Can someone look at these ASUS motherboards?

[kdogg]

I need a decent cheap motherboard.

I've narrowed it down to a couple and I was wondering if someone could tell me the differences.

For example, what are the main differences between these:

Newegg.com - ASUS M4A88T-V EVO/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

and

Newegg.com - ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard


They pretty much sound the same to me. They both have USB3.0, 6GB SATA, 8 channel audio, ATI 4250 HD onboard, DDR3, AM3, etc etc other then ones ATX and ones Micro ATX.

Oh and I noted that one has 2x pci-e for SLI video cards I suppose but, if you have dual gpu video card anyway like an ATI something or another HD X2, wouldn't that then not matter anyway?

I have a ATI 3870 HD X2 I was going to use with the motherboard.

I actually ordered this one, and it's here now:

Newegg.com - ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

I'm sorta thinking maybe I should have gotten the other one? I dont know if it really matters though. I thought I would ask before I open the box and start building. Actually, I can't build it til tomorrow morning, my DDR3 was shipped separately and won't be here til tomorrow.

 

[Lordbob75]

Well, the only real difference was the 2nd PCIe x16 slot and the board size.

Personally, I would have gone with the other board, but that one will work just fine.

The only problem would be if you are using a micro-ATX sized case.

~Lordbob

 

[Lemur]

Nothing wrong with the mobo you ordered.

 

[kdogg]

Well I guess my question was more about the "Crossfire" aspects of the board.

My my older system I have now, I have dual PCIe slots and in the past I've run dual ATI X1900's in SLI as it's a Crossfire board. Then I upgraded to a ATI 3870 HD X2, which is still a dual GPU setup but all in one card, using one PCIe slot. It can be run in Crossfire mode on my current board.

Well, this board is technically "Crossfire" but only if you use the onboard ATI 4250 HD along with another acceptable card, whatever that may be.

Well, being that is only has one PCIe slot, I can still disable the onboard and run my 3870 HD X2 single PCIe card as a "Crossfire" setup right?

That said, I don't quite know what the specs on the onboard 4250 HD are but would I be better off to just get a second 4250 HD to run "Crossfire" as they are cheap or disable as mentioned above and run my 3870 HD X2? It's a little dated but its a GOOD card still. It seems to run all my games as MAX everything for the most part. The couple it doesn't, it seems to be due to my old crappy single core CPU and old ass DDR1 ram which is why I ordered the above motherboard, a quad-core and some new DDR3 ram.

Also, I may have messed up on the ram. I ordered Crucial Ballistix Tracer ram, in triple channel DDR3 1600 kit (3x2GB)but I now see the specs say this board is "dual channel" for the ram which normally means 2 or 4 sticks, right? So do I need to order another stick to utilize it correctly?

I kinda rushed the buying of this PC, I thought had it sorted out, I guess not!