OK, I'm at the Crossroads Point

[jmichna]

In the last couple months, I've upgraded CPU (from TBird 1.2/100@1.4/266 to an XP2100+), upgraded HS/fan (ThermalRight AX7/Sunon 80mm fan), and video card (Elsa Gladiac Ultra to MSI GF Ti4400). PS, twin 7200rpm ATA-100 40gb HDs in RAID-0, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, NIC, sound card are all okay.

Trouble is... all this wonderful stuff is on an ol' Asus A7V133 mobo (incl 768mb CAS2 ram).

Looking to migrate to DDR-capable mobo, either 266 or 333. Looking for opinions on which mobo (leaning toward 333 flavor) and which (specific) ram to get. I do tinker a bit with O/Cing.

What do you think?
jmichna

PS: desirable (but not mandatory) mobo features would include onboard RAID controller and onboard NIC, USB 2.0. The onboard RAID is expendable, though, since I think a Promise card with true hardware IDE-RAID would probably offer better performance anyway.

[Peter M]

Keep on dreaming ... those Promise cards are just as software RAID as the onboard ones are. Only their top end SX6000 has a processor of its own and counts as hardware RAID ... but being a 32-bit PCI card, I doubt this will be very useful. In that price range, go SCSI and 64-bit 66 MHz PCI.

regards, Peter

[jmichna]

Originally posted by Peter Missel
Keep on dreaming ... those Promise cards are just as software RAID as the onboard ones are. Only their top end SX6000 has a processor of its own and counts as hardware RAID ... but being a 32-bit PCI card, I doubt this will be very useful. In that price range, go SCSI and 64-bit 66 MHz PCI.

regards, Peter Peter...
I've read some of your other posts (specifically those in regard to on-board (software) IDE-RAID. Given your knowledge, and also given that I do not want to go with SCSI (too many components to upgrade -- hard drives, DVD-ROM and CR-RW) but remain with IDE... then what mobos would you suggest?

I had a SCSI system (Adaptec 2940UW with 7200rpm SCSI HD and SCSI CD-ROM, Conner tape drive) a few years back, and frankly I wasn't all that impressed with it's performance. It was a gaming/general purpose machine, and maybe RAID just isn't warranted for these types of systems.
Thanks,
jmichna