AMD AM3+ Motherboard Thread

[Mem]

Another Asus Crosshair V review @Neoseeker http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/asus_crosshair_v_formula/ .

Overall, the Crosshair V Formula is the cream-of-the-crop AM3/AM3+ motherboard. It has so many features, most users will probably not even use half of them. It's not complicated, it does everything and does it well. There's nothing bad that can be said about it except maybe its applications that are Windows-only, but then this is what the vast majority of users are running on anyways. The price obviously is high; on popular e-tailers, the Crosshair sells for $230.

 

[Mem]

Just to let you know from UEFI 1.44 on the Asrock Fatal1ty Professional 990FX board you can now lose the face of Johnathan on the Bios screen(good news).

Thread on this board here http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?275018-ASRock-Fatal1ty-990FX-Professional-ThReAD

 

[Mem]

Another new Sabertooth 990FX review@Vortez http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/asus_sabertooth_990fx_review,1.html .

ASUS have created the perfect high-end companion to the classic Crosshair line. The SABERTOOTH provides a rock-solid, top performing and reliable base to any AM3+ system and is ideal for users looking for a no-frills but still incredibly capable motherboard. This is the perfect motherboard for those looking for the highest performance, but who don’t need features for extreme overclocking (i.e. LN2 etc) or all the bells and whistles of the ASUS Crosshair V, but still have high demands for connectivity, reliability and design.

 

[drizek]

meh. Looking at the Bulldozer previews, I really wish I could get rid of my Sabertooth right now.

 

[sequoia464]

meh. Looking at the Bulldozer previews, I really wish I could get rid of my Sabertooth right now.

I had a 2500K and a nice Gigabyte board sitting on the bench. Returned them for the Sabertooth that I am using currently. Not happy either.

I think the sabertooth is a great board, but like you said - those previews...

 

[Mem]

I had a 2500K and a nice Gigabyte board sitting on the bench. Returned them for the Sabertooth that I am using currently. Not happy either.

I think the sabertooth is a great board, but like you said - those previews...

I would not worry until you see how good or bad official benchmarks are from sites like Anandtech etc.....so still early days.

Slightly off topic but I did read about a bug/patch coming for BD,

Actually, we already have such an issue known for Bulldozer, and NO bench-marked system has the patch installed!

The shared L1 cache is causing cross invalidations across threads so that the prefetch data is incorrect in too many cases and data must be fetched again. The fix is a "simple" memory alignment and (possible)tagging system in the kernel of Windows/Linux.

I reviewed the code for the Linux patch and was astonished by just how little I know of the Linux kernel... lol! In any event, it could easily cost 10% in terms of single threaded performance, possibly more than double that in multi-threaded loads on the same module due to the increased contention and randomness of accesses.

Not sure if ordained reviewers have been given access to the MS patch, but I'd imagine (and hope) so! Last I saw, the Linux kernel patch was still being worked on by AMD (publicly) and Linus was showing some distaste for the method used to address the issue. One comment questioned the performance cost but had received no replies... but you don't go re-working kernel memory mapping for anything less than 5-10%... just not worth it!

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?275786-AMD-FX-8150-Bulldozer-finally-tested&p=4969164&viewfull=1#post4969164 (bottom of page).

 

[StrangerGuy]

Moral of the story: Don't buy boards for CPUs that aren't launched. Especially $200+ ones.

 

[dawp]

I have 2 boards that I might be able to drop a BD into (AM3 890gx that has a beta bios for BD) but I already have 1090t in them both so unless something changes in the next 6 months or so, I think I will leave them as is.

 

[Mem]

Moral of the story: Don't buy boards for CPUs that aren't launched. Especially $200+ ones.

Hardwareheaven got great results with Asrock 990fx and BD 8150,http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1285/pg3/amd-fx-8150-black-edition-8-core-processor-vs-core-i7-2600k-review-asrock-990fx-extreme4.html

There are two areas where the FX-8150 excells though, those are gaming and overclocking. In the former we saw the processor give us improved framerates over the Intel model. In the latter the ability to exceed 5GHz with ease offers additional value for money. In fact AMD have indicated that they expect most users to exceed 4.8GHz on air cooling.

Moving on to the 990FX Extreme4 we have another very impressive board from ASRock. It combined flawlessly with the new FX-8150 giving us great overclocking potential and stability from the moment we first turned the system on. Running DDR3-1866 was a simple process also and the overall package is enhanced by the extra features such as support for multiple GPUs, 3TB drives and a great BIOS GUI and update tool.

Amazing how their review is different.

I would like to see Anand test BD with Asrock 990FX extreme4 and see what benchmarks they get.

 

[gramboh]

Moral of the story: Don't buy boards for CPUs that aren't launched. Especially $200+ ones.

Shocked at how many did this across a few forums I frequent, even when people warned them too. Weird.

 

[dawp]

might be interesting to get a FX-8120 chip and a 990fx board just to play around with it to see for myself how it performs.

 

[magomago]

I have a Thuban from the MC deal; is it worth getting an AM3+ board right now or not? From my understanding its going to be phased out for FM2.

 

[Vesku]

Shocked at how many did this across a few forums I frequent, even when people warned them too. Weird.

Same, I bought a 990FX but I bought it for the features. It's a great board, plenty of PCI-E lanes, shame I'll have to ride a Phenom II in it until they release an improved FX.