MSI 970 Gaming Review

Written by Antony Leather

August 21, 2014 | 08:24

Tags: #atx #best-amd-motherboard #phenom

Companies: #msi

Test Setup

With the exception of ATTO, which we use to measure the performance of a motherboard's SATA controllers, all of our benchmarks use real applications that give you a great idea of how well a product fares when performing the tasks for which you're likely to use it.

We test with our own Media Benchmarks suite, which uses a combination of Gimp image editing, H.264 encoding with Handbrake and multi-tasking with 7-Zip file compression combined with HD video playback. Finally, for our game testing we benchmark the board running The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Total War: Shogun 2's DX9 CPU test and record the minimum and average frame rates.

Click to enlarge

Our benchmarks include stable overclocked results too, so you can gauge how much performance potential there is in the motherboard, and how much value this adds to your purchase. We ran the memory at 1,600MHz so our results would be comparable to previous results in many of our benchmarks for CPUs that we're no longer able to test. We've also included numbers for the fastest Z87 motherboard in each set of results for comparison, rather than clutter the graph with older models.

Common Components:
  • AMD FX-8150
  • 16GB Corsair Vengreance Pro DDR3 1,866MHz (at 1,600MHz)
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB
  • Corsair Pro Series Gold HX750 power supply
  • OCZ Vector 150 240GB SSD
  • Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Discuss this in the forums

Posted by Hustler - Thu Aug 21 2014 08:23

Hell of a good option if you want to build a PS4/Xbox One beating gaming PC on the cheap:

Bit Fenix Neos Case £30
MSI 970 £70
FX 6300 £70
Crucial M100 256GB £80
500GB 7200rpm £40
AMD 2GB Radeon 270 £120
8GB Ram £60
450w PSU £50

..for about £500 that's good enough to play anything out there at 1080p on medium/high settings.

Bargain.

Posted by Dogbert666 - Thu Aug 21 2014 09:13

Corsair M100? :p

Posted by Gareth Halfacree - Thu Aug 21 2014 09:17

Hustler
Hell of a good option if you want to build a PS4/Xbox One beating gaming PC on the cheap:
[snip]
..for about £500 that's good enough to play anything out there at 1080p on medium/high settings.
Plus £70 for the OS (£50 if you're a student), don't forget.

Posted by Hustler - Thu Aug 21 2014 09:28

Dogbert666
Corsair M100? :p
..derp, still hadn't finished my morning wake up coffee.

Corrected.
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