Asus vs Gigabyte Motherboard AM3+

void2500

I'm planning to buy a new motherboard for my AMD Phenom II 955 I got from Ebay.

Which of the two would you recomend?

Asus Sabertooth 990FX
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/47593/ASUS+SABERTOOTH+990FX%2C+AM3%2C+ATX.article

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/48263/Gigabyte+GA-990FXA-UD5%2C+AMD+980FX%2C+AM3%2B%2C+ATX.article

I will buy Crucial Ballistix Elite memories from crucials website
http://www.crucial.com/eu/store/partspecs.aspx?imodule=BLE2CP4G3D1608DE1TX0CEU

Monotype

Do you really need to spend that much on a motherboard? A 970 would do much the same job unless you want SLI/Crossfire.

There's not a whole lot of difference between them. The gigabyte has two eSATA ports which could be handy. High end Asus boards are usually fairly nice quality.


Here are the spec sheets.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/SABERTOOTH_990FX/#specifications
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891#sp

Is there anything that you specifically want from the motherboard.
That RAM is a bit of rip off. No need to spend that much.

void2500

Monotype wrote: »

Do you really need to spend that much on a motherboard? A 970 would do much the same job unless you want SLI/Crossfire.

There's not a whole lot of difference between them. The gigabyte has two eSATA ports which could be handy. High end Asus boards are usually fairly nice quality.


Here are the spec sheets.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/SABERTOOTH_990FX/#specifications
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891#sp

Is there anything that you specifically want from the motherboard.
That RAM is a bit of rip off. No need to spend that much.

I'm mostly out for the 8 SATA ports, what I have found these two are one of the few that have it on the AMD platform. I'm not really out for the SLI/Crossfire.

I have plans to do some overclocking once I have everything setup.
What I have read Crucial Ballistix overclock good.

Do you have any other suggestion on other memory?

Monotype

Is it even worth your while overclocking RAM? Performance gains are not massive and you'd be better off concentrating on CPU, unless you're squeezing every last bit of performance out - and if that's the case you'd be as well off getting an overclockable Intel system.

I'd just get something cheaper for the RAM like the G-skill ripjaws. Okay, the Crucial ones have got lower timings alright, but I don't think that they're worth the marginal cost.
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/1600+Low+Voltage/44321/8GB-Kit+G.Skill+RipJaws-X+PC3-12800U+CL9.article

That's a lot of hard drives you must be using. :eek:

void2500

Monotype wrote: »

Is it even worth your while overclocking RAM? Performance gains are not massive and you'd be better off concentrating on CPU, unless you're squeezing every last bit of performance out - and if that's the case you'd be as well off getting an overclockable Intel system.

I'd just get something cheaper for the RAM like the G-skill ripjaws. Okay, the Crucial ones have got lower timings alright, but I don't think that they're worth the marginal cost.
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/1600+Low+Voltage/44321/8GB-Kit+G.Skill+RipJaws-X+PC3-12800U+CL9.article

That's a lot of hard drives you must be using. :eek:

I have decided to buy the Asus card. Do you know how the G.Skill memory kit is overclocking? Corsair Vengeance seems quite popular aswell.
Any idea which is to prefer?

Monotype

Corsair Vengence is probably only popular because it's cheap. Not my favourite RAM as the high heatspreaders can get in the way of the bigger CPU heatsinks.

I've bought the ripjaws myself a few times with different systems. I've never overclocked it more than a little bit as I generally just overclock the CPU due to poor gain from memory overclocking and the testing is time consuming. From a reliability point of view, it's been pretty good.