Viability of the AM3+

The 970 Fatal1ty board just hit the greek stores at the price of 120Euros!?!?!
holy moly

With AMD you always want to try and get the best board possible as unlike Intel, Motherboards with AMD CPU's really do have an impact on overclocking etc...

Try and get a 990FX board, I honestly wouldn't bother with anything less.
 
With AMD you always want to try and get the best board possible as unlike Intel, Motherboards with AMD CPU's really do have an impact on overclocking etc...

Try and get a 990FX board, I honestly wouldn't bother with anything less.

Yeah amd uses the northbridge a lot and the vrm plays a huge role too. I could go for the 990FX fatal1ty board that also has the "premium audio" and go for the 8350 or the 8320e. Although the best possible solution would be the 990fx sabertooth and an extra sound card, but with that budget I could get only as far as a creative soundblaster Z which most of you guys say it's crap
 
Yeah amd uses the northbridge a lot and the vrm plays a huge role too. I could go for the 990FX fatal1ty board that also has the "premium audio" and go for the 8350 or the 8320e. Although the best possible solution would be the 990fx sabertooth and an extra sound card, but with that budget I could get only as far as a creative soundblaster Z which most of you guys say it's crap

I currently have an 8350 and a Sabertooth 2.0 as my media center/server as I picked them up for dirt cheap so thought, Why not :)

The audio on the Sabertooth is actually pretty decent and I'm not even joking when I say this, It's nearly on par with a Soundblaster ZX, Which for onboard on an AMD mobo is pretty damn good but says how bad the Soundblaster card/s really are when onboard audio can nigh on keep up.
 
The audio on the Sabertooth is actually pretty decent and I'm not even joking when I say this, It's nearly on par with a Soundblaster ZX, Which for onboard on an AMD mobo is pretty damn good but says how bad the Soundblaster card/s really are when onboard audio can nigh on keep up.

Yeah.... I'm in love with the DT 990, I don't think that the board can drive 250Ohm headphones.
The sabertooth is the best board for the AM3+ the TUF design is what AM3+ needs
 
Yeah.... I'm in love with the DT 990, I don't think that the board can drive 250Ohm headphones.
The sabertooth is the best board for the AM3+ the TUF design is what AM3+ needs

You can still use the DT 990's with the Sabertooth they just won't be performing to their maximum ability and while you have the board and CPU you can save up a little bit of cash either for a Xonar soundcard or an external AMP/DAC :)
 
You can still use the DT 990's with the Sabertooth they just won't be performing to their maximum ability and while you have the board and CPU you can save up a little bit of cash either for a Xonar soundcard or an external AMP/DAC :)


The only viable option is the Fiio Olympus E10 100Euros. I'll see If I can squeeze it in the budget all at once. If not, I'll see if I can sell one of my kidneys....

Btw, what was the OC you achieved on the 8350?
 
The only viable option is the Fiio Olympus E10 100Euros. I'll see If I can squeeze it in the budget all at once. If not, I'll see if I can sell one of my kidneys....

Btw, what was the OC you achieved on the 8350?

I managed 4.60GHZ game and bench stable, It's an stock now though as it's only being used for media/server duties so having the overclock on it would be a little pointless.
 
I managed 4.60GHZ game and bench stable, It's an stock now though as it's only being used for media/server duties so having the overclock on it would be a little pointless.

I'm writing the review for the FX 8320e and it is bench and game stable ATM.
 
You should undervolt it to save money or turn off half of the cores
Not worth it.


My 8320 runs 4.2ghz@1.35v (which is pretty much the lowest voltage I could get it to run at stock) and I use it to do stuff with Virtual box. Its a great budget option if you get into virtualization. They even support ECC ram I believe if you wanted to make it a 24/7 mini virtualhost.
 
The power saving would be miniscule, Like around €10 a year ^_^
If you take the FX-9590 (which is the most power hungry CPU you can get) and compare it to i7-4790k:

Power Saving = (0.220kW TDP - 0.088kW TDP) / 90% PSU Efficiency * €0.12/kWhr = €0.0176/hr

Then , for the year you get: €0.0176 * 20hrs/week * 52 = €22.88

Not that much really is it? In practice it's going to be even less given you're not really going to be loading your CPU 100% for every second you've your PC on. ^_^
 
Was aiming for a 9590 because I know it's going to be stable at 5Ghz whatsoever (ok well I would be able to cool it) Because the difference between the 8350 and the 9590 at stock is 10fps or more in some cases.
The 8320 is 140Euros
8350=175Euros
9590=230Euros
So if I get the 8350 I'm going to pray that it's an excellent chip and it will reach at least 4.8....
 
Was aiming for a 9590 because I know it's going to be stable at 5Ghz whatsoever (ok well I would be able to cool it) Because the difference between the 8350 and the 9590 at stock is 10fps or more in some cases.
The 8320 is 140Euros
8350=175Euros
9590=230Euros
So if I get the 8350 I'm going to pray that it's an excellent chip and it will reach at least 4.8....

Go for the 8350 as they usually clock slightly better than the 8320, From experience any way.

The 9590 is silly as it uses a HUGE amount of power and you need quite a decent cooler to properly keep it alive.

Even if you only clock the 8350 to 4.40GHZ, The difference between it and the 9590 at 5.0GHZ in games will be like 1 FPS.

Here's a good chart for you, Some games literally have ZERO difference between them -

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=1289
 
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I just checked the e-tailer's site and the price for the crosshair-V formulaZ just shot up from 209 to 250Euros.... U WOT!
So my board choices from now on are
ASUS M5A99FX PRO R.2
ASROCK 990FX Killer (not designed for 220W) Has amp
ASROCK 990FX Extreme 6 (designed for 220W) Has amp
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0

So my thought is that since I'm not going to go 220W. I could get the Extreme 6 (it has a bit more beefier vrm cooler than the killer) and settle with the built in amp OR get one of the asus boards (that are really beefy in terms of cooling) and try to make money for the aforementioned amp.

Then it dawned to me that this level of pushing the budget (with the Fiio) might have gotten me off bounds and the money I would spend in all of them would get me a ranger board and the 4790k.... I'm still 70Euros short or not. All I know is that my budget is 2000Euros for everything. (Rig+a mech keyboard+mouse+IPS monitor+headphones) Well ok 70 euros compared to 2000 isn't that much but then I'll have to buy furniture for the room etc.... But the budget on the pc is all mine
 
Out of those boards I'd highly recommend the Sabertooth 2.0, Rock solid, Looks awesome and it's extremely reliable.
 
Out of those boards I'd highly recommend the Sabertooth 2.0, Rock solid, Looks awesome and it's extremely reliable.

Also on a sidenote, searching Realtek's site about the sound chip on the particular board I ended up reading the tech data sheet of the chip. Somewhere in the 90page pdf file there is a rating for the internal amplifier the chip has.
It has an output impedance of 200Ohms!!

Something that companies that make boards and soundcards or boards with "premium audio" <_< apparently don't want the public to know about, for obvious reasons... (???)
 
The good thing about the FX series is that you can pick them up for very cheap, and they overclock quite well. As long as you don't have to worry about electricity bills (uni accommodation ect.) then the FX are actually viable for a budget build. However, if you do have the money to spend, i5s just destory anything AMD have to offer, especially once overclocked

145W in a house hold environment is nothing. normal light blub is 60 watts, kettle is 1XXX watts and a cooker is 2XXX watts.

the cost of 145 W vs 95 W on Intel is actually not much at all.
 
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