Asus A7V verses Abit KT7-Raid

[Guest]

I have a question about a post on another thread of mine a few pages down, here's what one reply was..

<<I've just built and Athlon T-bird system with the A7V rev. 1.02 m-board. I like it's features, and so far it's been working beautifully. One thing you do need to think about before buying this board, is: How many add-on cards will you be installing in the available PCI slots? The A7V's slots are shared with each other. The only slot that doesn't share an IRQ with another seems to be slot 3. So, if you put your sound card there, your video in the AGP (the AGP shares with slot 1 too), the rest of the slots are going to be sharing an IRQ with whatever else you decide to install. So you might want to find out if your addons will be ok sharing IRQs? Some do, some don't.
I'm on my way to re-install my sound card in Slot 3, because it's sharing an IRQ with my built-in Promise ATA-100 controller in the slot that I have it in now. Although I've had no conflicts yet, I'm sure there are a few waiting right around the corner when my hard drive and sound card both ask for help from the processor at the same time.
All in all, I like the board, and I'm happy with my choice.
Phil
Corpus Christi,TX>>>

Now, my question is, I'm going with the Abit KT7-Raid, does it have the IRQ sharing problems as the Asus A7V does?

Thx in advance for all your help,
Hype

 

[Guest]

Hype,

The A7V in not unique in this respect. There are only a limited number of IRQs available for all the slots, so if you have enough cards installed, they will share IRQs. There's a good section on this in the KT7 FAQ at:

<A HREF="http://go.to/kt7faq" target="_new">http://go.to/kt7faq</A>

Click on the <b>Troubleshooter</b> link on the left of the page.

Then scroll down to the link for the <b>instability</b> page and click it.

Finally, scroll down and read the section entitled <b>How do I avoid IRQ conflicts?</b>.

Mike

 

[Guest]

Great page Mike! Thx! One more (newbie) question, Whats the difference between raid or no raid? I'm not sure if raid is for using 2 hard drives or not. Can you please tell me in newbie terms what raid is, and if or when I need it.

Thx so much!
Hype

PS: This is an awesome community board!

 

[Guest]

Mike, I found the raid question from that page you listed. If you have any further comments, please reply. If thats your webpage, please keep it up, it's an awesome website! I bookmarked it.

Thx again,
Hype

 

[Guest]

You're welcome. Heh! I wish it were my page. That would mean I know a lot more about this board (and probably a lot of other things) than I currently do. I agree. I've never seen such comprehensive documentation for a single motherboard. Even Abit refer people to it in their small FAQ.

Mike