The gigabyte motherboard will support ddr2 and ddr3 and has more features than the msi, the gigabyte motherboard will also have better audio, but other then that they are fairly similar. not sure if the msi had a i.d.e or not... pretty sure that doesn't matter for you though. I bought that same motherboard before from gigabyte for a little workstation project I had and the motherboard has really good features solid caps and overall build quality. I've had at least for the some of the non solid cap msi boards I've had caps leak after about a year or 2 of use.