ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer vs Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

Never had an AMD CPU in my life, but thinking about getting a mobo+CPU for a friend.

One option would be

FX 8320 + ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer for around $220

the other

FX 8320 + Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 for around $200

If this is just for a mild OC and not benching etc.. then I think either would do fine. Make sure the Giga is a rev.4 though if you go that way.

No competitive OC, but he would like to "play" with the CPU. He has a gaming build, but would like something to experiment with.

Note, that I will give him probably my old AIO (Kraken X60) and I dunno how far it is possible to push a FX 83XX with that

I'd go UD3 over Killer.

Doing a little current checking...

...GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 User Reviews at NewEgg...
11/17/2014 > Cons: Issue #1: System does not wake from sleep or hibernation.
I've found multiple sources outlining the same issue - Am@zon, Hard|Forum, overclock.net - other people are having the same issue that I'm having.

11/15/2014 > Cons: Issues. System won't wake from sleep/hibernation
I'm looking for a replacement now that I've found the problem. (After replacing power supplies, video cards and a UPS thinking it was a peripheral device causing the problem, wasted money)

11/16/2014 > Cons: DOA! Should have researched a little more before I ordered... Tons of DOA with this mobo.. Returning and looking for a new one for my AMD 8350.

GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P is the latest AM3+ Mobo from Gigabyte. The main thing I saw about it in customer reviews is that the mouse moves jerky in bios and it does not play well with Linux.

NOT sleeping would be a deal breaker for me. I have my FX-8350 on an Asus CHV-z at idle @1600Mhz and under load with all 8 cores on @4,600Mhz and it 'sleeps' just fine. In fact I seldom every do a shutdown but go to sleep instead and touch keyboard space bar and up and running in about 3 seconds or maybe less.

Gigabyte in the real world lately has just not seemed to do well by their AMD friends. They have made one of the better OC Series Intel boards but then just about anyone can make an Intel board.
RGone...

I'm not a fan of Newegg reviews, reason why I asked here.

Other suggestions are welcome, as long they are not too expensive. Both are now around $100

Yeah I hear you there man...

...I don't pay much attention either unless there are over 50 or so reviews and the 'same' thing begins to rise as a pattern. Then I make up search phrase using keywords about the problem and see if the problem in fact shows elsewhere. But you are right in that you really have to pay attention to see if the reviewer is just doing something silly.

Where we have a problem giving recommendations is that there are three or four of us in here that put radiators outside in the winter, run ice water pumped with aquarium pumps thru free flowing water blocks and push over 5.5Ghz for benching. THAT takes a motherboard. And most of us use either the Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 or the CHV-z and non-z boards for that sort of playing around.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131851
ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0 AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
$120.00 after REbate. And clocking it for most of us that help is like sleeping with one's brother. Nothing to it. If we did not get so many users posting in the AMD cpu forum section asking how to overclock...well that might mean nothing. But buying an unknown and then 'wanting' help can be a pain. FYI & YMMV.
RGone...

Hippogriff said:

I'm not a fan of Newegg reviews, reason why I asked here.

Other suggestions are welcome, as long they are not too expensive. Both are now around $100

Click to expand...

Thank you very much. That Asus looks like a nice option...

The M5A is a nice board, I have the Pro R2 and it's good up to the 4.5ish area with an 8 core but will need a few extra fans if you want to run that high all the time.

Yup the M5A is a nice board. Got the M5A99X-EVO R1 so the first revision and it clocks quite well. I am able to get about a 4.7Ghz Stable on a ThermalTake Water 3.0 120mm Radiator with fans in push/pull.

I have heard the R2 version is even better and even has a lot better win 8 support.

So M5 will be.

Another question (I don't want to open another thread). What is the difference between FX8300, 8320, 8320E, 8350, etc..? How they are binned?
No one is trying to break record, so are they equal?

The FX 8300 is an OEM chip @ 95w
Fx 8320E is likely a retail version of it @ 95 w
Both are considered 95w chips because their non turbo clock speed is slower then the Fx 8320
They are all relatively the same, any of them running at say 4.5 Ghz if able to do so, on all 8 cores will be equal in speed. It will just be a matter of how good the silicon is, which will determine what voltage will be necessary to run it there. Johan recently picked up a sweetheart Fx 8320 that runs on really low voltage. If I recall correctly it does 5.0 at around 1.42 Cpu V. To give you an example to compare it to, my Fx 8350 which was purchased when first available for retail, needs 1.46875 to run 4.7 stable on water. It seems as if they are binning the high leakage chips for the Fx 9370/9590 series chips and keeping the low leakage ones for the 8xxx series ones.

The FX8320 is $120 and I can get a FX8300 for $100 with some coupons I have around.

Should I go for the 8300 (to get some HW points before giving everything to my friend ) or get him a 8320..

Mandrake4565 said:

The FX 8300 is an OEM chip @ 95w
Fx 8320E is likely a retail version of it @ 95 w
Both are considered 95w chips because their non turbo clock speed is slower then the Fx 8320
They are all relatively the same, any of them running at say 4.5 Ghz if able to do so, on all 8 cores will be equal in speed. It will just be a matter of how good the silicon is, which will determine what voltage will be necessary to run it there. Johan recently picked up a sweetheart Fx 8320 that runs on really low voltage. If I recall correctly it does 5.0 at around 1.42 Cpu V. To give you an example to compare it to, my Fx 8350 which was purchased when first available for retail, needs 1.46875 to run 4.7 stable on water. It seems as if they are binning the high leakage chips for the Fx 9370/9590 series chips and keeping the low leakage ones for the 8xxx series ones.

Click to expand...

I had never heard of the Fx 8300 till I read your last post, from reading the specs on it, it looks to have a 3.3 Ghz base clock with turbo up to 4.2. The 8320 is 3.5 Ghz base and 4.0 turbo. Other then that they are seemingly the same, though being OEM the Fx 8300 doesn't come with a heatsink. That said if you want to save $20.00 and get some boints I don't see any reason why not.

You need to check and see which of the cpus are supported by the mobo of choice at the manufacturer's website. The cpus will work but if not supported the monitoring software seems not to work well for temps etc. Sort of wonky if you cannot get a good monitoring read out.
RGone...ster.

RGone said:

You need to check and see which of the cpus are supported by the mobo of choice at the manufacturer's website. The cpus will work but if not supported the monitoring software seems not to work well for temps etc. Sort of wonky if you cannot get a good monitoring read out.
RGone...ster.

Click to expand...

M5A99FX PRO R2.0 supports FX-8300 according to Asus website

No problem then.
RGone...

So, grabbed a second-hand FX-8300 and a FX-8310 (one for my friend, one for my future HTPC/streaming PC).

Will bring some boints also for the team

Nice!

Since I'm going to get something for me, I was thinking about getting two motherboards.

For my friend I'll get the M5A you suggested, but I was thinking something more robust for me since that Asus seems to be a bit weak in terms of VRM.

The Crosshair Formula-Z at over $200 is a bit too expensive, so I leave it to extreme cooling peeps. So, I was thinking about a Sabertooth R2.0, a UD5 or a Extreme 9.

People seems to suggest the Sabertooth, but but I have always this impression that they are overpriced.