970 vs. 990FX

[Nerdfighter]

Hey guys.

So I'm building a more budget-oriented gaming PC at around the 800€ mark this Christmas: FX 6300 and GTX 760. But I'm not really sure which mobo to get. Should I get one with the 970 or the 990FX chipset? 990FX boards are usually more expensive, but they do support multiple cards. Is the "future-proofing" worth the extra money?

 

[Feronix]

Tbh, there are a lot of cards out there that will serve you fine in a single card configuration, which is usually better than SLI/ CrossfireX anyway since you won't need a bigger PSU and it'll run cooler and quieter.

If you want to SLI high-end cards on such an AMD platform, you're just doing it wrong really. If you do get the 970, you might save enough money to get an FX-8320 as well, which is not that much more expensive and I'd really recommend you to push for that one (preferably with an aftermarket CPU cooler).

 

[Nerdfighter]

Tbh, there are a lot of cards out there that will serve you fine in a single card configuration, which is usually better than SLI/ CrossfireX anyway since you won't need a bigger PSU and it'll run cooler and quieter.

If you want to SLI high-end cards on such an AMD platform, you're just doing it wrong really. If you do get the 970, you might save enough money to get an FX-8320 as well, which is not that much more expensive and I'd really recommend you to push for that one (preferably with an aftermarket CPU cooler).

Well yeah, I guess running SLI would a bit silly. Once the 760 gets outdated and too slow, it'll probably be smarter to just get a new card instead of buying another one to run in SLI.

As for the CPU, the rig is mainly for gaming, and after just browsing around some gaming benchmarks, it doesn't seem like the 8320 is much faster, apart from a few select games, which I guess are optimized for more cores. I'm planning on pairing whichever CPU I end up buying with the Hyper 212, so I will have a little overclocking headroom. What advantages do the 2 extra cores bring, other than being faster at heavily multi-threaded applications, like video rendering?

 

[Zoot]

The 990FX boards will likely overclock better; most of them have more power phases and more beefy heatsinks on the VRMs.