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What will fill these requirements?

Forum Motherboards & Memory : General Motherboard - What will fill these requirements?

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Anonymous   08-17-2001 at 09:09:24 AM

OK, looking at mobo's for a 1.4 266. My requirements are,
DDR
5-6 PCI slots
Either 3IDE or raid. (Have 6 IDE devices to hook up, so 2 ain't enough, and heard you could use a raid slot as a normal IDE port)
NOT going to OC it.
Upgrade potential (for a palamino when available)
Of the AVAILABLE chipsets, prefer the AMD761
That's it. Only board I've seen so far meeting many of my requirements is the KG7 Raid. Have I missed any?

Last question.... is their a timeline on the N-Force chipset release. Same question for the Palamino 1.4+ chips. I wish to upgrade within a month, so I don't mind waiting a lil, but I have visions of purchasing my processor, and the next day logging on to Tom's, and seeing "AMD releases 1.5 Palamino!" in big bold letters across the top of the page. Thanks for any info.

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Anonymous   08-17-2001 at 09:52:51 AM
- 0 +

I was about to post asking pretty much the very thing you did. The two that i found that i liked that you didnt mention are the Gigabyte GA-7DXR and the EPoX EP-8k7a+.

I am probably going with the Gigabyte GA-7DXR. The ONLY thing thats held me back till now was that it is not able to do Raid level 0+1. I called Gigabyte's USA office and spoke with 1 of their techs for awhile and even tho the Promise Raid chip on the board is capable of doing Raid 0+1, he doubts they will upgrade the bios to do it. :-(

*Yes i have allot of hard drives to waste, no bashing! ;-)

The Gigabyte also has a Creative SB128 PCI sound chip, AGP PRO, 4 Ram slots, 2 flash bios chips (for those dummies like me who mess up), and acording to Toms Hardware reviews; is a rock stable and a very fast motherboard.

The EPoX is nice too but i wanted a board that has some upgradability and the EPoX only has 2 Ram sockets and no AGP Pro slot (Just regular AGP). EPoX does have 6 PCI slots compared to Gigabytes 5 and a worthless AMR slot. The EPoX board also comes with a neat POST LED display to let you know if something's wrong at boot-up and where the problem is. I got a motherboard from Comdex a few years back with a Debugger onboard and i loved it. Seems they are adding it to allot of boards lately.

I searched many reviews and bulletin boards to see how either worked. Got a fair share of people who had problems with both. I looked at other bulletins and its the same for every board tho.

I want a board i can get plugged in and not have a problem with it. I dont plan to overclock either. Just want a stable system with good features that i can turn on and run with no problems. Before i make the call does anyone have anything good (or bad) to say about the Gigabyte? or a better alternative? would love to hear it.

Thanks for reading my ramblings,

Toygrubin

Reply to Anonymous
Anonymous   08-17-2001 at 10:08:47 AM
- 0 +

Thanks for your insight. One question, this Raid 0+1 you speak of, I'm not positive what you mean. I am not interested in running a real raid congig, just using the raid slots as regular IDE connections to attach more drives. (yeah I got waaaaay to many too.. :-) ) Is this mode considered 0+1? Just using it as an IDE port? Or is that just standard, that you can use a raid contoller as a traditional IDE connection?

Reply to Anonymous
Anonymous   08-17-2001 at 10:18:09 AM
- 0 +

Raid 0+1 requires at least 4 drives and combines Striping (Raid 0) and Mirroring (Raid 1) together. 2 drives do Striping and 2 do Mirroring.

Also just fyi there is also the KG7-Raid board. Its supposidly the fastest (at the moment) and has Raid too. But no other bells and whistles. I know its been held up for some reason and was supposed to be released a couple days ago. But i am not sure if its out yet or what the story is on it.

Toygrubin

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