budget OC board

[Grinder]

Trying to choose between a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3, and an Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0 to get the best day to day OC for an FX-8350 on water for a secondary rig on a budget.

The Gigabyte has 8+2 and I like the colour better, and the rev 4.0 has some improvements apparently. The Asus has 6+2 I believe, but probably better ram clocking and I'm putting an old Hynix BFR kit in it. However the Gigabyte will be $20+ cheaper.

The secondary box currently has an M5A97 R2.0, which doesn't OC for crap. 4+1 phase. This was a system with some nice parts in it that I bought cheap, but I can see I'll have to replace the mobo. It struggles to get either of my 8350's stable at 4.2, despite one of them being known to hit 5.0. I'm using budget semi-custom water in the rig, basically a Swiftech H220 with a 2x120 rad added (giving 2) and an old gpu block that is in the loop but not attached to the gpu yet lol.

[BeepBeep2]

New revision UD3 should beat the ASUS board. Old revision UD3 should be avoided because they have really bad vdroop and no Load Calibration.

[Grinder]

Thanks Beep. If I go that way I would definitely hold out for a rev 4. Do you know if they've improved the ram clocking? I had a UD7 with LLC (1.1 IIRC) that I was happy with, except for ram compatibility and clocking. I ended up selling it and moving to a C5F-Z, which is much better in that respect. I'd get a Sabertooth for the secondary rig, but it's 70 percent more than the UD3.

[BeepBeep2]

Thanks Beep. If I go that way I would definitely hold out for a rev 4. Do you know if they've improved the ram clocking? I had a UD7 with LLC (1.1 IIRC) that I was happy with, except for ram compatibility and clocking. I ended up selling it and moving to a C5F-Z, which is much better in that respect. I'd get a Sabertooth for the secondary rig, but it's 70 percent more than the UD3.

I don't know, but it's probably not much different between revisions.
My UD5 seems to clock ram alright but I don't have any 2x4GB Hynix/Samsung to test, only 2x2GB PSC/BBSE/Hyper.

It might do some good to shoot Gigabyte an email to ask about the LLC options for the new UD3. When I asked about the UD5, they fired up a board in the lab and took screenshots for me.

[Grinder]

I ordered one. AFAIK the ram clocking only becomes more of an issue when moving to 4 sticks, and I'll be using 2 for now.

[BeepBeep2]

I ordered one. AFAIK the ram clocking only becomes more of an issue when moving to 4 sticks, and I'll be using 2 for now.

Running 4 sticks is harder on the IMC. I tried 2x FX-8150 with 4 sticks in Crosshair V and UD5 and struggled to run above DDR3-1866 with both boards.

Since 890FX I think ASUS has had an edge in memory overclocking for AM3/AM3+.

[Grinder]

I know that this is an old thread. But I hate googling things and finding that the OP has moved on, so here is a past due update:

I haven't tried 4 sticks, but the UD3 has my Hynix BFR at 2133 C9, rough what I achieved with it on my UD7 and CVF-Z.

While the M5A97 R2.0 couldn't get my 8350 to 4.2, the UD3 has it prime stable at 4.7, probably 4.8 if I REALLY wanted to push it. And that chip has been rode hard and put away wet, so while it hit 4.8 prime stable on my UD7, I'm happy with the UD3 for a budget board (about 40 percent less than my C5F-Z).