Msi 990fxa-gd65?

What do you guys think of the MSI 990FXA-GD65? It has the 990FX chipset, and it has 2 PCIe x16, but I don't need more. Is this a good motherboard for overclocking the FX-8320 with the Phanteks PH-TC12DX as CPU-cooler? 

Thank you!

The BIOS/UEFI is voltage locked. There are at least three difference hoops you can jump through to overclock, so it isn't that much of an issue.

It should do well enough, but Asus is more reputable for overclocking -- even with lower tier products.

Mhm, should I get a M5A97 r2.0 or a M5A99fx evo? 

pickup the Asus M5A99FX pro R2.0 decent board for basic overclocking 6+2 powerphase  digi vrm. , 40 pci-e 2.0 lanes. for sli or CF support.

It has 4 PCIe 16x slots, not 40 :D . Mh, but I don't need that many expansion slots. I don't think I will crossfire my GPU. Is it effective to crossfire a R9 270 ?

 

i did not say 40 slots, i did say 40 pci-e 2.0 Lanes.

it was indeed with the intenstion to CF, but if you not looking for a CF board, then you can pickup Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0. This board is the same board as the M5A99FX Pro r2.0, The only diffrence is that this board has only 20 pci-e 2.0 lanes, so its not realy desigend for multiple gpu setups, thats the reason why its cheaper.

Grtz Angel ☺

haha I'm sorry. I still don't have a great knowledge about motherboards.

Mh, maybe crossfire is something to consider. But I heard crossfire isn't that effective as SLI. Is crossfiring 2 r9 270's  effective? How much more performance will it give me?

Well thats all depending on the games you play, a R9-270X is just a restickerd 7870GHZ edition. if you play games that are good optimized to run with CF or Sli then it will be nice, but there are also games that have bad optimization for sli or CF  and those games will be a pain in the ass.

I´m personaly not a big fan of dual gpu setups, the reason for that? like i said, there are games that gonne be a pain. But also you need to keep in mind, that you will need a more powerfull psu, like 750W or greater to power a CF setup. if you not have a powerfull psu, it will cost you extra money.

I´m personaly more a single gpu fan. i would allways recommend it. just pickup a R9-280X. for 1080P or 1440P single monitor, its realy all you gonne need. ☺

p.s if you plan to go CF or sli or if you wanne have the option for it later on? Then you have to buy a 990FX chipset board with 40 pci-e 2.0 lanes, to create a CF/sli at 16x speed.

Like the Asus M5A99FX pro R2.0

grtz Angel ☺

Mhm, I don't like crossfire neither sli. Mweah, i'll see if i can save up till an 280x . thank you for all the great advice!

Depending on the kinds of games, lets say you play Battlefield 4, you'll get up to 90% scaling with the second card, which means it's good for that.  Other games, like Arkham City/Origins have terrible scaling, something like 40%.  It's a hit and miss with it, personally i use Crossfire mainly because i do rendering and game development which benefits greatly with dual cards.

If you're afraid of wasting money on dual 270's, you can always go to a 280x.

Cool beans. Why does game development benefits crossfire greatly? 

mainly because rendering process.  When we render for example on Maya, 3dsMax, Blender, etc.  It needs RAW power to produce the numbers.  Crossfire is very effective at unloading the workload quite evenly on both cards as well as increase it up to 90%.  So essentially your render time can be 190% speed.  A render that can take 10 hours will be quite usefull to cut it down to 5:30 hours or so. This becomes a greater effect when you have to do multiple renders because many times the first render may not be great and tweaks need to be made.

Most games are starting to adopt multi card even on gameplay because developers are soo keen to using them, it only makes sense that they offer it.  I've done a 6 hour render for a final in one of my classes and screwed it up really bad, just because i had the second card, i was able to do another render and fix everything.  Saved my ass soo much.  The nice part about crossfire is also that you can use multiple monitor set ups to lower the load on a single video card, broadcasting, bitcoin mining(even though its pointless now), and some people may use GPU's for processing data, some programs can use gpu to automate programming which can do it over 100x faster than a cpu if set up properly.

Though anything past dual cards becomes a bit pointless because you start getting massive diminishing returns.  Most of the time the second card gets u up to 90% improvement.  Third card will be 40%, and if you're really crazy, you get a fourth card which will be 10% improvement on top.  So yeah, kinda pointless after 2 cards, you start wasting money.

Is the 7950 about the same performance as the r9 280x? I saw some pretty cool deals on a 7950

only if you can buy a voltage unlocked one, and overclock the hell out of it. then its comming close to a R9-280X . but, a 7950 is not a bad choice if you on a tight budget, and can find one on sale for cheap. ☺

 

How can I see if one is voltage unlocked?

  1. Msi 7950 twinfrozer
  2. Asus 7950 dc2T V2
  3. His 7950 iceQ x2
  4. Sapphire 7950 OC with boost.

Are those the only voltage unlockeded 7950's ?

As far as my knowledge goes.. yes. ☺