I have been a loyal fan of AMD for more than 15 years. However due to my horrible experience with AMD chipsets and mobo makers I have reluctantly moved to Intel platform.
Here is the list of some of the problems that neither the mobo makers nor AMD even bothered to resolve.
1. CPU overheating. I live in India and we have higher ambient temperature than almost all western countries. Only way I could run the systems was to take the cover off the PC and have direct draft from a desert cooler blowing at it.
2. USB support. The integrated USB 2.0 support was absolutely horrible. In stead of using the well proven Via or NEC chipset AMD went in for designing and integrating their own version. Couldn't even get the USB keyboard / mouse to function properly. Externally powered USB HDDs would simply connect / disconnect at its own whim leading to a lot of corrupted files. Finally had to install an old Via chipset based controller in pci slot to sort out that problem.
3. I have 3 PCs connected to a 4 port KVM switch through USB + VGA ports. These are : 2 year old Zotac dual core Atom mini-itx, a 4 year old Jetway Via C7 mini-itx ( both consuming under 30 watts measured at the wall socket) and a 3 year old MSI quad Phenon 9650 (consuming 120 watts !). The first 2 had absolutely no problem with the KVM switch. The MSI had all kinds of problem. Half the times it would not recognize KB/Mouse until windows loaded the right drivers. I had to keep PS2 keyboard AND mouse permanently connected to sort out the problem. Neither MSI nor AMD even bothered to answer my umpteen queries for a solution.
Finally Gigabyte AND MSI sc***ed me over warranty. In the first case (an AMD Athlon 1500) with more than 10 months of warranty still remaining the motherboard just shuttled between my home and their service center. After 10 months of this they simply raised their hands and claimed that it was out of warranty. In the second case (MSI quad Phenom) similar shuttling exercise took place. Finally they replaced it with a reworked lower grade motherboard which gave up the ghost about 6 months ago ( no more video), and still under warranty ! I got so sick of communicating with them that I just went out and bought a compatible Biostar mobo which is working fine.
I am now building a new system with an Intel i3-3220T cpu, Intel DH77EB motherboard, 2x8 gb Corsair Vengeance ram and a 2.5" - 750 gb WD Scorpio Black Hard disk. This is of course a low performance system but more than adequate for my requirements and runs at under 40 watts at the wall socket with a 400 watt smps !!! My main criterion being LOW power consumption ! It far outperforms the Phenom system at 1/3 the power consumption.
Nest thing I will be doing is to transplant the unused built in power supply from the Antec ISK300-65 mini-itx cabinet. At present it hosts the Zotac mini-itx with its own onboard power system running off of an external laptop type power supply.
So I would suggest you google and read up on "usb problem on AMD chipset" before finalizing your selection.
Here is the list of some of the problems that neither the mobo makers nor AMD even bothered to resolve.
1. CPU overheating. I live in India and we have higher ambient temperature than almost all western countries. Only way I could run the systems was to take the cover off the PC and have direct draft from a desert cooler blowing at it.
2. USB support. The integrated USB 2.0 support was absolutely horrible. In stead of using the well proven Via or NEC chipset AMD went in for designing and integrating their own version. Couldn't even get the USB keyboard / mouse to function properly. Externally powered USB HDDs would simply connect / disconnect at its own whim leading to a lot of corrupted files. Finally had to install an old Via chipset based controller in pci slot to sort out that problem.
3. I have 3 PCs connected to a 4 port KVM switch through USB + VGA ports. These are : 2 year old Zotac dual core Atom mini-itx, a 4 year old Jetway Via C7 mini-itx ( both consuming under 30 watts measured at the wall socket) and a 3 year old MSI quad Phenon 9650 (consuming 120 watts !). The first 2 had absolutely no problem with the KVM switch. The MSI had all kinds of problem. Half the times it would not recognize KB/Mouse until windows loaded the right drivers. I had to keep PS2 keyboard AND mouse permanently connected to sort out the problem. Neither MSI nor AMD even bothered to answer my umpteen queries for a solution.
Finally Gigabyte AND MSI sc***ed me over warranty. In the first case (an AMD Athlon 1500) with more than 10 months of warranty still remaining the motherboard just shuttled between my home and their service center. After 10 months of this they simply raised their hands and claimed that it was out of warranty. In the second case (MSI quad Phenom) similar shuttling exercise took place. Finally they replaced it with a reworked lower grade motherboard which gave up the ghost about 6 months ago ( no more video), and still under warranty ! I got so sick of communicating with them that I just went out and bought a compatible Biostar mobo which is working fine.
I am now building a new system with an Intel i3-3220T cpu, Intel DH77EB motherboard, 2x8 gb Corsair Vengeance ram and a 2.5" - 750 gb WD Scorpio Black Hard disk. This is of course a low performance system but more than adequate for my requirements and runs at under 40 watts at the wall socket with a 400 watt smps !!! My main criterion being LOW power consumption ! It far outperforms the Phenom system at 1/3 the power consumption.
Nest thing I will be doing is to transplant the unused built in power supply from the Antec ISK300-65 mini-itx cabinet. At present it hosts the Zotac mini-itx with its own onboard power system running off of an external laptop type power supply.
So I would suggest you google and read up on "usb problem on AMD chipset" before finalizing your selection.
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