Are "Gamer" boards worth it?

[Cerb]

Conroes OC'd well but you didn't get 80% increase, both in performance and frequency.

Some did.

If yes, than it's base overclock would be 5.4GHz(on air?)

5.4?! More like 3.3-4GHz. 80-100% OCs were largely based on slower models, like the 1.8-2.2GHz 2MB cache E4 series (which were crap w/o the OC), the initial 1.86 and 2.13GHz models, or a lucky E6550 / a P45 chipset.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/54?vs=289
Faster, but far from unreal.

 

[blackened23]

The short answer is "no." The money you save by not going overboard with these fancy, barely-any-better models can be used on other components or saved for your next build.

Completely agreed. I've used Asus pro and deluxe motherboards over several generations for many years - while the Maximus and premium lines easily cost 200$+ more for what is basically, the same thing. Unless you want quad SLI, and I never use Tri or Quad SLI.

Unless you need a feature such as that, you don't need to spend 400$ on a motherboard. Especially if you're on a yearly upgrade cycle, why bother.

 

[TridenT]

The enthusiast/gaming mobos are intended for very hardcore overclockers. They do have better components, stronger VRMs and more, but their benefits will only show up when you are doing extreme overclocking, probably with special water/LH cooling and gamers who also game with 4 cards or so. Average gamer playing with single screen and single or 2 cards will not really reach technical limits of mainstream boards. I think the Full ATX sized board, with 2x SIII, 2x USB 3 and 2x PCIe will be enough for any avid gamer today. The VRMs are strong enough and stable to work with 4.5 GHz overclock, but then again in name of gaming, the CPU overlocking does not bring much to the table anymore, it's the GPU performance that's important.

About the diagnostic display, my mobo does not even have 2 PCIe slots but it has the LED
The 80-100% OC was probably not even possible on Celeron 300 which is historically known best CPU to ever be overclocked, I don't remember how much the performance increase was back then but it was probably 40% performance increase.
Conroes OC'd well but you didn't get 80-100% increase, both in performance and frequency. If yes, than it's base overclock would be 5.4GHz(on air?) and performance wise it would be at the level of i3-2100, which was unreal at the time of their release.

E6300's came at 1.86ghz. I got 3.4-3.6Ghz easily on all of mine. I even got 3.4Ghz on stock voltage... It was 100% stable... I did every burn in and test imaginable and available at the time. :/

And you saw at least a 50% performance increase in all CPU tests.

 

[CakeMonster]

As far as I'm concerned the only things I'm willing to pay extra for over the cheapest possible board with 4 ram slots and 1 PCIE16 is:

Intel NIC
Good quality onboard sound
Lower power usage (proven)

 

[avtar2008]

my answer would be a simple "no". I think normal user would never use all those ports available on them. <10% people install more than 32gb. And since cpu and gpu are becoming more and more power efficient every generation, need for more phases is becoming less important for normal OCers.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Mobos that actually impact performance is like what...10 years ago?

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Mobos that actually impact performance is like what...10 years ago?

Not completely true. The Z77-Pro4 I tried with a 2500K couldn't OC it to save its life.
The VRM kept overheating and throttling the CPU multiplier to protect itself.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Recently installed a maximus v gene motherboard to replace a faulty h61 budget board and personally i just love what the gene offers @$200 even if my chip won't really overclock far as its a non k.

Doubt many people order a board like the gene,slap in a non k chip and actually get somewhere but my 2500 non k is sitting at 3.8ghz all cores loaded,apply 102.7 bck and it can sit at 3.9ghz and the max boost for the 2500 non k is 3.7ghz so can't complain as my old board simply locked it down tight to 3.4ghz.

 

[CrazyElf]

It really depends on what the gamer boards come with compared to "non-gamer" boards.

I'd say about 80% of the time, the features are not useful, but sometimes ... and it does depend on your usage:

1. Better NIC

2. Better onboard components, it may have you squeeze out a ~200 MHz or so on a higher end setup. It also means that you won't have to worry about things like VRMs blowing up on you.

3. Some do advertise a thicker PCB (more layers) - really, this is not a huge advantage, but the higher boards I hear do come with more (I need to verify this one)

4. Some have better audio. Personally this is not useful as I prefer using a soundcard. But the onboard sound on most motherboards isn't too good, so I guess this could be a good thing ... so long as the motherboard maker has good drives (if not, you're in for problems).

5. If you have a multi-GPU setup, some of the boards do have better layouts designed to accommodate the extra GPUs. That being said, this is not big - as many mainstream boards can support a 3 GPU setup these days as well.

Edit:
For 95+% of gamers, they have very little to gain by using the gaming boards. It's more for the higher end builds. Personally, I'd buy based on what's on the board and the price sold. If the "gamer edition" sells for only a small premium or roughly the same price, I wouldn't mind buying.