Which of these motherboards will be better?

[Jackoftrade]

I'll be getting an FX-8320 and an MSI GTX 960 graphics card. I'll be overclocking here and there, so I'm curious as to which of these would be better.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Motherboard: MSI 970 GAMING ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($98.99 @ B&H)
Total: $98.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-03 18:13 EDT-0400


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $79.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-03 18:14 EDT-0400

 

[TechGuyWesley]

Here is a comparison of both motherboards with additional motherboards to compare off of : https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/compare/asrock-motherboard-970extreme4,asus-motherboard-m5a97r20,gigabyte-motherboard-ga970aud3p,msi-motherboard-970gaming/

have a great day !

 

[TechGuyWesley]

or invidualy : http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/compare/asus-motherboard-m5a97r20%2Cmsi-motherboard-970gaming/

 

[Jackoftrade]

It seems by those comparison that the two are almost identical in specs, except that the Msi supports SLI and the Asus doesn't.

Does anyone have any personal experience with either of these boards? I'm leaning more towards the Msi simply because it looks cooler and it's only a few dollars more than the Asus one on Tigerdirect. Both seem to have good ratings and reviews as well.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Take the MSI....

MSI PSI-E 2 GFX card slots are x16, x8 ... Asus is x16, x4
MSI has Realtek ALC 1150, Asus has inferior ALC 887 .... HUGE difference
MSI has Killer E2205 Gigabit LAN controller Realtek 8111F
MSI has 2 extra USB ports

 

[TechGuyWesley]

I'm sorry I couldn't provide a solution. But MSI supports SLI which can prove benefits when upgrading GPUS or adding more of them.

 

[Jackoftrade]

It's all good, Wesley.

I think I'm going to go with the Msi anyways. I was just curious because I've seen a lot of people recommend that Asus board for overclocking, but I'll just put out the extra few bucks for the badass looking Msi.