Asus M5A97 vs Gigabyte GA-970A-D3

[freemad]

Hi there.

I'm building a new machine and I got everything except the mother board. I couldn't find any comparison for these two specific models so I would like to ask for your advice.

I'm wondering between these two:

Asus M5A97 R2.0 AMD 970 DDR3 SATA 6Gb (Socket AM3+) ATX

http://www.tekheads.co.uk/product/Asus-M5A97-R20-AMD-970-DDR3-SATA-6Gb-Socket-AM3-ATX-Motherboard_44272.html

and

Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 AMD 970 SATA 6Gbs USB3.0 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 ATX

http://www.tekheads.co.uk/product/Gigabyte-GA-970A-D3-AMD-970-SATA-6Gbs-USB30-Socket-AM3-DDR3-ATX-Motherboard_42280.html


I'll be using AMD FX8350 Black Edition 8 Core Processor

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks !

 

[professorturtle]

From a non-biased perspective - either will do. They're both good boards that'll do the job.

From a slightly biased opinion: The M5A97. The M5A97 anyday imho. The AM3 boards that ASUS made were wonderful. Simply wonderful. (worked it out yet? lol)

 

[freemad]

From a non-biased perspective - either will do. They're both good boards that'll do the job.

From a slightly biased opinion: The M5A97. The M5A97 anyday imho. The AM3 boards that ASUS made were wonderful. Simply wonderful. (worked it out yet? lol)

I'm gonna go for the Wonderful one!

Thanks a lot mate 😉

 

[fozzybeat]

i am running the FX 8350 on a M5A97 Pro rev1 and i love it, good board!
I had one problem when i updated from my Phenom II x4 965 while updating to the latest bios 1604 to support the piledriver. I had to hardflash the bios chip since the update corrupted the bios. Never happened before and its specifically with this bios (updated lot of versions before).
So see to it that you get a board with the latest bios flashed on it, if it comes with an old one it will not recognize the cpu out of the box!

all in all i love this board i even used it to push my 965 to 4ghz with aircooling and maintaining it stable at high nb and ht settings. good ram support as well

 

[professorturtle]

Remember to pop me as best answer so I get those extra points

 

[freemad]

i am running the FX 8350 on a M5A97 Pro rev1 and i love it, good board!
I had one problem when i updated from my Phenom II x4 965 while updating to the latest bios 1604 to support the piledriver. I had to hardflash the bios chip since the update corrupted the bios. Never happened before and its specifically with this bios (updated lot of versions before).
So see to it that you get a board with the latest bios flashed on it, if it comes with an old one it will not recognize the cpu out of the box!

all in all i love this board i even used it to push my 965 to 4ghz with aircooling and maintaining it stable at high nb and ht settings. good ram support as well

Yes I've heard about the BIOS. I'll need to do a bit of a reading as I know exactly for what are you talking about, but have no idea how to do it...

Anyway, thanks ! 😉