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Review: MSI 970 Gaming

by Ryan Martin on 30 January 2015, 15:00

Tags: MSI

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Conclusion

Key elements of the board are well implemented given the limited competition MSI face in the AM3+ gaming segment.

The MSI 970 Gaming motherboard sports an aggressive price tag of £80 ($100). Whether it needs to be that aggressively-priced is questionable. MSI, we feel, could have considered the 990FX chipset for enhanced PCIe lane availability while only marginally increasing price. Such a move would give the board more robustness in the long-run for multi-GPU configurations and, quite pedantically, prevent the product name from sounding like an Nvidia graphics card. On the other hand, multi-GPU configurations are likely reserved for more expensive Intel-based platforms so MSI makes a calculated decision.

Other key elements of the board are well-implemented given the limited competition MSI faces in the AM3+ gaming segment. The gaming audio and networking combination is solid, and it's great to see those popularised Z97 motherboard features trickle down to an older platform like AM3+. MSI deserve further commendation for providing a 'driver-only' download for the Killer E2205 networking chip, the Killer networking software is bloated at the best of times.

There are a few areas where the MSI 970 Gaming could benefit from changes. The BIOS needs some tweaking in the CPU voltage section and some of the MSI software utilities need a bit more polish, primarily Live Update 6. USB 3.0 performance is a grey area, where performance seemed low given what we're used to with Z97. We come away with the feeling that MSI's 970 Gaming is a safe bet for anyone considering AMD's FX platform.

The Good
 
The Bad

Gaming audio and networking
Aggressive pricing
Updated feature-set
Capable overclocker

 
Mediocre USB 3.0 implementation

 

HEXUS.awards


MSI 970 Gaming

 

HEXUS.where2buy

The MSI 970 Gaming is available to buy from Scan.co.uk.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.



HEXUS Forums :: 15 Comments

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Not really fair you compare performance of 8350FX with I7 4970k considering the huge price difference
loccothan
No comments ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spZJrsssPA0&feature=youtu.be

Jokes on you buddy. This is the MSI 970 Gaming **MOTHERBOARD** Not the graphics card.
A good looking board that i nearly bought a few months ago but went for the GA-970A-DS3P instead …