Some months ago MSI announced that they are releasing a slew of USB 3.1 compliant parts. What was surprising was the mention of a brand new AM3+ board based on the now nearly geriatric AMD 990FX chipset. The 990FX has had quite a lifespan with PCI-E 2.0 support and the accompanying SB950 southbridge with USB 2.0 and SATA6G features.
It looks as if MSI is doing a clean sheet design for the 990FXA-Gaming. This looks to be a class leading product with plenty of features. Not only does it have the USB 3.1 support, but it also implements the enhanced audio design that we have seen on other top end boards from MSI. It also embraces the Killer ethernet software suite (utilizing Qualcomm's Atheros Gig-E chip).
The power delivery system looks to be a full 8+2 unit, so it can officially handle the 220 watt TDP FX-9000 series of CPUs. It supports both SLI and CrossFire. The cooling on the board looks to be top notch as well, with a heatpipe stretching from the Southbridge, through the Northbridge, and finally to the VRMs.
We expect these boards to be available sometime around the middle of this month. We should also be receiving a sample for testing around then. It is nice to see new support for AMD's FX CPUs, and this should be a cost effective member of the club. Though AM3+ is a dead end in terms of socket infrastructure, there is still a lot of value in AMD's FX CPU line.
There is no word on pricing at this time, but I would not be surprised to see it hit the $149 mark. It does not seem as decked out as the 990FXA-GD80 which is priced around $179. With the robust featureset that they do implement, it does look to be a value if it can hit that aggressive price point.
I jumped the gun and bought
I jumped the gun and bought 970 Krait last month. Now, I wish I would have waited. 🙁 Only saving grace is that my build scheme was black and white colors and it looks pretty slick.
Wasn’t that posted two days
Wasn’t that posted two days ago?
It was, but apparently there
It was, but apparently there was actually an NDA that we were informed about later. Had to unpost and then repost when NDA expired today.
An NDA on a press release?
An NDA on a press release? Why? Are there still vestigal remnants of the printed media that requires lead time to publish stuff?
Considering the amount of
Considering the amount of problems with the “killernic suit”, not the driver I would never get a board with utilizing that nic.
Dont know how many people I have seen having problems getting the Software suit delivered with the killernic to work properly.
Work around is to extract and install the drivers only but then you migth as Well get “Intel” that is way better any way or Realtek that have released some realy nice Nics as of late unlike there older once that had a bad reputation of being cheap.
No, better off getting a high quality MB with an Intel nic or even a Realtek RTL8111G or something with IPV4/IPV6 offloading. They work and they work well and you get what you pay for.
“Killer” is just overpriced crap with bloated software for a premium price and in the end no real benefits just a lot of problems.