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AM3/AM3+: replacing M5A97 Evo - what would you get?

uOpt

uOpt

Golden Member
For my 1100T I got a Asus M5A97 Evo. The thing doesn't do anything right, in particular 4 memory sticks that work great in pairs are randomly detected or not when in a 4-pack. What is reported to the OS varies a lot, too, including 10 GB (!) reported to FreeBSD. Updating the BIOS (which was a hassle for reasons I bashed on 2cpu if you are interested) made the board never detect 16 GB anymore and the PXE boot on the GbE now only boots half my OSes. Other problems. So this board has to go.

What would you get as a replacement? I need 2x PCIe x16, 4x 4 GB ECC unreg and as many slots as I can get. I have a M4A785-M in a different machine that worked perfectly for me (with it's max memory) so I have hope in Asus left.

Choices:
  • M5A88-V. This is a similar board, will also allow me to run Bulldozer, and instead of the A97's crossfire ability has onboard video. Neither crossfire nor onboard do anything for me since I need to slam in two NVidia PCIe cards anyway. The risk here is that it might be as shitty as the M5A97 Evo software wise, the benefit is that it will do Bullroarer and generally new stuff rocks, right? The new chipset on these seems to work all perfect for Linux and FreeBSD, so I might be willing to risk another RMA fee here.
  • M4A87TD EVO. More conservative board. AM3, not AM3+. Closer but not really that close to my beloved M4A785. I would really love to hear feedback on this board.
  • M4A89GTD. Another board like the M4A87TD EVO. More useful slots. Again, would love to hear feedback.

Opinions?

In hindsight the M5A97 was a stupid choice, I really want P-ATA, and onboard video will be used later in this board's lifetime when not in a workstation.
 
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I got a MSI 890GX with my 1055T from fry's and love it. It has literally no issues, OC's nicely, and has everything you need as it already has a BIOS update available for BD chip compatibility.
 
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I don't think the MSI boards support ECC, do they? I only ever had one MSI that even claimed to support ECC - and it tried but failed.

I'll check them out anyway.
 
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