MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard Review: Undercutting AM3+ at $100

MSI 970 Gaming Conclusions

Regardless of the conclusions derived from the new FX-E series of processors from AMD, they see the $600 PC gaming market as a vibrant source of sales and upgrades. When it comes the FX-8320E and FX-8370E, their argument is always about performance to an equivalent costing Intel build, or that these CPUs offer an upgrade path to those still running FX-4000, FX-6000 or even Phenom II based CPUs. The only downside for MSI in that logic is that by upgrading a CPU, the user is not upgrading the motherboard, which is what MSI would rather happen.

The 970 Gaming is aiming at that cheaper market, by providing a motherboard suitable for single GPU gaming and an FX-8000 series processor. Very few motherboard manufacturers are actively pursuing this demographic, perhaps because margins are low or the numbers simply are not there. But what is available from MSI certainly looks the part. As their Gaming branding has evolved since 2013, it is clear that user perception of experience, rather than perhaps the experience itself or the technology behind it, comes in to play. Placing a user inside that MSI Gaming ecosystem, such as the styling, the forums and the atmosphere during a period of time when they cannot afford the big name and big performance parts allows them to develop an affinity for the brand and hopefully drives the bigger sale down the road.

For a motherboard under $100, it was going to be basic, but there are a couple of additions over the norm worth highlighting. The Killer networking solution, especially as a marketing tool, has worked well for MSI in the past and gets a showcasing here. This comes along with the enhanced Realtek ALC1150 audio solution which I would imagine MSI gets very cheap as it is used across most of the self-build motherboard range. The 970 chipset limits the user to a single NVIDIA GPU and PCIe 2.0, but for a $600 gaming system any dual card arrangement or at high resolutions is probably not on the cards, so the lack of x8/x8 or PCIe 3.0 is not a big loss.

Looking at the performance, if we directly compare the FX-8320E overclocking results of the 970 Gaming to the 990FX Extreme9, the latter has the headroom for another 100 MHz peak but also costs almost double. The 970 Gaming has a few downsides, such as offset-only overclocking and a lack of load-line calibration options, but it will provide a decent manual overclock when it needs to. The OC Genie seems dependent on the CPU being used, and while it failed with the FX-8320E, the FX-8150 had no issue at all.

Benchmarks threw up a couple of yellow flags, with some results being a lot lower than expected but the rest were higher than the Extreme9 by a few percentage points. USB speed, THD+N and DPC latency are lower than expected, but POST times are par for the course. Peak power consumption was the same as the Extreme9 within margin, but the 970 Gaming idled several watts lower.

To put it bluntly, the 970 Gaming has a few flaws. At $100 we were not expecting perfection, and while it achieved a little more than a $190 motherboard did in a few benchmarks, it was quite a way behind in others. But the gaming-positive styling, the MSI Gaming ecosystem and the couple of technical improvements over the base specifications can make up for this a little. We reserve awards for motherboards that execute near-perfectly for their price range, and while the MSI has a lot of room to improve, it offers a very interesting element for the new AMD FX system builder to consider.