Too little too late? or saviour? AMD motherboard

mgssteve

New member
Hello to all i pose this question and it is my very 1st post on the forums with a subject i would like to open up.

AMD have for many years been seen as the poor mans choice, i have no preference either way tbh i just go with what i can afford.

Currently i am still running my dated rig Asus p5q WS mobo with a Q6600 and 4 gig of OCZ ddr2 800mhz ram. I use a AIO liquid cooler and has enabled me to push the cpu to 3.6ghz ram running at 825mhz i have also added ssd drives and a 760gtx card.

Its showing its age tbh no denying this.

Many of the reviews i see are for Intel based systems and i was hoping the AMD 6300 with the bonus of a new motherboard and DDR3 ram would be good.

But this is still dated tech, no PCI express 3 support no usb 3. no m.2 the list is long. So that left me with what can i get with more upto date tech AM2+ was on obvious choice but after doing research these chips dont match the performance of the AM3 when overclocked. So i was left in limbo land what to do what to do.

Then to my sheer joy i see this Gigabyte GA-990FX Gaming motherboard
it has all the right things M.2 pciexpress 3 USB3.1 type A/ type C. Retails for Around £116 inc vat which is for an Intel board low end entry lvl. So i am now faced with the reality of going semi on par with tech just the CPU is a little dated. But this is a Hex core cpu and from CPUBOSS it blows the Q6600 to bits.

I am not sure why AMD has taken so long to implement these techs to its older boards for the AM3 range or why motherboard makers have taken so long to implement them but it seems like an awsome and cheep alternative to anything newer. £255 will net you said motherboard a six core CPU 6300 and 8 Gig of whatever corsair LP memory you want be, it red blue white (my personal choice) or standard black. This setup would imo blow away any intel based rig or newer AMD rig for the same money / price point.

I know many will say it wont be able to compete or perform with newer tech but my current rig still plays BF4 at 1080p resolution and never drops below 45 fps with everything set to mid not max as the fps drops to 20-30 fps which is no good.

I would love to know what others think on this subject and if anybody has a better setup for those on a shoestring budget.

 
PCIE 3 offers extra bandwidth. Bandwidth for things like quad SLI using 4 Titan Blacks. Note - even that GPU set up can not saturate the bandwidth of PCIE 2.

M2? You can get a PCIE-M2 adapter for about a tenner.

Don't get a FX6300. Go for the 8320e it's only about £25 more and is a much more refined chip (and it has two extra cores).

To AMD AM3+ is a dead tech. Sure there have been some new boards over the past couple of years but that's only because Intel's budget chips were crap and companies like Asrock MSI and Gigabyte just want to mop up some sales.
 
O.k sounds reasonable but the newest boards are literally no more than a month or two old as far as i can tell, Scan.co.uk have only just started to stock these newer boards along with a couple of new boards for the FM2+ cpu's, adding such nice things as m.2 and usb 3.1, i know i could in theory get add in cards for my current rig but i feel the cpu is now along with the memory a true bottleneck. I see where you are coming from with going for the 8320 octo core but was put off by the high tdp compared to the six core thus limiting the potential for a good overclock.

I know AMD have some new stuff due to drop as in cpu's but unclear with the motherboard sittuation i believe they are going to keep the current lineup as in FM2 and the AM3 boards and just release newer boards with the sexier options as previosly mentioned. thankyou for some insight and have given me something else to ponder upon. =0)
 
There are a few new AM3+ boards out which have USB 3.1 and other goodies. The new AM4 chipset is worth waiting for however as you will be able to upgrade from the launch APUs to their new high performance CPUs (if they are any good that is).
 
Really isnt worth buying new AM3 anymore. Either sit back and wait for AM4 or just come to terms with the fact that in this instance Intel is way ahead.
 
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