[SOLVED] Which one should I buy? for R5 2600, Trident Z 3200Mhz

[hod17956]

So I am debating between these 3 motherboards for the r5 2600, and G.Skill Trident Z 3200mhz ram, the GPUs would be gtx 980 sli, and these 3 motherboards are in my budget (125 Euro) where I live so since these are first gen ryzen motherboards I am concerned about ram support and you get the picture,
so:
ASRock X370 Killer SLI
ASUS Prime X370-Pro
ASRock Fatal1ty X370 Gaming X

SLI is needed in my case so if you have any other suggestions in my budget that would work with this setup then please let me know!
and thank you to all who came here to help out.
Cheers.

 

[cdrkf]

So I am debating between these 3 motherboards for the r5 2600, and G.Skill Trident Z 3200mhz ram, the GPUs would be gtx 980 sli, and these 3 motherboards are in my budget (125 Euro) where I live so since these are first gen ryzen motherboards I am concerned about ram support and you get the picture,
so:
ASRock X370 Killer SLI
ASUS Prime X370-Pro
ASRock Fatal1ty X370 Gaming X

SLI is needed in my case so if you have any other suggestions in my budget that would work with this setup then please let me know!
and thank you to all who came here to help out.
Cheers.

Hi,

Well I can tell you from personal experience that you probably aren't going to get that ram to run at 3200 mhz on an X370 board. I have the Prime X370-Pro and it doesn't support XMP so you have to set the memory timings manually. I have a kit of 3200Mhz memory however to get the ram stable (and using the QVL memory list Asus provides on their website) the fastest I could get it running is 2933. That said the machine is rock solid stable at those settings and in my case I'm using the machine for work (3D rendering mainly)- for which the memory clock makes very little difference.

Other than the memory support the board is pretty good. I have had good experiences with ASRock boards in the past so either of those should probably be fine- again though first gen Ryzen motherboards aren't great for higher speed ram, even with more up to date cpus....

Out of curiosity, can you not run SLI on a B450 motherboard? I think quite a few B450 boards have dual PCIe x 16 slots on them so it should work, you would get better memory support on B450 over X370

 

[hod17956]

Hi,

Well I can tell you from personal experience that you probably aren't going to get that ram to run at 3200 mhz on an X370 board. I have the Prime X370-Pro and it doesn't support XMP so you have to set the memory timings manually. I have a kit of 3200Mhz memory however to get the ram stable (and using the QVL memory list Asus provides on their website) the fastest I could get it running is 2933. That said the machine is rock solid stable at those settings and in my case I'm using the machine for work (3D rendering mainly)- for which the memory clock makes very little difference.

Other than the memory support the board is pretty good. I have had good experiences with ASRock boards in the past so either of those should probably be fine- again though first gen Ryzen motherboards aren't great for higher speed ram, even with more up to date cpus....

Out of curiosity, can you not run SLI on a B450 motherboard? I think quite a few B450 boards have dual PCIe x 16 slots on them so it should work, you would get better memory support on B450 over X370

So what I am running these on now is a ASRock B450 Pro4, the problem is that idk if its capable of running SLI, the website says crossfire, and I cant try sli yet because I only have 1 GTX 980 rn, so thanks for the info earlier helped a lot but if you can confirm that my motherboard now can run 980 sli that would be great.

 

[velocityg4]

B450 is Crossfire only. You need X370/X470 or I presume X570 for SLI.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/details-amd-b450-mid-range-chipset-surface.html

It sounds like you only have one GTX 980. That you are considering buying a second one. Which I presume will be used for SLI. My question would be why? Most games have no SLI support or scale poorly with SLI. Usually you can get better performance from one good GPU than two lower end GPU.

Unless prices on better cards are prohibitive in you country. It seems it would be cheaper overall to sell your current GTX 980. Then take that money from selling it plus the money you'd spend on the second GTX 980 and new motherboard. Use all that money for one good GPU. Such as an RTX 2060/2060 Super or GTX 1070 Ti.

Edit: Then there are some limitations of the GTX 980 which are impossible to overcome. Mainly 4GB VRAM. Which will limit the maximum detail settings in many games. The newer cards have 8GB which is necessary for some of the details in modern games.

 

[cdrkf]

B450 is Crossfire only. You need X370/X470 or I presume X570 for SLI.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/details-amd-b450-mid-range-chipset-surface.html

It sounds like you only have one GTX 980. That you are considering buying a second one. Which I presume will be used for SLI. My question would be why? Most games have no SLI support or scale poorly with SLI. Usually you can get better performance from one good GPU than two lower end GPU.

Unless prices on better cards are prohibitive in you country. It seems it would be cheaper overall to sell your current GTX 980. Then take that money from selling it plus the money you'd spend on the second GTX 980 and new motherboard. Use all that money for one good GPU. Such as an RTX 2060/2060 Super or GTX 1070 Ti.

Edit: Then there are some limitations of the GTX 980 which are impossible to overcome. Mainly 4GB VRAM. Which will limit the maximum detail settings in many games. The newer cards have 8GB which is necessary for some of the details in modern games.

As far as I'm aware a motherboard doesn't need to "support" sli for it to work- so long as it has the require PCIe slots it should work as it's all dealt with by the graphics driver. I think it's more a case of it being certified by nVidia to work or not....

It was the same case with the old AM3 platform, no AM3 motherboard had 'SLI Support' - but you could run SLI on those boards. That is a side issue though as I agree with you, SLI is a bad idea these days (it's only really good for getting records in benchmarks).

The biggest issue with it is that even in games that support it well (in which you can get 70 - 80% scaling), the frame times are usually pretty uneven resulting in a much less fluid experience than the high frame rates would suggest (i.e. micro stutter). That means in practice a single card that is 40 - 50% faster than a 980 would actually be a better experience in games than 2 980's, even running games that support SLI. It's the same reason that both nVidia and AMD have ditched dual gpu cards such in the latest generations.

 

[velocityg4]

As far as I'm aware a motherboard doesn't need to "support" sli for it to work- so long as it has the require PCIe slots it should work as it's all dealt with by the graphics driver. I think it's more a case of it being certified by nVidia to work or not....

It was the same case with the old AM3 platform, no AM3 motherboard had 'SLI Support' - but you could run SLI on those boards. That is a side issue though as I agree with you, SLI is a bad idea these days (it's only really good for getting records in benchmarks).

The biggest issue with it is that even in games that support it well (in which you can get 70 - 80% scaling), the frame times are usually pretty uneven resulting in a much less fluid experience than the high frame rates would suggest (i.e. micro stutter). That means in practice a single card that is 40 - 50% faster than a 980 would actually be a better experience in games than 2 980's, even running games that support SLI. It's the same reason that both nVidia and AMD have ditched dual gpu cards such in the latest generations.

There's explicit multi-GPU with DirectX 12. Which can offer benefits in games which support this feature. I think there are some other software or driver options and all need game support for the specific form of multi-gpu being used. I don't believe any can be called SLI though. There's still the issue of support or lack thereof. Making a single faster GPU more palatable. Not to mention the energy savings.