PCA Forums

Doing the reseach for the next system

What's the opions on M/b's for a 2500xp or above. Gonna build that 333fsb soon.

I want IDE that works good and fast!
Best on board sound.
Compatible with ATI AIW cards!
It will be connected to a lan, but onboard not required.
USB 2 of course, geuss more the better?
I plan to run 1 gig ram
I'll be adding an extra promise controller for more drives also.
Don't think I need raid.

This system will be for animation rendering, video capturing, video editing, and everything else we use them for

I plan to install several hard drives, a cd burner, DVD -r, and either a DVD +r or plain DVD drive in the future.
USb still camera, usb printer, usb scanner.
Maybe DV camcorder latter, firewire?

I'll be running 2k pro most likely.

Would like to stay near $100, but since I plan to keep this one and work it to death I might go higher

Speed and stable, not overclocked (though might be nice as option for later).

For a board 100% stable at stock settings, nForce2 is the way to go. For getting nforce2 around the $100 mark, you could consider the Epox or Abit. However, Asus has the best paskage with SoundStorm sound.

the new GigaByte nForce2 board (which is fricken sweet, may I add) has EVERYTHING. Including an IDE Raid controller AND SATA Raid

I'd go with an nforce2 chipset, Just because they are so dang fast.

Go with Abit, their board is $98.50 shipped 2nd day air.

http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/ProductDe ... ode=240111

I have the 333MHz FSB version of this board... this one was just recently updated for the new 400MHz FSB AMD CPUs (XP 3200+ and future).

Looking at boards I saw the Nforce2 ones seemed abit higher than Via or other chipsets for otherwise similar type boards. Is that because Nforce is so much better, or just something new that will even out in the future with other boards?

Also, if I have all the drive types, Ide, Raid, Sata, do most boards let you use all of them together, or do you have to choose which ones? And whats the most drives I could run? 4 Ide, 2 sata, 2 raid? Or still just a total of 4?

I haven't tried gigabyte boards yet. Any known problems or conflicts? Actually I haven't tried Asus, MSI, or Abit either.