This past September AMD introduced a refresh of their FX CPUs that included a few new more power efficient CPUs along with a major pricing restructure to update the lineup. While I had the chance to test out most of the lineup there were a few that weren’t included. Recently AMD sent over one of the CPUs that I missed the FX-8320E. With the FX-8320E being a budget focused gaming CPU AMD also sent along with it a motherboard that matched its low price point and gaming focus, the 970 Gaming from MSI. Paired together you can get them for just a few dollars more than an i5-4670K with no motherboard or any of the 2011 socket CPUs. With 8 cores and a turbo clock speed of 4 GHz it should still be performer, but of course there really is only one way to find out, let’s check it out.

Product Name: AMD FX-8320E and MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard

Review Samples Provided by: AMD

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

 

AMD FX-8320E Specifications

x86 Piledriver Cores

8

Core Clock

Up to 3.2/4.0GHz

L2 Cache

8MB

Shared L3 Cache

8MB

Memory Support

Up to 1866MHz w/ AMP

Typical TDP

95W

Motherboard Socket

AM3+

Chipset Compatibility

990FX, 990X, 980G, 970

Unlocked CPU Multiplier

Yes

Price

$146.99

MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard Specifications

CPU

Supports  AMD®FXTM/ Phenom™ II/ Athlon™ II and Sempron™ processors for the AM3/ AM3+ socket

Hyper Transport Bus

HyperTransport 3.0 supporting speed up to 4.8GT/s

Chipset

AMD® 970 and SB950 Chipset

Main Memory

-4 x DDR3 memory slots supporting up to 32GB

-Supports DDR3 2133(OC)/ 1866/ 1600/ 1333/ 1066 MHz

-Dual channel memory architecture

Slots

2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots

- PCI_E2 supports up to PCIe 2.0 x16 speed

- PCI_E4 supports up to PCIe 2.0 x8 speed

2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots

2 x PCI slots

Multi-GPU

Supports 2-Way AMD® CrossFire™ Technology*

Supports 2-Way NVIDIA® SLI™ Technology*

On-Board SATA

AMD SB950 Chipset

- 6 x SATA 6Gb/s ports

- Supports RAID 0, RAID1, RAID5 and RAID 10

USB

AMD® SB950 Chipset

- 14x USB 2.0 ports (8 ports on the back panel, 6 ports available through the internal USB 2.0 connectors)

VIA VL806 Chipset

- 4 x USB 3.0 ports (2 ports on the back panel, 2 ports available through the internal USB 3.0 connector)*

* These USB 3.0 ports do not support M-Flash recovery function.

Audio

Realtek® ALC1150 Codec

LAN

Killer E2205 Gigabit LAN controller

Internal I/O Connectors

-1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector

-1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector

-6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors

-3 x USB 2.0 connectors (supports additional 6 USB 2.0 ports)

-1 x USB 3.0 connector

-1 x 4-pin CPU fan connector

-2 x 4-pin system fan connectors

-2 x 3-pin system fan connectors

-1 x Front panel audio connector

-2 x System panel connectors

-1 x Chassis Intrusion connector

-1 x TPM module connector

-1 x Serial port connector

-1 x S/PDIF-Out connector

-1 x Clear CMOS jumper

-1 x Slow mode booting switch

Back Panel I/O Ports

- 1 x PS/2 keyboard/ mouse combo port

- 8 x USB 2.0 ports

- 2 x USB 3.0 ports

- 1 x Optical S/PDIF-Out connector

- 1 x LAN (RJ45) port

- 6 x OFC audio jacks

BIOS

-The motherboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically.

-The motherboard provides a Desktop Management Interface(DMI) function which records your motherboard specifications.

Dimension

12 in. x 9.6 in. (30.5 cm x 24.4 cm) ATX Form Factor

Mounting

9 mounting holes

image 20

image 21

 

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #36131 07 Jan 2015 22:48
Today I take a look at a budget CPU from AMD along with a budget gaming board from MSI. The goal of pairing these two together is to see if you can keep costs down while still getting good in game performance. In other words, is this the ideal setup for a budget gaming rig? Check it out and find out

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