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.
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The Good
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The Bad
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Gaming audio and networking |
Mediocre USB 3.0 implementation
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HEXUS.awards
MSI 970 Gaming
HEXUS.where2buy
The MSI 970 Gaming is available to buy from Scan.co.uk.
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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.
