Stuck between these motherboards!

[Atls]

Hey all, I'm in a tight situation. I can't decide which motherboard I should go with out of these three! Originally I was going to get the UD3R, but...ugh, can you guys help?

1) P55 UD3R 1156

2) MSI P55-CD53

3) Gigabyte UD2 1156 microATX

Specs:
i5
XFX 4890
4GB DDR3 Ripjaws

-Should I save $30 and go with the UD2, or what?

 

[lothar]

Ud3r.

*EDIT*
Changed to lower case, WTF?

 

[Atls]

Ud3r.

*EDIT*
Changed to lower case, WTF?

UD3R..hmm..that is what I was thinking too. Thanks, I'll get that.

 

[Absolution75]

the UD3R has too many pci slots for my liking-I'd go with the MSI board

 

[Atls]

the UD3R has too many pci slots for my liking-I'd go with the MSI board

Would it be a great board to game on? Would it be a good idea to get it and save $20?

 

[Absolution75]

Any of the boards would be great to game on. In reality, you probably won't need anything more than the ud2 board offers. You could put that $30 toward something else. Motherboard performance is almost identical across all P55 motherboards. It is really all about features that are added by the manufacter; its the only way to differentiate the between products.

I got my board because it has lots of PCI-E slots (not that I'll need them all), a solid layout, 8x SATA slots, great bios options, and was fairly cheap. If you don't see yourself needing anything that the UD2 board doesn't offer (which isn't much), then just get it and pocket the $30 or put it towards a better video card.

 

[ekoostik]

I opted for the UD2 because of the price difference. Allowed me to upgrade a couple other components and still stay under budget. It's been a great board and in these first couple months Gigabyte has steadily released BIOS updates as needed to support us early adopters.

As others mentioned, the biggest draw back for many is that it has less expansion slots than some of the other boards. It has one PCIe x16, one PCIe x4, and two PCI slots. I found that with a GPU in the PCIe x16 with active cooling, one of the PCI slots is covered. So, after installing the GPU I have remaining one PCIe x4 and one PCI slot. Not a problem for me as for the foreseeable future I have no plans to use any of the slots. If that is enough expansion slots for you and budget is a concern it's a great little motherboard.