Motherboard upgrade?

[Ecnaeg]

Hello, I have a MSI H61M - P20 (G3) motherboard, I have a choice to upgrade to a Biostar TP67XE motherboard.

Reasons I want to upgrade:

- Sata III support : I have a Intel 330 120GB SSD which uses Sata III, current I only have Sata II so I am losing around 200Mb/s.

- USB 3.0.

- SLI capability.

- Full ATX motherboard: Gives more room for cable management.

- Support RAM up to 2200: My RAM is 1600 but my motherboard only support 1333 with this new motherboard there would be no bottleneck.

- More expansion slots.



Reasons I don't want to upgrade:

- Does not have PCI-E 3 like my current motherboard: I plan on getting a GTX 670 in the future ( PCI-E 3 crad ) I know there are backward compatible but it would be bottlenecked. ( BIG ONE )

- I have heard ( not 100% sure ) that the P67 chipset does not support the graphics on i3 2120( or any CPU ): I current have a GTX 550 ti but if that fails I am stuck without a computer until I get a replacement.

- Does not have features like OC-GENIE, WINKI 3, etc....

- Current motherboard supports Ivy Bridge CPU's, after reading the reviews on the Biostar motherboard many people were saying it does not support the 3rd Gen "i" processors ( Ivy Bridge ) so I lose room for possible future upgrades. ( HUGE ONE )



Things I am not sure about:

- What company is better MSI or Biostar?

- Which chipset is better H61 ( current board) or P67( new board )



MSI H61M - P20 ( G3 ) current motherboard - http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130640

Biostar TP67XE ( Possible new motherboard ) - http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138317

 

[Ecnaeg]

I forgot to add this will be used as a gaming PC.

 

[Hazle]

-SATA III, SLI, USB 3.0, is a viable reason to get a new motherboard

- RAM speed plays a rather small role in a system bottleneck gaming-wise. the only exception to this are usually AMD's APUs and laptops in most cases. you'll see a small increase in fps at best in your case. and running SLI with PCIe 2.0 is not a huge bottleneck, not now with today's GPU anyway:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/p67-gaming-3-way-sli-three-card-crossfire,2910-9.html

-while motherboard features like OC-Genie are nice little things, they're not a necessity for overclocking.

-p67 motherboards don't support any kind of onboard video. you're looking for a Z68 or Z77 mobo if you want to OC and onboard video.

-Sandy bridge CPU's aren't all that bad a choice by today's standards. your PC has a good number of years ahead of you if you upgrade to a 2500K at least.

-if you're insistent on getting an Ivy Bridge compatible mobo and are on a budget, there's always Asrock, who's quality has been on a rise in the past year or so. MSI on my personal experience has been falling behind in quality more recently. i've heard mix feelings with Biostar.

and just in case you're not aware; you can't OC an i3-2120 (not by much, anyway).