Looking for a good mobo for an AMD FX 8350 CPU.

[Guest Messenjah]

So, I'm building a new rig. Currently I run a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo system with 4GB of RAM a GeForce GT 240. This system still works perfectly and even handles Skyrim quite well. I can't run the game on the very highest settings but I can run it at about medium pretty good. The only time I ever have sever frame drops would be during the siege missions where there are a lot of npc's running around all at once.

 

 

To give you an idea of what I am trying to accomplish for a system, I am primarily a modder/animator/3d artist with my PC and as a secondary I am a gamer of course. For major gaming, I have an XBox 360 that takes care of that need.

 

Now, I'm not really an Intel or an AMD fanboy. I originally ran an AMD processor and I simply followed the technology leap at the time to use Core 2 Duo processors from Intel when I built the system I am currently running on. I'm on a much tigher budget this time around however so I need to plan a little differently.

 

 

Intel has been making really great processors for some time now, but a while back, they decided to start adding GPU's into their multicore processors. While this is an efficient idea and an interesting one, I feel that it really needs a little more time before I go out and spend my money on an i5 or an i7 cpu. I doubt they can really compare to a decent grapphics card that well. I would rather opt for a higher clock speed/larger cache/additional cores.

 

So, I'm looking at the AMD FX 8350. Benchmarks show that it is pretty comparable to the i7 line for a LOT less money. It also has a higher clock speed and has 8 cores. Why would additional cores be important? Well, if you look at the PS4 and XBox One, they are both using 8 core AMD processors. This means that many games and video applications will be using more features within the AMD processors and technology will hopefully start making use of the other cores.

 

The problem is, now that I've chosen my CPU, now I need a motherboard to support it. I'm a big Gigabyte fan but I've read that there is an issue with the board where it will actually throttle down the cpu if you start loading six cores or more and they may not even make use of 8 cores at all. I do like the boards because of their dual bios and solid state capacitors.

 

The other thing I'm reading is that many boards under $150 support the 970 chipset and from what someone said, this chipset is outdated and will not work well with piledriver. I have read that the 990fx chipsets will. I've also read some people claim that the 990fx is only good for overclockers. Is this true?

 

 

Any recommendations on a good mobo for this cpu?

[Werne]

The other thing I'm reading is that many boards under $150 support the 970 chipset and from what someone said, this chipset is outdated and will not work well with piledriver. I have read that the 990fx chipsets will. I've also read some people claim that the 990fx is only good for overclockers. Is this true?

That's bull, 970 chipset doesn't support Crossfire/SLI at x16, only at x8. That's all there is to it, overclocking is pretty much the same, unless you're willing to use a board like Crosshair V Formula or Sabertooth R2.0 which have more precise voltage adjustments and huge VRM heatsinks. CPU support, I have an FX 8320 (lower-binned 8350) on a 970 chipset board, works smooth as butter.

 

The difference is also that some 970 boards don't have very good VRM heatsinks (like older revision Gigabyte/ASRock/MSI boards) but newer revisions have formidable ones. Note, do take a board with 8+2 power phase regardless of overclocking, it'll last longer and will OC with less heat on the VRMs.

 

One thing though, don't take a Gigabyte board, it throttles even on stock, it works correctly only when HPC Mode is enabled and Turbo disabled but HPC craps out if you try to overclock (gives you benchmark failures). Tried it, FX 8320 @4.72GHz 1.428V fails on my GA-970A-UD3 with HPC but works fine on an ASRock 970 Xtreme3 R2.0 with HPC disabled on the same settings, the ASRock doesn't throttle down to x14.5 either. Same thing happens on a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 - fails with HPC, throttles without it. Gotta get myself a better board one of these days, I'm thinking Sabertooth.

 

And finally, if you intend to do 3D modeling, disable power-saving features, I find that having them off improves sculpting performance about 25% since it doesn't switch power states in the middle of your work. Overclocking also helps with sculpting, you need per-core for that which is Intel's territory, AMD needs overclocking for improvement in that regard.