them has moved from middle road Asus boards and have found themselves no longer board limited. Yes they dumped air-cooling for g00d water cooling and seem glad they did so.

One of my friends just bought a new FX-8350 and on the same model CHV as I have with the same bios cannot touch my cpu speeds. Law of averages? No idea. But I can assure you he does not like himself being bit by the exception to the rule, since most FX-8350s will clock pretty good.

When giving advice in a forum the most of us that remain and help day in and day out, try to stay with the law of averages and not hope for the exception to the rule. Glad you have been so fortunate.
RGone...

I'm one of those guys. The chip I have is not a pick of the litter. It runs daily at 4.64GHz on 1.47v. I can't reach 5 with this one even though I've tried and tried. Mid 4.9 I need 1.55v and I'm just out of room with my cooler I can get it to run and prime but it's a toaster for sure. With any lower voltage P95 fails instanly on cores 4-8.
So yes OC as RGone says you have a really nice piec of silicon there!

For gaming, I'd keep the 965, grab a better cooling and take it to 4/4.1GHz.

A PhenomII has a 15% faster IPC than a FX. Make the math: 965@4GHz=[email protected].

EDIT: just have a look at this. PhenomII 980 (3.7GHz) vs [email protected]. PileDriver is 5 to 10% faster than BD, wich is still slower than PhenomII for a given frequency in most stasks. Unless you are a heavy multithreader/multitasker, keep the PhII.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...amd-bulldozer-fx-8150-processor-review-3.html

I actually bought the Corsair Hydro H80i before, but the rad was pretty much broken when I got it, so I sent it back and layed out some extra bucks for GTX 650Ti boost

I should read posts entirely again

I thought you were planning on moving to a FX CPU

manu2b said:

I should read posts entirely again

I thought you were planning on moving to a FX CPU

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It happens to all of us!

I would have to agree with the others and say the Sabertooth. I currently have the rev.1 and mine overclocks like a dream. Original cpu was an AMD 960T that unlocked to an X6 and I could clock it to 4.1 stable all day long. Sold it and upgraded to the FX8350 and I managed to get a stable 5ghz (water of course). The board is a beast, so far so good for me.

Cool. Yeah I'll most likely buy the Sabertooth next week.

You won't be disappointed !!