AM3 M/B advice

[Borealis7]

Hi all,
I'm researching a cheapo upgrade to my old C2D setup.

right now I'm thinking about a Phenom II X4 955 and o/c but i don't know anything about AMD chipsets so its hard for me to choose a motherboard.

the requirements will be:
AM3 (obviously).
mainstream, single PCIe2 x16 is fine. (no plans for multi-GPU)
no IGP.
DDR2 support (i want to keep my 6GB DDR2 for now)
some O/C and recovery features.

if i go with this, i'll get the X4 955, slap a Zalman CNPS10X Performa on it and O/C.

what do you think i should get? or scrap the idea altogether until next generation comes?

 

[3DVagabond]

Maybe this board? Unless you just don't like Asrock. Seems to fit the bill though. Has a few more features than you asked for, but it's cheap enough and does allow for a few more options.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157226

P.S. I hope the case you're going to use doesn't have a window. It's fugly as hell. 😉

 

[dma0991]

I say save your money for another 2 months for the upcoming Bulldozer. 🙂

 

[Borealis7]

so the chipset i'm looking at is the 770 or higher? there are some Gigabyte m/bs available here all cost about 100$:

GAMA770UD3
GAMA785GMUS2H
GAMA790XUD3P
price difference is negligible.

its better than what i asked for,is the GA-MA790X-UD3P a good board?

 

[Vette73]

You plan on keeping this system/board for a while?

If so then just get some DDR3 and a AM3+ board.
most DDR2 boards lose features that are mroe common on the newwer DDR3 boards. You can get 8gigs of DDR3 for less than $80 now. Sell your DDR2 and just upgrade.

 

[dma0991]

http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/274/mb-am3plus.html

Here is a list of motherboards that are supposed to be Bulldozer ready with an updated BIOS. Some of the boards that you listed down are not in the list.

 

[toolbag]

To be honest this is not the time to upgrade. Just hold on until bulldozer is released.

Plus I don't know of any am3 boards that use ddr2. You'd have to go backwards in technology to an am2+ board possibly.

 

[lifeblood]

The board I'm using is a AM2+ board which uses DDR2, but is running a AM3 CPU. It works great. However, I am looking to upgrade to a AM3+ board and replace my DDR2 with DDR3. The price is cheap and you can sell your DDR2 for almost as much as the equivalent DDR3 costs (based on a quick look at ebay). That way I can continue to use my AM3 CPU until I'm ready to jump to Bulldozer.

Just something to think about.