MSI 970 GAMING AM3+ Motherboard

[HardOCP News]

There is a review of the MSI 970 GAMING AM3+ motherboard posted this morning at HwC. As far as I can tell, this looks like a regular ol' non-April Fool's Day review. No joke.

Due to what we can only describe as stagnating CPU development and a palpable lack of reader interest, we haven't actually reviewed an AMD AM3+ motherboard since all the way back in May 2011. Surprisingly - and regrettably - there really hasn't been any huge advancements since then. The processors are still fundamentally based on the Bulldozer microarchitecture, there is still no support for PCI Express 3.0, and the SB950 southbridge is still being used so high speed connectivity is limited to SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0.

 

[Quix]

Weird to see a review of this seeing as AMD hasn't really released a new FX chip in 3 years.

 

[ROShay]

"...and the SB950 southbridge is still being used so high speed connectivity is limited to SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0."

This constitutes a bit of FAIL on the part of the author. First, it implies the SB950 natively supports USB 3.0. It does not. Secondly, it implies that being "limited to SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0" doesn't somehow also describe upwards of 90% of all currently available motherboards, independent of which chipset they utilize.

For $100 USD retail, looks like a pretty solid product to me.

 

[MrCaffeineX]

For $100 USD retail, looks like a pretty solid product to me.

I feel the same way. Paired up with an 8370e purchased as part of a MicroCenter combo deal, this would make a decent, cheap platform, that is even capable of handling dual-GPUs down the line.

 

[lord_emperor]

The weird thing is, even though AMD hasn't released anything "new" since Vishera in 2012, their CPUs are completely adequate for any task. And while Intel has been releasing products they're incremental upgrades and maybe superior under specific circumstances like gaming on ultra-high-end GPU setups XFire/SLI.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1836783

This is why I was completely happy to buy an FX-8310 (OC to 4.0 / 4.8 Turbo) with the cheapest motherboard available and putting my savings into a better GPU this Christmas.

Actually I wish I'd spent another $20 on a motherboard with better VRMs I could probably get 5.0 GHz on all 8 cores without Turbo.

 

[redbeard75]

I was having a hard time deciding between the msi gaming and the gigabyte ud3p that I ended up buying. The specs are nice on the msi but what the MSI is only 6+2 vrm while the Gigabyte was 8+1. I purchased an 8320e w/ the board at microcenter for 145. havent really tried to push it to its limits but managed 4.5, but decided on 4.2 for 24/7. I do alot of encoding, and I dont think i could find anything that can match price/performance ratio on these AMD FX chips!

 

[Simmonz]

I was impressed that they got an 8320 to 4.7 GHz on this board.

 

[jamesgalb]

I was having a hard time deciding between the msi gaming and the gigabyte ud3p that I ended up buying. The specs are nice on the msi but what the MSI is only 6+1 vrm while the Gigabyte was 8+1. I purchased an 8320e w/ the board at microcenter for 145. havent really tried to push it to its limits but managed 4.5, but decided on 4.2 for 24/7. I do alot of encoding, and I dont think i could find anything that can match price/performance ratio on these AMD FX chips!

I couldn't find the specs on the MSI being 6 or 8... Nor the new MSI 990fx...

Where did you find that info? Looks like 8 to me, no?

 

[redbeard75]

I believe I saw it was 6 phase in an online review, and also on some forum reviews I read.can't remember where specifically though. The board will overclock well but for how long is the question. I'm not hating on the board or anything like that, I still may get one with an 8320e when I upgrade my other rig or if I get a good bundle deal. But when it came time to buy, I knew of the quality of the power phases on the gigabyte board and is was cheaper. I do believe the MSI is good for mild overclock on the 95w fx cups but would question it's longevity with the non E 8 cores. But it definitely is a nice board for the price, I like the color scheme too.

Edit...just checked, toms and pcper state it is indeed 6+2 phase and not 8+2. I did see my typo in the quoted text as I stated 6+1, which should have read 6+2, edited past post.

 

[ManofGod]

Excellent board, I think that if these were the boards sold back in 2012, AMD might be better off. I am running an FX8320 non E and the board and processor are running much cooler than they did in my previous board that I had to replace. (Asrock 990FX Extreme 4.)