GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3P or Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

[Oweoz]

I'm going to be upgrading my CPU and mobo I've picked the Fx 8320 (on sale for 99.99$) as my cpu and was wondering which mobo I should get.

There is a bundle deal where I can get the 8320 and the GA-990FXA-UD3 for around 200$. Or I could get the 8320 for 99.99$ and order the GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3P for 64.99$. Im trying to spend as little as I need to, is the 970 a big difference than the 990? and will it become a problem in the future? (looking to play games like bf4)

specs
Processor: AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics (4 CPUs), ~2.9GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8168MB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7950
600watt PSU

 

[Francisco Costa]

go for the GA-990FXA-UD3

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

The $200 combo price for an FX 8320 and a 990FX based motherboard is a very good value, however if you never expect to need the benefit of the differences between the two motherboards, and your primary concern is overall price, get the lower priced board. Unless you're going with CrossFire or SLI, there won't be performance differences between them.

The benefit of the 990FX chipset VS the 970 is in it's peripheral connectivity, not overall speed of operation. If you never use the extra connectivity it offers, is it really worth the extra cost?

The 990FX based board offers 2 PCIe x16 slots with a full 16 lanes wired to each. The lesser priced board only offers 4 lanes wired to a second x16 slot. So, in situations where you wish to pair graphics cards, the second card, on the lower priced board, will have less available bandwidth, but it will still function perfectly fine. The second card will lose perhaps 5 - 10% of it's potential performance, depending on the card used, or none, if it's not a high performance card at all.

 

[Francisco Costa]

The $200 combo price for an FX 8320 and a 990FX based motherboard is a very good value, however if you never expect to need the benefit of the differences between the two motherboards, and your primary concern is overall price, get the lower priced board. Unless you're going with CrossFire or SLI, there won't be performance differences between them.

The benefit of the 990FX chipset VS the 970 is in it's peripheral connectivity, not overall speed of operation. If you never use the extra connectivity it offers, is it really worth the extra cost?

The 990FX based board offers 2 PCIe x16 slots with a full 16 lanes wired to each. The lesser priced board only offers 4 lanes wired to a second x16 slot. So, in situations where you wish to pair graphics cards, the second card, on the lower priced board, will have less available bandwidth, but it will still function perfectly fine. The second card will lose perhaps 5 - 10% of it's potential performance, depending on the card used, or none, if it's not a high performance card at all.

And also the cheaper one doesn't support SLI, only CrossFire

 

[Oweoz]

The $200 combo price for an FX 8320 and a 990FX based motherboard is a very good value, however if you never expect to need the benefit of the differences between the two motherboards, and your primary concern is overall price, get the lower priced board. Unless you're going with CrossFire or SLI, there won't be performance differences between them.

The benefit of the 990FX chipset VS the 970 is in it's peripheral connectivity, not overall speed of operation. If you never use the extra connectivity it offers, is it really worth the extra cost?

The 990FX based board offers 2 PCIe x16 slots with a full 16 lanes wired to each. The lesser priced board only offers 4 lanes wired to a second x16 slot. So, in situations where you wish to pair graphics cards, the second card, on the lower priced board, will have less available bandwidth, but it will still function perfectly fine. The second card will lose perhaps 5 - 10% of it's potential performance, depending on the card used, or none, if it's not a high performance card at all.

Thank you! Ill probably go for the cheaper one, I don't I'm going to crossfire anytime soon.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

The lack of SLI support is due to NVIDIA's licensing requirements, not an inability of the 970 chipset to run an SLI configuration. NVIDIA locks the feature through their drivers, which is nothing more than childish, heavy handed forcing of the consumer to jump through arbitrary hoops.

 

[Francisco Costa]

The lack of SLI support is due to NVIDIA's licensing requirements, not an inability of the 970 chipset to run an SLI configuration. NVIDIA locks the feature through their drivers, which is nothing more than childish, heavy handed forcing of the consumer to jump through arbitrary hoops.

Oh ok didn't know about that, thanks

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

I would think you are correct about that particular motherboard, that since it doesn't specifically list SLI support, NVIDIA's drivers will disallow it.