Is upgrading worth it? (970 to 990)

Hey guys, i just got an unexpected raise at work, and was wondering in light of this- Is upgrading to a 990 chipset worth it? I currently have a M5A97 R2.0 and am looking at getting the M5A99 FX pro R2.0, along with maxing out my ram (I'm RAM cashing and rendering large files- so yes, I'll use 32 gigs.) some time later this year.

I know that I'll be jumping my power phase from 4+2 to 6+2+2, letting me ramp my CPU from its mobo bottlenecked 4.2 Ghz a little higher (I'd hope for a solid 4.4 atleast.) and finally take full advantage of my dual graphics cards, but what other advantages could I look forward to?

also- how much pain is the migration going to cause? is there any way to strip the old chipset drivers and install the new ones? or is a OS reinstall in my future/less painfull?

pretty good board choice. and there is an amd utility that strips all amd drivers chipset, and  graphics. so it is possible to change out the board and not have to reinstall windows. i dont reccomend doing it that way but it is possible. i went from a crosshair iv to a crosshair v with out reinstalling windows. it was a bit wonky for the first few boots.  if you have a phenom II it isnt much of a gain for you. other than the max ram and more pcie lanes. the 970 chipsets on the high end boards worked amazingly well for phenom II.

 

I intend to upgrade to the next gen FX CPU's at some point, so that comes into play too.

another thing thats driving me towards the 990 is the PCI lanes- My M5A97 only has one x16 slot, and the other slots an x4. needless to say- my dual 7870's are hopelessly saturating the tiny amount of bandwidth, and thats causing some interesting issues. (I'm only getting 70-80fps in most games. only a 10-20fps gain.) so the extra PCI lanes are a big driving factor. and it also has two other x4 lanes in addition to the two x16. so I might get a GT 630/40 to run Physx off of.

If you are planning on getting a new processor in the near future, I would say wait for that and get a new board with the new chipselt. No sense, in spending money now and later...

That said, if that money is burning a hole in your pocket, I would say go for it. There is the sabertooth series which is desnigned for reliability and overclocking too. I would say take a look at that.

not sure if I'm gonna be going *that* high on the overclocking...

as for 1090FX... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. though- I am looking at getting the stuff as a christmas present to my self, so If steamroller and 1090FX are out by then... who knows.