Which motherboard should I choose?

For reference, here's the system I'm putting together:

PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 720
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

GPU: XFX Radeon HD 4850 w/1GB RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

The rest of the parts are irrelevant to the question or will depend on its answer so I won't include them.

Some of the things I'm looking for in a motherboard are Firewire and eSATA support, 2 PCIe slots for possible crossfire in the future, maybe IDE support, unlocking the 4th core of my CPU is something I will probably try to do in the future, but I've never overclocked so I probably won't do anything more than experimenting. I also don't care about onboard graphics as I will be buying a separate graphics card. And obviously good build quality and reliability.

I'm not sure whether or not to go with a DDR3-capable board because I'm trying to keep this build as low-budget as possible. Help me decide between these two (DDR3) boards:

ASUS M4A78T-E
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

GIGABYTE GA-MA790XT-UD4P
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

They're similar in their features, but the Gigabyte board seems to offer more "goodies" (the eSATA and 4-pin molex expansion port thing) than Asus so I'm leaning towards that. Could anyone point out any major differences to me that I may have overlooked? I think they're close enough in terms of build quality and reputability that I shouldn't worry about one brand being better than the other in any significant way.

Otherwise, the best DDR2 board I could find for the price is this:

ASUS M4A78-E
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I couldn't find anything else that met my requirements for a similar price. I'm open to suggestions here. This is from one of the reviews: "Second of all 1066 is supported with one dimm per channel...meaning if you have 4 sticks of 1066 your ram will be underclocked to 800....Not a big deal for me but nothing a little tweaking can't handle." Is this true? Should I save my money and go with the 800 off the bat rather than have it underclock if I decide to upgrade?

I'm also open to RAM recommendations, as I'm not too familiar with DDR3.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and giving me your opinions.