Asus or Gigabyte

[gernstsmit]

Hey guys, I am looking to upgrade my motherboard and have a few questions.

Let me start by saying I currently have a sandy bridge based intel mobo with i5 processor. My 9800GT gfx failed a while back and I replaced it with an Asus R9 270 card. My current mobo only has PCI express v2.0 so the new gfx card is not performing optimally. Also the intel mobo doesn't have USB3 which is lame.

So I am deciding between three mobo's and need some advice. FYI the CPU I'm looking at buying with the mobo is the i5 3.4GHz 4670.

The board I'm seriously considering is the Asus Z87-Plus. This has bi 8x PCIe v3.0 support, 8 Sata 6G ports and 4 x 1600 ram slots. It also has dual intelligent processor 4 that is a plus (no pun intended). I'm not looking at the Pro, the next step up, because I don't need the wifi, Bluetooth etc. that comes extra. The Plus has all I need.

The competition is the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H. It seems very similarly spec'd except for the following: you get 2 x e-sata ports and a gold plated CPU socket. It does cost 20% more though (perhaps for the 15u gold plating??).

The third competitor is the Asus Z87 Gryphon TUF mobo. This is a micro-ATX where the other two are regular ATX. The price tag is exactly the same as the Asus Z87-Plus and you lose 2 Sata and a few USB ports however it supports 4 x 1866 ram without overclocking.

So my questions are these:

1) Who makes the better mobo???? I am a big Asus fan and the board seems better value for money but will I get better FPS in my games with the Gigabyte? Or are they so similar that it won't make a difference either way.

2) Is there a huge benefit in running 1866 vs 1600 ram? Or is it one of those things you will never notice?

3) I am a total noob when it comes to crossfire/sli. Is there a difference between these boards in terms of crossfire performance? I will read more on crossfire and how to set it up to get the best performance, but I don't want to start with the wrong mobo and shoot myself in the foot.

Cheers! I appreciate your opinion.

 

[ubercake]

To answer your questions:

1) Given the same components, the motherboard really isn't going to make much of a difference for gaming. Now if you're going for high overclocks (>400MHz) and trying to get record breaking benchmark scores, a motherboard can make a big difference.

A micro ATX board is great if you know you won't be running two video cards in an SLI or crossfire configuration. That Gryphon board supports SLI and crossfire, but will sandwich two video cards right next to each other which will raise temps. Newer standard ATX motherboards will leave a slot or more of separation between two 2-slot GPUs. For this reason, I'd stick with the standard ATX sized motherboard if your intention is to run SLI or crossfire one day.

I've had two builds with Gigabyte boards. Both were good, but each motherboard failed after about a year outside of warranty. Every Asus board I've had hasn't failed on me. I've only gotten rid of an Asus board for an upgrade to architecture. Asus makes solid motherboards.

You should also check out the Asus Z87-A. It has almost the same config but with 2 fewer SATA connections than the "plus" (Are 6 SATA ports enough?). Same on-board audio as the Plus. It is SLI ready. It runs around $140.

I do like the BIOS Flashback available on the Z87-plus because you can update the BIOS prior to installing components. You just plug power to the motherboard and you can update the BIOS with a USB-connected thumb drive. This will help you reduce the possibility that you'll run into compatibility issues with any of the newer components you'll be installing on the motherboard prior to building the PC.

If your motherboard is built after most of your components have already hit the market, chances are the motherboard's BIOS will be upgraded to a point by which you won't experience compatibility issues upon initial build. So BIOS Flashback is a nice-to-have feature but not entirely necessary.

2)The difference between 1866 and 1600 RAM speed is negligible. Shoot for CL9 for whichever is less expensive.

3)Based on my experience with both crossfire and SLI, I'll pick SLI every time for many reasons. The Asus Z87-A and Z87-Plus boards both support SLI and crossfire. This makes for a lot of options moving forward.

 

[gernstsmit]

Thank you for the great advice, you confirmed everything my gut told me so it is good to know I am making the right choices.

What I did not think of was the implication of having two graphics cards closer together on a micro-ATX board. It makes a lot of sense to avoid this.

I am not interested in overclocking. My belief is that you should buy the best you can afford and be content with that and not try to do something with your hardware it wasn't meant for. However with Intel's new turbo boost feature as well as all the trouble Asus went to to give me "dual intelligent processor 4" as well as that handy overclocking dip switch I will be sorely tempted to see if I can push my gaming frame rates just a little ;-P

I am interested in knowing why you recommend SLi over Crossfire. I have been an nVidia supporter for a long time but recently it just seems that ATi is giving you more bang for your buck. This is why I went for the R9 270 ATi card an I will probably end up doing crossfire with another similar if not identical card. Is the advantages of SLi over Crossfire so great that is would make sense to replace my current ATi card?

 

[ubercake]

I'm not an either or when it comes to GPUs. Nvidia is just the best with start to finish at this time. They have great driver support for SLI.

Problems I always had with AMD were primarily with the drivers. I was told that crossfire and SLI have the same problems and the both would have perceivable microstutter and poor driver support so I hung on to my AMD cards. Every driver release offered some kind of new challenge. One was the PC would no longer wake from a sleep state, another was HDMI audio couldn't install and the next release fixed the HDMI audio, but broke the sleep state issue. Another example is how I waited for over a year for a driver fix to get flickering video to stop with 5850s in crossfire with Bad Company 2 while driving a tank. I also had other flickering video issues in other titles. I absolutely do not trust the AMD driver team when it comes to their GPUs at this time. Yeah the AMD cards were a better deal and FRAPS showed comparable frame rates in games, but due to the runt/dropped frame issue, the quality was terrible. After a year of putting up with AMD cards, I switched to a GTX 580. It was a really nice change, but I thought the issues may have gone away because it was a single card. I picked up another GTX 580 a couple of weeks later and ran SLI. The performance was fantastic as expected. I've since had a pair of 680s and 780s. SLI simply works great and Nvidia has made it apparent through the release of great drivers that they fully support SLI technology.

You can go through many of my old posts describing my issues with AMD drivers while I was going through them. I think mousemonkey and matto17secs finally convinced me that SLI didn't have the problems crossfire does. I found they were and are correct.

On the AMD side, the R9 290 and R9 290x have fixed the runt/dropped frame issue at a hardware level. These are the only cards I would even might consider buying, myself, from AMD as I don't trust anything software-related that's produced by AMD (ie drivers or software fix for runt/dropped frame issue), but these are still only first-pass hardware solutions to the problem. All other AMD cards have a software (driver) solution for the runt/dropped frame issue, but who knows what the next driver release might screw up and a software solution won't be as efficient at handling the issue as the hardware solution would be. I will consider whatever next gen cards AMD releases since they will all have the runt/dropped frame issue addressed at the hardware level, but I wouldn't get anything before then.

When the runt/dropped frame issue articles were released last year regarding single AMD cards as well as crossfire setups, I finally felt validated with regard to my opinion of AMD cards. When I had my issues with my 5850s, I got on the AMD/ATI support forums and was seeking fixes for my issues with AMD cards. I was banned for trolling because some really active AMD forum members and mods said these issues were due to my other hardware and I needed to stop exaggerating.

When you spend your hard-earned money on something, you want it to work as expected. SLI works as expected. Nvidia offers driver support that can't be matched by AMD. I'm convinced this is why they can charge more for their products.