MSI P67A-G43 vs. P67A-GD65

[WWBD]

I am having the hardest time picking out a motherboard, as I find there are so many more variables in a mobo purchase vs. cpu, ram, gpu, etc. There are 2 MSI boards I'm looking at (along with a bunch of others), but I can't tell the difference between them.

The G43, for $134:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130583&cm_re=msi_p67a-_-13-130-583-_-Product

and the GD65, for $179:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130574&cm_re=msi_p67a-_-13-130-574-_-Product


Here's my planned setup:
i7-2600k
8 gb 1600 cas 9 ripjaws
MSI Radeon 6950 2gb
Antec Truepower 750
Crucial C300 128gb
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
Coolermaster Hyper 212


I will probably be interested in some mild overclocking at some point. And I'd like to have the option of crossfiring down the line. I understand that PCI lanes are a big determining factor for price in these p67 boards. Both those boards seem to have 2. The GD65 has 2 16x's, and the G43 has 1 16x and 1 8x, as far as I can tell. But don't crossfired cards run at 16x-8x anyway? So wouldn't both boards offer me identical crossfire performance? What else besides a second GPU would I want a 16x slot for?

The other important factor would be a 6gb/s connection for my Crucial C300.


Edit: And just like that I discover there is a third option, the MSI G45:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130582&cm_re=p67-_-13-130-582-_-Product

My, this is complicated! Help!

 

[rolli59]

Pick the one with the feature you want! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006519%2050001312%2040000280%20600093976%20600008069&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemList=280|13-130-583^13-130-583-TS%2C13-130-582^13-130-582-TS%2C13-130-572^13-130-572-TS%2C13-130-573^13-130-573-TS%2C13-130-574^13-130-574-TS
If you want more than 2 SATA 6GB ports you will need the GD65 as an example.

 

[abswindows7]

179$ I'd grab a real motherboard
P8P67

 

[WWBD]

I guess I'll just ask a more straightforward question then. Some of the more expensive boards offer 2 16x PCIe slots. Cheaper ones have 1 16x and 1 8x. Since crossfire would limit that pair of 16x slots to a 16x/8x configuration anyway, what benefit would I gain from having two full 16x slots? Are there other devices besides GPUs that can take advantage of a 16x slot?

 

[abswindows7]

You'd gain probably 2-3% going 16/16 instead of 16/8

 

[WWBD]

16/16 is not an option (I think you'd need a $300+ board to do that, and maybe not even then. P67 might not have the capability yet).

 

[rolli59]

Here is a good article with x8 / x8 versus x16 /x16 http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/p67-gaming-3-way-sli-three-card-crossfire,review-32165-16.html