Quote:
Originally Posted by jsc1973 
There are five 970 motherboards that are worth owning, and the M5A97 is one of them. You'll also do well with the Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3, the Asrock 970 Extreme 3 or 4, or the Biostar TA970XE. All of them have good enough VRM's to deal with any kind of overclocking you'd want to try; note my 1.1 GHz overclock on an X6 with the TA970XE, and I'm sure I can get more if I try.
If you have a good motherboard, you can probably get just as far on a 955 as you can with a 965BE, but you'll have to do it differently. Because the 955 is locked, you'll have to boost the CPU/NB frequency and cannot change the multiplier. But that's not an issue; just boost the frequency from 200 to 250 and you've got 4 GHz. And that's a better way to overclock than just raising the multiplier, because it improves the performance of the rest of the system, and not just the CPU.
The GTX 480 is a great deal for the money; I'm not an Nvidia fan, but I can't argue with that choice at all.
There are five 970 motherboards that are worth owning, and the M5A97 is one of them. You'll also do well with the Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3, the Asrock 970 Extreme 3 or 4, or the Biostar TA970XE. All of them have good enough VRM's to deal with any kind of overclocking you'd want to try; note my 1.1 GHz overclock on an X6 with the TA970XE, and I'm sure I can get more if I try.
If you have a good motherboard, you can probably get just as far on a 955 as you can with a 965BE, but you'll have to do it differently. Because the 955 is locked, you'll have to boost the CPU/NB frequency and cannot change the multiplier. But that's not an issue; just boost the frequency from 200 to 250 and you've got 4 GHz. And that's a better way to overclock than just raising the multiplier, because it improves the performance of the rest of the system, and not just the CPU.
The GTX 480 is a great deal for the money; I'm not an Nvidia fan, but I can't argue with that choice at all.
I really want to get my Phenom to 4 GHz if possible.
And the GTX 480 seems to be a really nice choice for its price.
I read alot about Radeon drivers not being the greatest so i'm just gonna go NVidia on this one.
No qualms against AMD what-so-ever though!
