Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I used this motherboard as the basis of a gaming rig.The machine is 4 weeks old and so far no glitches.For those who like the details, here are the major components I attached to this board.
nf980-gs5 (the MB itself)
1090t (amd's 6 core cpu)
evga gtx480 (nvidia's latest graphics card)
16gb memory (generic brand of memory)
continuous 1200Watt power supply (maybe over kill but not if someday I do the 3xsli this board supports)
wireless card (turned out to be the best upgrade I put in this box, nice not having this cable come out of the box)
Besides no problems running the components I used, this board has several other attractors:
1) it is black.That means it looks good in the case.OK not a big deal for many but for those of us who have cases that let you view the insides, this is a benny.
2) There are lots of USB pots.Yes there are four on the back compared to many other MBs that offer six.However, this is not an issue for me because of two things:
A) I used a PS/2 800dpi mouse and PS/2 Keyboard rather than usb versions.They work just as well, are just as cheap, and make use of these two ports that nothing else will use anyway.Thus there are effectively the same number of USABLE ports after accounting for mouse/keyboard on the back of this board as any other board.
B) my case offers four USB up front so in the end I have eight (8) usable USB ports running of this motherboard (four in front and four in back) so no lack of USB with this MB if you connect everything.
3) the audio is pretty good.It is an advanced audio that offers several setup types.It may not be clear at first what these are all for so read the manual before you goof with it.Specifically you can set up headphone jacks specifically for headphones and you should as the sound from these is louder than that comming off the back of the MB since the back was meant for a powered speaker setup.At least, this is how it seems to be working for me.Headphones can be used off the audio jacks comming out of the back of the MB too but for some reason the headphone jacks on the front of my case offer a louder signal for headphones than the back ports which think you are plugging in a powered speaker setup.Since I like to play AC/DC JAILBREAK over my headphones while I browse, I want it loud and thus I use the jacks on the front of my case.
4) it has an onboard 8000 series NVIDIA graphics chip.I think this is an 8200 or 8400, I forget which.It is capable of doing hybrid sli if you want so you can offload physx to this onboard chip to squeek out a few extra FPS is you are into that kind of thing.The board offers VGA out, DVI-D out, and HDMI out so all common bases are covered.
5) my reason for choosing this board is because I am an AMD/NVIDIA fan.Since AMD bought ATI, there are few boards these days that allow you to pair up an AMD cpu with a NVIDIA SLI video setup.This one does at a good price point.
6) it seems to do an awesome job of power management.My power consumption does not get anywhere near the levels I figured it would based on the readouts I get from my zalman controler.The controler might be giving a bad number but the free MicroSoft software based power monitoring tool I downloaded to check the Zalman numbers said the same basic numbers too, so maybe the numbers are right, which means I am consuming < 300 Watts.I can only figure this MB is doing a good job with power management to make that happen.
Detractors:
1) You need a patch according to online reading I have done, in order to get the 1090t 6 core cpu to use its full power boost capabilities.Since I was buying this as part of a build, I told the vendor to load the necessary MB updates as part of the build and they did (EWiz).I can see powerboost in action using the CORETEMP freeware product I also downloaded.So if you are planning on using one of the AMD 6 CORE cpus, do some reading to make sure you know what you need to do and that you feel you can do it.Otherwise go with the AMD 955be as this is an awesome chip for the price.
2) the "easy overclocking" switch is a gimmick which works but I am not sure is worth using.I tried it.All it does is up the FSB speed.This affects several things including memory speed and it seems to turn off the cpu chip powerboost feature which admittedly for some may be good and others may be undesireable.Read up on bowerboost if you don't know what it is and how it works.The switch is also kludgy.I turned it off but overclocking did not undo.I had to go into the bios to undo the switch's effect.As I remember, I had to load defaults to get it back to stock setup as untweaking pieces did not seem to take.So if you want to overclock with this board, do it manually, and forget about the switch.
Other thoughts:
Many bloggers and reviewers report this board to be a good overclocker, taking most higher end AMD chips to 4Ghz on air cooling.I am not a big overclocker so I don't really care.Since my major use is playing graphics intensive games, CPU speeds over 3.2 Ghz for today's video cards is of questionable value.In particular I saw a test on the web that tracked CPU AMD and INTEL cpus against ATI's 5970 (highest FPS producing card avaialable).They concluded that @3.2GHz +- .2Ghz, the video card peaked in FPS such that overclocking the CPU beyond this speed did not produce additional FPS out of the video card.Thus in today's gaming rigs, video is the limiting factor.Obviously this is a point in time study but I figure it will be true for a year of more so since my CPU runs at this speed naturally and will powerboost 3 cores up to 3.6Ghz when demand is detected, I have no need to actually overclock my CPU or memory.This motherboard and the AMD chip together do it for me automatically as I need it thus making sure I am getting all the FPS out of my video card I can get.If I go SLI some day then maybe overclocking will play a role for me at that point.
Given my experience to date, I like this board.Indeed, I like the entire gaming rig EWiz built for me.I have to get back to The Witcher now.I am trying to bed one of the Ladys of Vizima and obtain her COLLECTIBLE CHICK CARD.I hear there is an "uncensored" version of the cards and cut-scenes that come in a patch from Europe...
Hail Flavius!
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Product Description:
NF980-G65, NVIDIA NFORCE 980ASLI, SOCKET AM3, FSB 2600MHZ, ATX, 4 DDR3 UP TO 16G
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