chipset troubles deciding, for 1090T

[Trypt]

I bought the 1090T BE hexcore cpu, the new 125W one (not new anymore I know). I play on o'cing it to about 4ghz which should be ok, with either staying at 200mhz chipset or going to 250 which I heard is ok with memory and is about 1-2% increase by itself with doing no damage.

But, I have absolutely no need for crossfire or dual video cards, not now, not in the future, so I don't know why I should spend $200+ on a 890FX, unless there are clear reasons for it.

I also don't need onboard video.

So, is there an alternative for me in the 800 series boards? Someone somewhere mentioned to someone else that since the latter is not interested in two x16 pcie slots he should consider the 870 chipset, so what is that about?

I need about everything else that comes on a top 890FX board such as the UD5 GB, basically a couple USB 3.0 ports, and SATA 3, if it has that, I'm happy, and perhaps an eSATA.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Naturally the board has to overclock well, and do all that, it just doesn't need to support full x16 crossfire (it probably will have two pci-e slots i know, but only one has to be x16 is what I'm saying, I will never run a dual card system, one high end card with such a system is more then enough for 1920x1200).

Please help me save some money, or give me a reason why I must go with the 890FX if I indeed must.

The board also doesn't need to support huge memory numbers, I'd be happy with getting 1600 o/ced (to that, not from that), every test I found shows a very tiny percentage increase when going to 2000, and none if latencies have to be increased. I just want good ram that has low latencies and will O/C to 1600 to be happy.

 

[trents]

There is more to the question than whether or not you need 2x16-bit PCI-e slots. The ruggedness of the chipset and power/voltage stability tend to increase as you go up the chipset ladder. Those things are essential to high overclocks at safe voltages.

 

[QuietIce]

As trents has pointed out, with a couple of exceptions the quality of the on-board components on 890FX chipset boards will be higher than the quality on a 870 chipset board.

The Gigabyte you mentioned is an excellent board as is the ASUS M4A89TD (890FX). For a slightly cheaper option the M4A89GTD (890GX board) seems to have the same quality components as the more expensive M4A89TD. We're not saying the cheaper 870 chipset boards won't overclock but if the on-board power systems are lower quality then chances are your 4.0 GHz overclock may require a little more vCore and cpuNB voltage to be stable.

If you're sure you'll be happy stopping at 4.0 GHz (though it may go higher) then it probably doesn't matter too much which board you get. The 1090T has shown itself to overclock pretty easily up to 4.0 GHz on almost anything except low-end boards where badly fluctuating voltages create problems.

 

[Trypt]

I want top end components and no trouble, this will be a constantly O/Ced computer, not just here and there when it needs it, and it will run 24/7 with many background processes, and also used for gaming.

I think it's clear I need to go with 890FX, but what I don't understand is how is it that the 890GX is cheaper when it seems to have the same stuff but comes with an onboard video card, that just makes little sense to me.

So, the UD5 is the board to get then? If it's the 890FX, then please tell me which is the best board to get without mentioning those $300 boards with features I'll never use. Basically, a choice from MSI's $160 option to Asus's $220 option and anything in between (Gigabyte and whatever else). Is MSI cheap for a reason? As I said, besides the regular stuff, I need it to be completely customizable in bios and have usb 3.0 (even 2 is enough, just to be future proof for those couple components I may get that want to use the extra speed, cuz 2.0 is fast already), and sata3.

And how about DFI, for my cpu (sig) everyone was raving about the DFI, and they do offer a cheaper 890FX then any other, but I heard rumours it's not the best, or even bad.

Any opinion would be appreciated, and thanx for the above!

 

[trents]

I would stay away from DFI. Their quality has gone downhill in recent times. Stay away also from ECS and Jetway. Most of the other manufacturers like Asus, MSI, Biostar, Gigabyte, ASRock and even Foxconn of late make good boards for the most part but also turn out some bad eggs as well. Just make some tentative choices according to your price range and feature set needs and then research research them via customer reviews, especially on NewEgg. Don't take every customer review seriously because there are no lack of idiot reviews. Look for patterns in the reviews. If a number of reviewers comment on the same problem it should not be ignored. Don't buy a board that has fewer than a couple dozen reviews to go by. Take note also of review comments about customer service. I have been going with ASRock products lately because of the combination of price, quality and features and I also think they have the most user friendly web site of any of the motherboard companies. They are a spin off of Asus. Foxconn has the least user friendly web site of all the board companies and their connection is slower than the seven year itch.

 

[QuietIce]

I want top end components and no trouble, this will be a constantly O/Ced computer, not just here and there when it needs it, and it will run 24/7 with many background processes, and also used for gaming.

I think it's clear I need to go with 890FX, but what I don't understand is how is it that the 890GX is cheaper when it seems to have the same stuff but comes with an onboard video card, that just makes little sense to me.

So, the UD5 is the board to get then? If it's the 890FX, then please tell me which is the best board to get without mentioning those $300 boards with features I'll never use. Basically, a choice from MSI's $160 option to Asus's $220 option and anything in between (Gigabyte and whatever else). Is MSI cheap for a reason? As I said, besides the regular stuff, I need it to be completely customizable in bios and have usb 3.0 (even 2 is enough, just to be future proof for those couple components I may get that want to use the extra speed, cuz 2.0 is fast already), and sata3.

And how about DFI, for my cpu (sig) everyone was raving about the DFI, and they do offer a cheaper 890FX then any other, but I heard rumours it's not the best, or even bad.

Any opinion would be appreciated, and thanx for the above!

There's only one AMD board at $300 and it's pretty worthless unless you want to play mix-n-match with various video cards, even nVidia and ATi together. The next step down from there is the ASUS Crosshair IV, which will do anything you want to do and then some. After that the ASUS M4A89TD and Gigabyte 890FX-UD5 drop into the line-up followed by the Biostar 890FXE. I can't give you opinions on anything else just from lack of good reporting (on the forums) on other boards.

The 890FX may not have on-board graphics but it does have a 40 lane PCIe bus. I guess that's enough of a difference.

 

[Trypt]

I think it's decided, the GB UD5 is obviously the one to get, it's cheaper then the Asus, has everything the Asus has, and nobody has said one negative thing about it, and on top of that it looks good and has everything I need. The only reason I was looking for alternatives and asking (I already knew the GB UD5 is a top board for am3 price/performance ratio on this forum) is because I've never owned a GB board, only Asus, MSI, DFI, ECS (argh), Biostar. Never ASRock or GB, so don't know the layout or bios etc. Isn't there an UD7 too? What is that?

But I've decided, unless someone leaves me an alternative in 4 days, I am buying UD5 on Thursday.

edit: umm, forget about me mentioning the ud7, i just saw it for $330, lol.. ridiculous.

 

[QuietIce]

I keep forgetting about the UD7. I don't know why Gigabyte ever built it ...