G1.sniper A88x good budget mobo?

[Baconhashtags]

■ What are your views on the gigabyte g1.sniper a88x mobo for a budget build?

 

[BigBadBeef]

Its not exactly a budget mobo you know, its quite high end, but the ram speed is relatively slow, considering you need as much as possible for an APU.

Try Asus A55BM-K, its half the price with full 2400MHz radeon gamer memory support!

 

[Baconhashtags]

Yeah only does 2133mhz but I would try to get low cas

 

[BigBadBeef]

CAS won't help, you need speed, lots of speed. Preferably wait for DDR4 memory which will have double speeds, which means that your APU will be almost as fast as the R9 series graphics cards...

 

[Baconhashtags]

Like this

http://uk.crucial.com/ProductDisplay?urlRequestType=Base&catalogId=10153&categoryId=&productId=134007&urlLangId=-1&langId=-1&top_category=&parent_category_rn=&storeId=10153

 

[BigBadBeef]

You may have noticed that DDR4 is not exactly full scale consumer product yet...

 

[Baconhashtags]

Yeah there is some 3000mhz ddr 3 available but i think I'll wait for a bit, watch the prices and consider adding a graphics card later is i need it, but i wiil have a look round at other boards to see if which has fastest speeds

 

[BigBadBeef]

In the meantime, do what I recommended.

 

[Baconhashtags]

In the meantime, do what I recommended.

# i haven't bought anything yet, lol, it's still a twinkle in my eye! But mobo bandwidth and ram speed capacity will be a consideration in the future.

 

[Karadjgne]

Value-wise, 2133 is best for APU's, any speed under that has measurable performance loss, any speed over that has too little performance gain for the price. For an APU I'd also run 16Gb ram, since the APU is using system ram as vram, and the cpu is also trying to use system ram, so some games like bf4, watchdogs, MMO's etc that use heavy amounts of system ram don't tag the igpu as well, there is plenty to spare.

 

[Baconhashtags]

Value-wise, 2133 is best for APU's, any speed under that has measurable performance loss, any speed over that has too little performance gain for the price. For an APU I'd also run 16Gb ram, since the APU is using system ram as vram, and the cpu is also trying to use system ram, so some games like bf4, watchdogs, MMO's etc that use heavy amounts of system ram don't tag the igpu as well, there is plenty to spare.

# thats is the upper limit of the board i am considering so thats great! but do i hold on for a bit and see what ddr4 brings? I suppose it depends on how well me computers last, lol, thanks for the input

 

[Karadjgne]

Honestly, APU may as well stand for :All Purpose Unit' as they do everything OK. They are as cheap as a lower end pc, but have better graphics than a low end dedicated gpu, cheaper for sure than a dedicated system with equitable cpu/gpu power. But thats the limit. Upgrade to a strong gpu like 280x or gtx 770 and your cpu is killin you. An APU does eberything OK, but nothing really well, and gamers need 1 thing in particular, a gpu that does better than 'ok'

 

[Baconhashtags]

This may sound like. A silly question is the FM2+ socket the same as amd3+ but with onboard graphic support?

 

[Karadjgne]

No. Sockets are what the cpu sits in when attached to the motherboard. All are unique, but some are compatible, you cam put AM3 cpus in a AM3+ socket, but not the reverse. The AM3+ cpu pins are larger, and wont fit in the AM3 socket holes. An intel i5-3570 is Ivy-Bridge LGA1155 and is incompatible with i5-4670 Haswell LGA1150, even though both are i5's.

The AM3/AM3+ sockets for FX series cpus are different than the FM2/FM2+ sockets for Athlon II/Phenom/APU cpus

 

[Baconhashtags]

Okay i new different generations used to have different pin counts back in the day, i was hoping to find a mobo that was am3+ with support for 64gb ram but I'm not having much look my budget i max £100,

 

[Karadjgne]

Unless you are heavy into 3d rendering and related stuff, you'll have no need of 64Gb of ram. Even 16Gb is a stretch for those who regularly photoshop etc. Generally 8Gb of ram is all you'll need for games, as any extra really will never be used.