What is so different about these AM3 boards?

[legocitytruck]

While looking through the various AM3 boards, I noticed a very large price difference.

This ASUS board is $199

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131363

But the same features are offered on these two boards:

MSI for $129

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813130224

ASRock for $114

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813157152

The ASUS board was listed in an article as a great board, but it has nearly all the same features are these two much lower priced board. What makes it better/ justifies the cost? Am I missing something?

 

[tcsenter]

Besides one of them being a different chipset, two having integrated graphics, one having 1GB Side Port memory, one having four PCI-E x16 slots....so on and so forth?

 

[daw123]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
Besides one of them being a different chipset, two having integrated graphics, one having 1GB Side Port memory, one having four PCI-E x16 slots....so on and so forth?

tcsenter hit the nail on the head. The three boards are completely different. Pick the one that best suits your needs for the money.

 

[legocitytruck]

Thanks for the help. I would have thought that integrated video would make the board more expensive, but I guess PCI-E slots make it more expensive.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

MSI is the only non - "Asus" aka Crapsus, board maker

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: legocitytruck
Thanks for the help. I would have thought that integrated video would make the board more expensive, but I guess PCI-E slots make it more expensive.

A completely different chipset makes it more expensive.

 

[lopri]

Boards with integrated video is usually cheaper for several reasons. A major one is that the board won't need as many PCI/PCIe slots because a lot of board makers assumes that a buyer will not use a discrete video card. Also in many cases these boards offer slightly less performance because the on-board GPU consumes system memory and bus bandwidth.

790GX is kind of an exception, in that AMD mandated board makers to equip the boards with 128MB of DDR3-1066. (it's called 'sideport memory') So all 790GX boards have dedicated memory built-in for their Radeon 3300 GPUs and it performs much better than traditional mATX boards with integrated video. But when it comes to pure performance 790FX is still the king, I hear.

 

[legocitytruck]

Thanks for the replies. Some of the boards have one LAN port while others have two, what is the reason for having two?

Also, this MSI board supports DDR3 2133, is this a typo? http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813130223

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
Besides one of them being a different chipset, two having integrated graphics, one having 1GB Side Port memory, one having four PCI-E x16 slots....so on and so forth?

Haha....I smiled...

 

[PCTC2]

Originally posted by: legocitytruck
Thanks for the replies. Some of the boards have one LAN port while others have two, what is the reason for having two?

Also, this MSI board supports DDR3 2133, is this a typo? http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813130223

AM3 boards use DDR3. By OC'ing some sticks can hit that.

And with 2 LAN ports, you can team them with software and have double the effective bandwidth or put them on separate LANs to have separate access to an internal intranet.