There have been a lot of Intel reviews lately, but if you are on a budget and want an 8-core processor for under 200 USD to combine with an attractive motherboard, then we think we may have found the answer. Join us as we review the MSI 970 Gaming, an affordable but high-end motherboard that has incredible good looks and a decent feature-set. We will pop an AMD FX 8370E processor onto it today. And hey, gaming at FullHD will be good even with the latest graphics cards. You can read a full review right here at Guru3D of course. The motherboard is based on the series 9 chipset from AMD, you all know the 990FX/980G but there is a cheaper 970 revision as well. It is slightly cut down overall, but still offers tremendous value for money. In fact the motherboard as tested today will cost you 90 USD and we spotted it for a similar 90 EURO in the EU as well.

Actually the AMD Series 9 Chipset is a set of chipsets developed by AMD that now originates from the year 2011 already. The chipset series uses the same silicon as AMD's previous 8-Series chipset however it's targeted at the socket AM3+ platform, including the Bulldozer line, while the 800 series is targeted at the socket AM3 platform. In support of AM3+ CPUs, AMD has validated the 9-Series chipset for use with HyperTransport 3.1 (up to 6.4GT/s). They also worked with NVIDIA to bring SLI support to this chipset series. The 970 chipset carries the codename RX980 and has one physical PCIe 2.0 ×16 slot, one PCIe 2.0 ×4 slot and two PCIe 2.0 ×1 slots, the chipset provides a total of 22 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge HyperTransport 3.0 up to 2400 MHz and PCI Express 2.0. It has a 13.6 Watt TDP for the combined chipset SB950/SB920. Processor wise you can mount AMD FX/ Phenom II/ Athlon II and Sempron processors that are compatible with socket AM3+.