ASUS P7P55D Pro or P7P55D-E ?

Hi,

I'm looking to make a gaming PC with the following specs and would appreciate advice on which motherboard is better for it:

Intel i5 760
Corsair XMS3 4GB 1600 Mhz
Gainward GTX 460 1GB OC Edition

The two motherboards are:

1) ASUS P7P55D Pro at about £115
2) ASUS P7P55D-E at about £105.

I realise that the D-E version of the P55 board has a Pro equivalent, but this is around £135 so over my budget.

I also know that the -E version motherboards are slightly newer with additional USB 3.0 ports and two SATA 3.0 6GB/s slots. However, I'm not really fussed about the new 3.0 technology because I don't have anything at the moment that would use them.

From reviews, I can only make out that the P7P55D-E Pro (which is out of my price range) is slightly better than the P7P55D Pro, as it has a few better placed chips and slightly better technology - though I'm not sure if that means anything in terms of performance.

I will also say that I'm not really bothered about SLI or Crossfire, in fact I will probably avoid it as I'm conscious of power draw and heat, so it's not a factor for me. I have seen that there is a non Crossfire version that is the P7P55D-E LX, however it's only a few pounds less than the standard D-E, so I've not included this as an option.

What do you guys think is better? The Pro version of the previous iteration, or the standard version of the current one?

Hi newcomer and welcome to the Tom's hardware forum.

I'd go with the P7P55D Pro since have better features.

The P55D can run Crossfire @x8 that in the future could be useful even if u don't plan add a 2nd GPU now and in OC features is more friendly.