Motherboard for PII x4 955

[SparksIT]

I need advice on a MB for a new AMD Phenom II x4 955 CPU, I am not going Xfire, but at some point I will be doing a RAID 10, with 4 drives and 1 extra for OS, and I'd perfer not to have to buy a dedicated RAID card. All the PC's I have built for my self used Asus boards, and I've never had an issue, but at the moment I am looking at the following Boards: I don't plan on OC just yet, maybe in a down the road when I need more performance out of it.

Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P @ 139 w/ 15 MIR
Asus M4A78T-E @ 135
MSI 790FS-GD70 @ 169
Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P @ 179

I Like the MSI Board has it has 2 seperate RAID controllers, but I don't have the need for 4 PCIe x16 slots, It seems to have slightly more(or larger Heatsinks) but I'm not sure if that is a good thing.

How is the AMD 790 chipset for Single card use? Are there any AM3 boards on the horizon using nVidia Chipsets?

As I've said, I've always used Asus, and never had any issues with them. How does Asus vs Gigabyte vs MSi compare quality and Customer service.

 

[MegaWorks]

First you're better off with an AMD chipset.

I would get the MSI board if overclocking is going to be use in future upgrades. I've heard nothing but good praise for this board. I've build two systems for my friends using the MSI 790FX-GD70 and I can tell you that it's the best AMD board I have ever used!

 

[lopri]

If budget allows, I'd go for the newly updated DDR3 790FX boards. ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI's offerings are nearly equal with very small differences here and there. ASUS board will be easiest to overclock, Gigabyte board is probably the cooliest-running, and MSI board will give slightly better performance. If you can wait, AnandTech will have a review up in near future so it might be worthwile to hear what AnandTech editors have to say. (Though I can't say when the review will be out)

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
First you're better off with an AMD chipset.

I would get the MSI board if overclocking is going to be use in future upgrades. I've heard nothing but good praise for this board. I've build two systems for my friends using the MSI 790FX-GD70 and I can tell you that it's the best AMD board I have ever used!

Indeed. All I have heard about the MSI board is praise and it looks like an excellent performer and overclocker- this would be my choice. I loved my MSI K9A2 Platinum so I'm sure MSI have gone 1 better with this GD70.