PricingChoosing for AM3 means choosing for the more expensive DDR3 memory. However, since this still mainly is a motherboard comparison, we won't make a price/performance chart based on DDR2 and DDR3 setups.
We looked up the current (22th April 2009) prices of the different motherboards in both Euro (€) and US Dollar ($). For our European-based readers, we used the pricewatch feature found on Geizhals.eu, for our US-based readers, we used the price tables found on Froogle.com.
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Both tested AM3 motherboards have a price above the average AM3 motherboard. Although you may find this surprising, it's not: a lot of manufacturers still look at the AMD products as more budget-minded platforms and less as high-end gaming platforms. Therefore the amount of time spent on R&D and added features are less, which allows manufacturers to release very cheap motherboards. Both DFI and MSI are targeted at the enthusiasts and offer overclocking features and extra features.
The AM2+ motherboards are, in average, also much cheaper than their bigger AM3 brothers.
EvaluationDfi Lanparty DK 790FXB-M3H5In terms of looks and added accessories, this motherboard is pretty much the same like the M2RS sample we tested a few weeks ago. Even the bios looks very similar, which gave us really high hopes for the main purpose of this motherboard: overclocking. The problem with high hopes is, however, that when these hopes do not come true, we might be a bit too harsh in the conclusion. It's true, this motherboard does do well in standard situations and gives the users quite a playground to tune and tweak his/her components, but ... after the great experience with the M2RS, I don't think this motherboard is ready for the extreme overclockers yet. Maybe, we'll have to wait for another bios release to get the board running as well as the M2RS version did. With a price a little above the average AM3 motherboard and knowing that there are not that many added accessories, I'd say this motherboard is good for the fans of Dfi (or yellow motherboards), but if you're on a budget, you may want to check lower priced motherboards.
+ Elaborate bios
+ Basic overclocking capabilities
- Price is relatively high
- Not ready to max out all your components yet.
MSI 790FX-GD70As an overclocker I was not the least bit surprised to see MSI putting new overclocking features such as the OC Dial on their motherboards. Agreed, it may not be the most innovative concept, but against all expectations the OC Dial does work quite stable and can absolutely help you when overclocking. The MAXFSB feature, added in the bios, also works quite well. In despite of the added oc features, the GD70 still has a few problems to fix although it has to be said that the overclocking results are a tad better than those on the Dfi M3H5. This motherboard is targeted on the high-end and/or enthusiast market, which means that the price is targeted on the same market. Yes, it's one of the more expensive AM3 motherboards around and it's very difficult to recommend this motherboard to people who don't care about overclocking, but just want to have a working setup. For those who want to build a high-end system, this motherboard does give everything you need. Actually, with its four vga-ready pci-e lanes, it might not be so expensive to actually build a fast gaming rig: four middle-end ATI cards in Crossfire-X combined with a Phenom X4 II 955 processor should give you quite the gaming performance.
+ Elaborate bios
+ Basic overclocking capabilities
+ Added features such as OC Dial
+ 4 x PCIe x16
- Price is high
- Not ready to max out all your components yet.
Conclusive thoughtsBoth AM3 products are fully functional when it comes to daily usage, let there be no doubt about that. For the average user, there's only the price issue that can play a significant role in the decision what board to purchase. For overclockers, both motherboards do offer a very good amount of options to tweak, although it has to be noted that further improvements will lead to better overclocks. For instance, the memory controller frequency and raw memory frequency can't seem to be maxed out on both boards, of which the MSI comes out a tad better than the DFI. We have high hopes for improvement, though, since we saw the exact same phenomenon (pun not intended) on the early Phenom II AM2+ motherboards.
BUT!! The difference between DDR2 and DDR3 is so fantastically small that it may be even better to choose an AM2+ motherboard for your AM3 processor. The memory is much cheaper as well the motherboards and with a bit of tweaking, you can easily match the performance of a DDR3 configuration.
To end with, I'd like to thank:
Janneke from MSI for sending us the MSI 790FX-GD70
Eric from DFI for providing us the Lanparty DK 790FXB-M3H5
'Till the next time!