What is the best AM2+ board out there?

Roberty

Roberty

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OK guys, I'm kicking around the idea of building a new AMD rig. A buddy of mine is wanting a fairly high end system and I floated the idea of selling him my current system
(X2-6000+ , 2 gigs of ram and a 8800GT) and he's wanting to jump on it. I'm totally happy with my current system, and I'm probably crazy for even thinking about upgrading that being the case, but I thought I'd try to put together a new high end system through Newegg and then make a desision. I want something that will run a Phenom even though I might or might not get one right off the bat. I got to looking at the motherboard situitation on the AM2+'s and the more I look, the more I'm confused - not too many to choose from right now. Any that I'm overlooking or that are about to be released that I need to know about?

Thanks in advance.
 
Check out biostar's new 770 board.for 89.00 its a great board and o/clocks very well too..
 
I don't want anywhere near the best...I just want a AM2+ board that is mATX....Its a lot to ask for though :-/
Jason
 
We've had good luck with the Asus M3A, not micro ATX though. It overclocks the heck out of the X2, upgradeable to phenom but lacks voltage controls for good over clocking on it. It's only on the 4th bios revision so it'll get better over time. When I got it it was around a hundred. Clocked the 5000 black edition to 3.2 stable in about an hour.
 
methious said:
We've had good luck with the Asus M3A.
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I saw that board at Newegg but from reading the reviews it didn't sound too hot with only a 55% excellent rating. I normally try to steer clear of anything with that many negative reviews but I'll do some more research.
 
i don't know about best board, but decent-for-its-price award goes to the msi k9a2cf. i needed an upgradeable board for my semi legacy x19 crossfire build. it's got my 90nm x2 3800 to 2.6ghz stable and with no voltage tweaks on a crappy, old coolermaster aquagate. the amd overdrive utility is pretty awesome too.
 
on thing to look out for with the 6000+ (assuming its a 125W TDP CPU) is that the board is compatible. I am currently running teh ECS 770 board with the 6000+, and it doesnt support anything over 95W TDP (Phenom up to 9600). so its really unstable. new board should be here this week...
 
My vote is also for the Asus M3A32-MVP as best AM2+ board. I've tried the DFI LanParty, GigaByte DQ6 and the MSI K9A2 Plat as well. They're all good boards but the Asus just doesn't have any of the quirks the other brands displayed in one area or another. I suppose it's hard to get that brand-new chipset just-so sometimes. Also one thing regarding the MSI K9A2 CF is I read a thread here of a fellow who blew his board sky high by doing some moderate OCing. Also, MSI recently announced that this board does not support the higher clocked CPUs, which doesn't look good for those hoping to overclock with this board. :(
 
the k9a2cf is rock stable now at 2.95 ghz with voltage tweaks to the vcore, vdimm, and north bridge. if i used better ram than old corsair cl5 i probably wouldn't have to increase the voltage to the memory at all. it'll boot to windows at 3ghz but prime 25.5 won't last long with the voltages for 2.95ghz. i might just leave it at 2.95 because the cheapo liquid cooler has the cpu at 52 degrees load even with the north bridge block.
 
does the Asus M3A32-MVP board have a TBL fix in the MB or does it have an option to disable it?
 
KaCaBUla said:
does the Asus M3A32-MVP board have a TBL fix in the MB or does it have an option to disable it?
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The M3A32-MVP was one of the 1st 790FX boards released, and none of those boards had the TLB fix in their original BIOS. So unless the newer boards are shipping with more current BIOS revisions, they won't have the fix either. Even if they do, both the BIOS and AMD Overdrive give you the option of enabling or disabling it.
 
ok cool, i hate my current asus am2 board with the tbl fix enabled by default and with no fix in the bios. ive had to resort to a program hack to get the fix to be disabled. so its cool knowing that its an option in the bios.
 
KaCaBUla said:
ok cool, i hate my current asus am2 board with the tbl fix enabled by default and with no fix in the bios. ive had to resort to a program hack to get the fix to be disabled. so its cool knowing that its an option in the bios.
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I can't be sure about AM2/Phenom compatibility with AMD Overdrive, but you might be able to disable the TLB fix on your current system this way. Apparently, there's a way to disable the fix through CrystalCPU as well.
 
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