Hi folks,

Phenom II X4 955

Which moderate priced ASUS motherboard would be recommend to match the captioned CPU ?

What about other makers such as GIGABYTE, MSI and Biostar ?

Are Biostar motherboards stable/reliable?


TIA


B.R.
satimis

well since the 955 is a am3 cpu you can either go with a am2+ MB with ddr2 or a am3 MB with ddr3.
the ddr3 will cost more and you wont see much differance from ddr2, but am3 system will be upgradable for a longer time than the am2+.

as far as MB makers i can only comment on the ones i have owned-ASUS,DFI and ASRock.
ASUS is very good (and yes guys here i go agian)
the DFI is an overclockers dream,every bit as good as the ASUS (maybe even better) in every way (the BIOS might be a little imtimidating, but once you get the hang of it,they have every option in the world)
it is also less money.
i like my ASRock,never gave me any problems and ran like a champ.

so you need to decide which platform you are going with am3 or am2+.
let us know and we can help you with your selections.
it also helps if you give a little more info as, budget,if you are using part from another system,which online sites you can buy from...


-dimwit-

well thats my $.02

-------------------------
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.

Edited: 04/18/2009 at 10:19 AM by dimwit13

I concur doctor

-------------------------
Phenom II 955
Cooler Master V8
ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe 790FX
2 x Sapphire 4870 1GB GDDR5
4GB GSkill Pi Black 1066
2 x 74GB WD Raptor 16mb RAID-0
640GB WD Caviar Black 32mb
Cooler Master HAF 932
Antec Quattro 850w

i use biostar they also are a good board
is the 955 available yet?

-------------------------
Biostar TA-990FXE-Extreme
amd-fx8120 @3.7 1.2750 V
corsair ddr3-1866 16GB
ocz-vertex3-240
windows 8 rtm

Hi dimwit13,


Thanks for your advice.

I'll go am3 motherboard. Previously I have done a survey on Phenom II X4 940. Finally I have to give up because the limitation on ddr2 1066 RAM.


The box to be built will be used for testing server consolidation NOT for production. No gaming nor graphic editing will be run. The planned config is as follows;

Motherboard - mid-level price
RAM - DDR-2 1066/1600 8G, dual channel
HD - 640G SATA-II/16MB (already available, new)
Box and power supply (already available, new)
DVD Writer (already available)


Software
OS - Linux, 64bit
Virtualization software - Xen (64bit)


There will be 10 servers running on the box, mail or web servers. (I have an AMD dualcore box with 4G RAM running 20 servers (32bit) without problem, also using Xen as virtualization software). Actually an AMD dualcore box with 4G RAM can do the job. However there will be no reason to build a new box with components of yesterday. Therefore I have been waiting until Phenom II X4 955 on the market. Besides I'm considering testing PSPP, statistical computing, on this new box. It requires faster CPU and more RAM.

If the motherboard does not have onboard video card I may use an old ASUS graphic card with DDR3 128M RAM. I think it can do the job without problem because no graphic editing nor gaming will be done on this new box. All servers are HEADLESS without X running (graphic software). I install/configure the servers remotely, i.e. on a workstation on LAN. Actually a headless server doesn't require graphic card, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.


I have no pre-set budget. Please shed me some light on selecting a suitable motherboard. TIA

A further thought would onboard video card exhaust CPU resource ?


B.R.
satimis

if you are going to use the onboard grafix then you should be looking at a GX AMD motherboard.
like these-GX motherboards

i would go with the ASUS.
as for DDR3 ram-G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3
should be good to for you.

let me know if you need anything else.


-dimwit-

-------------------------
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.

I found;

1)
ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 DDR3 AMD 790GX ATX AMD Motherboard ;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...Item=N82E16813131366R


and


2)
ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16813131363

Is there any advantage to get 2) above?



Good suggestion. Thanks


B.R.
satimis

Hi mbjbdc,

Thanks for your advice.

Phenom II X4 955 is already on the market, but not many stock. Please wait for couple weeks. Also I won't purchase it immediately. I'll try to hear whether there is any noise.


B.R.
satimis

satimis,

You might want to take a look at 2 Gigabyte M/B...

GA-MA790XT-UD4P


GA-MA790FXT-UD5P

Mem: Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333



-Tech

-------------------------
Dragon: GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, Phenom II X3 720BE, 4GB Ballistix DDR3-10600, ATI Radeon HD4850 Toxic, PC 610W EPS, WD640GB, DVD 22X LiteON, O/S WinXP Pro and Vista Ultimate 64-bit dual-boot.

Edited: 04/25/2009 at 03:01 PM by Tech_On-Call

Tech_On-Call,my thought on the ram was ,he should go with the cheaper ram with the higher timings..

you could have narrowed down the MB link-you have him going to amd and intel MBs.
i think he needs a little more guidance than a link to all Gigabyte MBs-same with the asus link.


-dimwit-

-------------------------
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.

Edited: 04/19/2009 at 08:33 AM by dimwit13

Hi Tech_On-Call,

Thanks for your advice.

I have no specific preference on ASUS mobo. I have been using the products of ASUS and Gigabyte, mobo and graphic card, for some times Only in one incident Gigabyte's graphic card lasted for one year. I can't get it replaced free because guarantee period expired. It was an expensive graphic card.


Both links refer to the same mobo having AM2+/AM2 socket. I need AM3


Noted and thanks



Thanks for your info.


B.R.
satimis

Hi dimwit,

The RAM is PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz timing 6 6 6 20 2T at 1.8v and the price isn't that bad only $68.99 4GB... it was $127.00 when I bought it.

-Tech

-------------------------
Dragon: GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, Phenom II X3 720BE, 4GB Ballistix DDR3-10600, ATI Radeon HD4850 Toxic, PC 610W EPS, WD640GB, DVD 22X LiteON, O/S WinXP Pro and Vista Ultimate 64-bit dual-boot.

Hi all,

Just a little update for the 23rd of April... I know, I know, but just waite.

http://www.techpowerup.com/919...for_New_Products.html

-Tech

-------------------------
Dragon: GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, Phenom II X3 720BE, 4GB Ballistix DDR3-10600, ATI Radeon HD4850 Toxic, PC 610W EPS, WD640GB, DVD 22X LiteON, O/S WinXP Pro and Vista Ultimate 64-bit dual-boot.

Since you are picking on the 955 I assume you know this is the big boys and not the middle or lower end stuff! I have been waiting for months for the 955 to be released and just noticed it tonight. I have studied the heck out of the configuration problem and here are my recommendations: MOBO ASUS M4A79T nothing else comes close to it. Don't take my word for it go to Tom's HW they just posted a new review of 4 different MFGs AM3 MOBOs a day or so ago. I think only one of the other guys will use 1600 memory. DDR3 memory was one of the reasons I waited on the release of the 955. As you know the 940 can not use it and it will make a difference in performance. The ASUS M4A79T Deluxe is a True AM3 MOBO instead of the M4A79 deluxe which is a AM2+/AM3. if you want to use the DDR3 use this board it is a true AM3 board. It does not have the problems of peripheral placement, SATA disk socket et al that the other guys have. ASUS boards OC better than their competition does too. I have OCed the heck out of an Athlon 3200+(2600MHz) socket 754 using an ASUS board for 5+ years and it has been rock steady.

Next, memory this is some what speculation on my part but Crucial Ballistix 1600 is what I'm going with here: reason 1. cost moderate not the most expensive reason 2. quality recent OC tests run by Toms HW found that Kingston had highest OC head room(they also are very pricey) and Crucial Ballistic was 2nd on the head room list. Corsair was further down on the list and was found to be using cheaper(quality wise) chips than either Kingston or Ballistix. Corsair may be using better chips now than they were during Tom's tests but how are you going to know with out knowing a bunch more about chip numbers and MFG dates?

Now the one that a lot of amateurs screw up Power supply. If you are going to run a big system ie GPUs and other peripherals you are going to need power and a lot of it. For instance, the ATI Radeon 4890 is a Monster for power, put two of these beasts together and its in the range of close to 400 watts I think- geeze I know hard to believe. So keep that in mind before picking a PSU out. Quality of PSUs are another factor don't go cheap here you will regret it in the future. Bad PSUs will age components as much as anything. I have a brand new Enermax 85+ 1050watt I bought a month ago waiting to buy the rest of this system. I paid $275(after rebate) and I shopped the heck out that. Enermax is made in the good ole USA in Southern Califonia they have a modular cable system and it rocks, but it aint cheap! They also figured out new technology for this supply that supplies more power at higher efficiencies under much high loads than their competition.

Next, the GPU - this is going to hurt! As expensive as the other components are the GPUs are the absolute wallet busters in systems now days, if you go first class. I'm buying a Sapphire Radeon 4870 2X 2GB board. Why not the 4890 you ask? Well the 4890 does not seem to have has as good as performance as the twin 4870's do and it eats up power and the mfg bugs in it are yet to be discovered and reported on by the public. For instance the reason I'm picking the Sapphire brand is the other guys are notorious for producing 4870 2X boards that have heating problems and fail. I have not found that to be the case with Sapphire brand 4870's. If your pocket book can't handle the $395 price tag of the 4870 2X look at the 4850 2X its somewhere in the middle $200's class, but the word on the street is that it may be the best price/performance of any GPU out there. If you like NVIDIA instead hey I don't blame you I use an AGP NVIDIA 7600 in my current system.

Ok, if I haven't lost you yet - hard drives. If you want the absolute killer system hard drive then 2 western digital Veloci Raptor 10,000 RPM beasts running a RAID are the best and fastest HDs in the non server class on the street today. One of the things they've found out about the new technology SSD drives is they slow down over time. The more you write them and read them the slower they get up to a point so I would stay away from them for the time being. I have 2 Raptor older model drives I've been running for 4+ years and my system performance stomps all over systems with faster processors but slow disks in them. Did I mention the fact that the Veloci Raptors are pricey - I've found them for as little as $220 a piece, but you are really going to have shop them if you want them at that price.

Finally, the monitor! Here I don't know exactly what to recommend. I'm still making up my mind. I Like the 24 inch LCD because price/performance right now it seems to be the sweet spot. I've go my eye on Samsung, but Acer and Dell at this size seem tempting I'm just not sure about their quality yet. You really want to pay attention to details like viewing angle sync speed adjustments(swivel, tilt, up-down) connector formats, all depending upon what you are going to use your system for and the environment it will be in(lots of light vs dark room).

I won't recommend the other peripherals such as DVD etc because simply they are not any where near as important performance wise as what I've covered.

To review:
MOBO ASUS M4A79T Deluxe nothing comes close to this guy YET! $189 at newegg

RAM Crucial Ballistix 1600 buy what ever size you think you are going to use I'm thinking 2X2GB to start Note: the benchmarks Toms ran were against 1GB parts

PSU Enermax 85+ 1050Watt - None better I'd steak my rep on it $275-330 depending on if you find a deal- I did last month

GPU Sapphire Radeon 4870 2X 2GB ~$395 and worth it for high end graphics

HD 2 Western Digital 300GB Veloci Raptors ~$440-500 total for both Running a RAID these guys will eat anything on the market

Well that's my list you can go cheaper because of your wallet but you are going to be hard pressed to beat this configuration.

I did not give a case because that item varies a lot but I'm putting my lot in a new ATCS 840 Cooler Master because it has a bunch of room and I'm going to Liq. cool this guy - hey more OC head room!!!

It took me months of research to put this list together and I am not a hobbist. I've been a computer engineer for 30 years. I hope this was some help to you and others as we are all in this war together!

OOPS! I did this backwards. I went through all the posts after I wrote this and noticed that you are going use this to study severs using linux 64Bit.

I would still go with a very fast disk system because that will highly impact you if you are doing virtual systems and are not able keep everything in memory at the same time. What the amateurs forget about computer systems is they pay attention to the over quoted stat of clock speed and don't pay any attention at all to the disk system and we are all running virtual memory based systems so you get into memory paging. Depending upon how you handle this issue will greatly influence your over all systems performance. Keep the page faults down to a minimum and the disk system becomes less relevant. Use one of the MS windows OSes and the disk system can influence system performance in a huge way.

The ASUS board is your best bet for your app. I read a bit tonight by one of the AMD people(this was a disguised ad in a way) and he takes you through a quick overclocking session with the AMD OC specialist. They are using the MA479T deluxe - does that tell you something.

Hope I wasn't too verbose earlier!!

Edited: 04/25/2009 at 09:46 AM by Bulldog64

Hi Bulldog64,


Thanks for your detail advice and time spent.

I'll stick to following hardware configuration;

CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 955
Mobo - ASUS MA479T deluxe with vedio card onboard
RAM - Kingston DDR-3 1600 dual channel 8G (2 sets 2Gx2)

HardDrive - 750G SATA-II - already available
Power Supply - already available
Case - already available
DVD Writer -already available

This is a headless server box for testing. No graphic card is needed. The onboard vedio card will be enough. I'll do installation and configuration remotely on a workstation on LAN.

I'll wait for another 2 weeks to hear whether there is any noisy on the quality and stability of this new CPU.


B.R.
satimis

You are probably wise to do that. I think you can't go wrong with the configuration you've settled on. If this CPU is a good one, and I'm betting that's a certainty as much as any of these things can be because I don't think AMD would have released this with out it being a winner. Their immediate future in the enthusiast market in a bad economy depends on this guy not having any real show stoppers! I think in the next 2 weeks we are going to find out very quick what the real benchmarks for this guy are. I'll bet Tom's is already testing this guy against his Intel competition. One of the great a sides is that Intel is going to have to come down off their high horse and lower the price of their current overpriced Core 7's especially if this guy is anywhere in the ball park with his opposite number processor. That's good for every body AMD supporter and Intel supporter.

Hi satimis...

Just one thing you need to be aware of for the M4A79-T Dleuxe, it uses the 790FX chipset and as such doesn't have any onbaord video..... just thought I should point this out to you...So you will need to add a graphics card of some kind, even if its a cheap budget card....

-------------------------

3DMark06 = 20717 / 3DMark Vantage = P13618 / My Overclock Guide / My Troubleshooting Guide

Hi Bulldog64,


Noted with thanks


B.R.
satimis

Hi kazgirl,


Thanks for your advice.

I'll put an old graphic card on the box. I have several graphic cards resting on the shelves. Actually a headless server doesn't need graphic card. The server can work without monitor, keyboard and mouse. I just put it there in case of need.


B.R.
satimis