Best Motherboards For The Money: October 2014 (Archive)

[adamovera]

Are you having a hard time keeping track of the best motherboards out there? Our resident motherboard expert helps you pick the right platform with this collection of award-winning boards covering today's top AMD and Intel processors.

Best Motherboards For The Money: October 2014 : Read more

 

[adamovera]

Archived comments are found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2423102/motherboards-money-october-2014.html

 

[GObonzo]

the ASUS Sabertooth Gen3 offering PCIe 3.0 has been left off why? because of price, performance? as far as i can tell through a hundred or so pages of researching this is the best AMD board out there.

 

[Eggz]

It's crazy how much more affordable the AMD motherboards are compared to Intel! I use Intel but give the value proposition hands-down to AMD. Nicely done!

 

[jryder]

These motherboards are all very expensive, but they don't seem to offer much that a typical gamer would miss in a $130 motherboard like this one: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z97a

Also, most people--even most gamers--don't overclock. So it might be a good idea to make recommendations for sub $100 H97 boards.

 

[Crashman]

We've found a couple guys to address budget Intel and rehashed AMD boards, but it might take a month to get their data!

 

[gypsydan]

Are you ever going to do a MB report for sub-$100 motherboards?

 

[Crashman]

Are you ever going to do a MB report for sub-$100 motherboards?

We've found a couple guys to address budget Intel and rehashed AMD boards, but it might take a month to get their data!

 

[gypsydan]

We've found a couple guys to address budget Intel and rehashed AMD boards, but it might take a month to get their data!

Thanks for doing this. . . . . I don't know how big the gaming market is, but I'm sure there is a MUCH BIGGER MARKET for the less expensive boards. I upgrade every 3-4 years, so for general computing I do not need an expensive board, which I'm sure is the class most people fall into.

 

[Naeem Rahman]

where is mine mobo
Asus Z97-A

 

[Crashman]

where is mine mobo
Asus Z97-A

These are all nice boards right? But putting them all on the list would make this a very long list. Z97-A lost to the Z97 Extreme4 due primarily to having fewer features for more money.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mainstream-gaming-z97-motherboard,3824-27.html

 

[jml79]

In every other catagory you spec some budget parts and every quarter you spec a $500 ish computer system. How about making motherboard recommendations that match you CPU recommendations. Nobody should be buying a Z97 motherboard unless they are buyîng the K series processor which isn't mentioned in your best processor for the money until the top tier. A nice little MSI H81 that is used in your budget build will suit your recommend I3 and non K I5 just fine. I'm am also sure there must be a motherboard that can support multiple video cards in between the H81 and Z97 as well. You do such a good job ith your other best for the money articles. This one just falls flat.

 

[Crashman]

In every other catagory you spec some budget parts and every quarter you spec a $500 ish computer system. How about making motherboard recommendations that match you CPU recommendations. Nobody should be buying a Z97 motherboard unless they are buyîng the K series processor which isn't mentioned in your best processor for the money until the top tier. A nice little MSI H81 that is used in your budget build will suit your recommend I3 and non K I5 just fine. I'm am also sure there must be a motherboard that can support multiple video cards in between the H81 and Z97 as well. You do such a good job ith your other best for the money articles. This one just falls flat.

We've found a couple guys to address budget Intel and rehashed AMD boards, but it might take a month to get their data!

As for the rest, we're also trying to get some budget Z97 parts into the mix. So you'll eventually have $40 B85s through sub-$120 Z97, including H81.

And the only reason the recommendations haven't been put up yet is because we only recommend parts we've tested. This isn't best chipsets for the money after all, and we can't just pick a "reference" H81 to put on the list as we might with GPUs.

My appologies that the motherboard team hasn't been working as fast as the SSD team. Motherboards take longer, so we've added more team members

 

[tsnor]

+1 to all the comments calling for ranking low priced MB of the type that would be selected with reasonable processors like i3-4160.

(It would be interesting to understand the MB selection process for the $500 and $1000 builds that Tom's publishes)

Very glad Crashman reports that Toms is stepping up. I especially like the idea in a few comments of changing the categories, for example, best low priced MB for non-K intel. Best intel MB for serious OC. Best AMD MB for less than $150 CPUs. Best AMD MB for OC, etc. It would be interesting to understand the MB selection process for the $500 and $1000 builds that Tom's publishes. Maybe the categories could be 'best MB for a $500 intel build', etc.

 

[JohnDR]

AMD Boards missing could include Sabertooth Gen 3 since it's the first board to have PCIE 3.0 ( and if only they were still selling them) and ASRock Fatality Killer 990 FX since it incorporates an M.2 device without requiring an FM2 CPU.

 

[BobRoberts363]

Would have been nice to see the better boards such as Asus X99 Deluxe or the Rampage VII . I hardly think ASrock is going to stand up to either of those. I agree with JohnDR, The sabertooths are awesome and as far as life span will out last any of these. You get what you pay for , i never understood adding all the nice doo dads and chince out on the engine. Board and CPU first everything else is just filling. I'll take the Asus deluxe x99 thanks.

 

[Crashman]

Would have been nice to see the better boards such as Asus X99 Deluxe or the Rampage VII . I hardly think ASrock is going to stand up to either of those. I agree with JohnDR, The sabertooths are awesome and as far as life span will out last any of these. You get what you pay for , i never understood adding all the nice doo dads and chince out on the engine. Board and CPU first everything else is just filling. I'll take the Asus deluxe x99 thanks.

Asus makes nice boards, we're testing more as we go along. But so far, the "X99 Pro" has an undesirable slot/lane configuration, matched by the Extreme6/ac, making us question whether we should recommend either product. Maybe MSI or Gigabyte will do better?

 

[JohnDR]

Honestly, I don't care too much about how much new motherboards cost, I care about whether the manufacturers were innovative enough to try something new, that other manufacturers didn't. Without innovation, PCIE 3.0 may never be widely used on AMD boards and we would all be stuck only having one option. At leadt now you can get an FM2+ board that has PCIE3.0. Why is it none of the other AMD 990 FX boards other than Sabertooth Gen 3 have PCIE 3.0 on their MB's? Because board manufacturers aren't innovative enough. Reward innovation and let the sky high prices on these "been there done that" motherboards fall through the floor!

 

[Crashman]

Honestly, I don't care too much about how much new motherboards cost, I care about whether the manufacturers were innovative enough to try something new, that other manufacturers didn't. Without innovation, PCIE 3.0 may never be widely used on AMD boards and we would all be stuck only having one option. At leadt now you can get an FM2+ board that has PCIE3.0. Why is it none of the other AMD 990 FX boards other than Sabertooth Gen 3 have PCIE 3.0 on their MB's? Because board manufacturers aren't innovative enough. Reward innovation and let the sky high prices on these "been there done that" motherboards fall through the floor!

There's a reason why nobody is geeking out over PCIe 3.0 on a 990FX chipset: It's not real. The 990FX doesn't have PCIe 3.0, it only has PCIe 2.0 When you put a PLX PCIe 3.0 bridge on a PCIe 2.0 controller, the system will see that the card sits on a PCIe 3.0 connection, but you'll still be limited to the bandwidth of the chipset's PCIe 2.0 controller.

The chipset has 32 lanes at PCIe 2.0. The bridge allows 16 lanes of PCIe 2.0 to split to 32-lanes. But the bridge itself is PCIe 3.0, so every card on the bridge will be seen by the system as having a PCIe 3.0 connection even though bandwidth to and from the bridge is limited to PCIe 2.0 x16.

That means a single card can transfer at PCIe 2.0 x16 rates. Because SLI and CrossFire use the same data and it’s a repeater bridge (same data to multiple cards), two cards also get PCIe 2.0 x16 data rate.

So, what's the advantage of using a PCIe 3.0 bridge on a PCIe 2.0 controller? Because PCIe 3.0 x8 has the same transfer rate as PCIe 2.0 x16, the bridge allows three-card (x16-x8-x8) and four-card (x8-x8-x8-x8) configurations to still have PCIe 2.0 x16 bandwidth for each card, whereas a PCIe 2.0 version of this bridge would drop the transfer rate to PCIe 2.0 x8 per-card.

In other words, the benefits only apply to 3 and 4 card configurations. And even then, they're dubious.

 

[GObonzo]

The chipset has 32 lanes at PCIe 2.0. The bridge allows 16 lanes of PCIe 2.0 to split to 32-lanes. But the bridge itself is PCIe 3.0, so every card on the bridge will be seen by the system as having a PCIe 3.0 connection even though bandwidth to and from the bridge is limited to PCIe 2.0 x16.

That means a single card can transfer at PCIe 2.0 x16 rates. Because SLI and CrossFire use the same data and it’s a repeater bridge (same data to multiple cards), two cards also get PCIe 2.0 x16 data rate.

So, what's the advantage of using a PCIe 3.0 bridge on a PCIe 2.0 controller? Because PCIe 3.0 x8 has the same transfer rate as PCIe 2.0 x16, the bridge allows three-card (x16-x8-x8) and four-card (x8-x8-x8-x8) configurations to still have PCIe 2.0 x16 bandwidth for each card, whereas a PCIe 2.0 version of this bridge would drop the transfer rate to PCIe 2.0 x8 per-card.

In other words, the benefits only apply to 3 and 4 card configurations. And even then, they're dubious.

so, what would be the benefit to the AMD board engineers to be keeping the 2.0 controllers for newer boards? correct that upgrading to the 3.0 controller would offer faster bridge transfer rates with single and double cards?

 

[Crashman]

The chipset has 32 lanes at PCIe 2.0. The bridge allows 16 lanes of PCIe 2.0 to split to 32-lanes. But the bridge itself is PCIe 3.0, so every card on the bridge will be seen by the system as having a PCIe 3.0 connection even though bandwidth to and from the bridge is limited to PCIe 2.0 x16.

That means a single card can transfer at PCIe 2.0 x16 rates. Because SLI and CrossFire use the same data and it’s a repeater bridge (same data to multiple cards), two cards also get PCIe 2.0 x16 data rate.

So, what's the advantage of using a PCIe 3.0 bridge on a PCIe 2.0 controller? Because PCIe 3.0 x8 has the same transfer rate as PCIe 2.0 x16, the bridge allows three-card (x16-x8-x8) and four-card (x8-x8-x8-x8) configurations to still have PCIe 2.0 x16 bandwidth for each card, whereas a PCIe 2.0 version of this bridge would drop the transfer rate to PCIe 2.0 x8 per-card.

In other words, the benefits only apply to 3 and 4 card configurations. And even then, they're dubious.

so, what would be the benefit to the AMD board engineers to be keeping the 2.0 controllers for newer boards? correct that upgrading to the 3.0 controller would offer faster bridge transfer rates with single and double cards?

The benefit to AMD is that they don't need to develop a new chipset. AMD never planned to replace the 990FX because it decided a few years ago to drop high-end platforms and push mainstream, where it's easier to compete. I think at this point the company is just waiting for sales volume to drop below production profitability. Lots of companies outside the tech industry do this, they call it "milking the cow".

 

[mfreshna]

There is a version of the Extreme 6 with wifi: ASRock Z97 Extreme6/ac

 

[Crashman]

There is a version of the Extreme 6 with wifi: ASRock Z97 Extreme6/ac

Yes, it was reviewed a couple weeks ago but still awaits a publishing slot.

 

[ChosenUndead]

WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU EVER RECOMMEND THE ASUS M5A99? Yes please I don't like useing HDMI! Oh no, who the fuck needs pci 3, who uses that anyway? Thanks Tom for throwing 100 $ out the window for me : (((

 

[Crashman]

WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU EVER RECOMMEND THE ASUS M5A99(FX Pro R2.0)? Yes please I don't like useing HDMI! Oh no, who the fuck needs pci 3, who uses that anyway? Thanks Tom for throwing 100 $ out the window for me : (((

Nobody said you HAD to buy a 990FX motherboard, the article only make a few recommendations to those who WILL buy a 990FX motherboard.

Don't take your hatred for AMD's high-end platform out on the review site