Does motherboard size matter? (performance wise)

[Scotty99]

Hey all.

After my intel core 2 duo MB finally crapped out after 5 years i decided to go down to my local microcenter and buy a AMD phenom II x4 840 for 99 bucks, it came with a micro atx biostar for free. But now i am at the point i finally want to upgrade to windows 7, and the version i want to get is the 100 dollar "system builder" edition which will only work with one motherboard (so if mine fries i would have to buy a new copy of windows 7).

So basically what i am asking is, should i buy an asus/msi full size board before i upgrade to windows 7? Are there any performance issues related to micro atx boards? Things like SLI or 6gb/s connections do not matter to me, as i do not have two video cards or hard drives that support that technology. I am more looking for an answer on, say you have two boards and they have the exact same specs but one is standard atx and one is micro, will one outperform the other?

I will link my motherboard and processor here:

CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103921

Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138199


I have had zero issues so far with windows XP on this setup, but i am just ready to upgrade to windows 7 and was looking for advice. I have heard a lot of newer 4 core systems simply run better on windows 7 because it optomizes 4 cores better (also games play better?). Also i bought 4gb's of 1333 ram from microcenter (for 30 bucks) and that is another reason i want to upgrade, because my windows xp system only recognizes 3gb of that.

Thoughts? I am not a hardcore gamer, mostly play fallout series with some mafia and WoW thrown in.

 

[Tillman32]

A Micro ATX motherboard is generally the same as a full size, they just don't have as many expansion slots. As far as performance goes, the Micro is going to be the same as long as it has the same specs on each component. Meaning, if it has a x16 PCI-E Slot, a standard FSB speed, Dual Channel Memory, SATA etc..

Looking at that board, its got all the normal speeds as a full size motherboard. So you wouldn't have a change in performance at all.

 

[Scotty99]

Awesome, so no need to get a new mboard then.

Forgot a couple things, i have an IDE hard drive and cd burner, would replacing those with sata ones be a noticeable difference in performance?

 

[Tillman32]

I would for sure upgrade the Hard Drive to SATA you'll notice that one. Faster load times, file transfers etc. CD Rom Drive all depends on how much you use it, if you install stuff off the CD a lot, or Burn a lot, I'd say go for it considering you can get a SATA DVD Burner for 20 bucks on Newegg