Advice for 850E chipset Motherboard

Hi,

After lots of research, I am trying to decide between two different manufacturers for a motherboard that supports the 850e chipset. I produce music which requires powerful memory processing due to the large audio files which are used simultaneously.

Stability is also key. It seems as though the 850e chipset which supports rdram is ideal in my situation.

I have been thinking about the Asus P4T533-C or the Intel boards which I understand are very stable: D850EMV2 or D850EMD2 (I don't really know the difference).

I will be using a P4 2.4 or 2.53 chip. I will use 512mb 1066 RDRAM.

I have a midiman sound card and will be using lots of usb (therefore audio on the motherboard doesn't really matter that much to me)

I will also need firewire but can probably buy a firewire card for the pci slot.

I also use a scuzzy card for my external music devices such as the sampler.

I also plan on buying a good video card for gaming.

I will be using quite a bit of different USB devices. (On my current intel board pentium3, everytime I plug in a USB the computer crashes. Maybe it is the windows 98?)

I will probably have 100gigs on the hard drive 7200rpm.

I will be running on Windows XP

I have provided the above information in hopes that it can help with the advice I am seeking. Please let me know if there is any info needed.

Thanks a lot !

Kam

One of the servers I built in July has an Asus P4T533-C (2x128MB RDRAM PC800, P4-1.8A/478 BOX, w2ksp3, Radeon 8500 64MB BBA, SiI ATA/PCI Controller...), another has a Gigabyte GA-8IEX (256MB PC2700, P4-2.0A/478 BOX, w2ksp3, Radeon 7000 32MB BBA, SiI ATA/PCI Controller...). Both have always run flawlessly (24/7), and never crashed or freezed or anything else for now (just 3 months I must say...). After a few weeks I slightly prefer the Gigabyte construction, but the RDRAM memory. The design of the P4T533-C surprised me, since a little less carefully done than the older Asus mobos I had used, but it does work.

I agree that Granite Bay could please you if you can wait for it to come, be tested and tried... however in case you can't wait and still need speed and stability right now, the i850E remains so far a good solution IMO, particularly now that PC1066 is available - I would chose the P4T533-C (http://www.asus.com/mb/socket478/p4t533-c/overview.htm), or slightly better IMO, the Gigabyte GA-8IHXP (http://tw.giga-byte.com/products/8ihxp.htm) (more features for the price, still more stability if ever possible...)

Paris, Tue 22 Oct 2002 11:14:15 +0200

Thanks for the advice guys. I don't think I can wait long enough for the new DDR.

The Ga-8IHXP looks like a good option. If I use 512RDRAM 1066, do I need two of them? Am I better off buying two 256RDRAM 1066 sticks?