a GB mobo question for you gurus

[Toothpick]

Hello All
I currently own an 'Iwill' mobo and am getting ready to dump that for a Gigabyte mobo, because I want to get into the DDR333/XP1900 family But its kinda confusing for me since theres a lot of GB mobos so I thought that I would come in here and ask you GB Guru's

OK, heres what I do, I am a gamer big time and the rest of my
computing is photo editing, websurfing, and the rest of the cool stuff that goes with a normal everyday computer addiction

Here's what my new mobo must have so if you could direct me to the model num. I would appreciate it.
1) DDR-333 mem.
2) 8 USB/4USB 2.0
3) Realtek lan
4) CT5880

I am not interested in RAID but if what I need comes only on a RAID board can I bypass the RAID anyway ? and if so I have 4 IDE
devices so would I be able to use them on a RAID disabled board?

Thanks for your knowledge and help
God Bless TP

 

[claffeyb]

Without doing some research myself, I can't direct you to the right Gigabyte mo'bd (seeing as how I'm probably going to buy their new dual CPU board). However, I can answer the Raid and IDE question. Oh, I'm looking at the banner flashing above as I write this and I do see the 7VRXP (a KT333) mo'bd listed, but I haven't looked into it.

The last two mo'bds I have had were RAID boards and if you don't want your drives to operate as RAID, you don't have to do anything. This was both for the cr@ppy Abit KT7-RAID [which I have NEVER been able to get any sound card working with in coinjunction with a NIC] which had a Highpoint RAID controller, and for the wonderful Gigabyte GA-7DXR board which has the Promise RAID controller.

You can just use the RAID controller for hooking up 1 to 4 ATA/100 IDE drives, which I did. Just make sure your ATAPI drives (zip, cdrw, etc) connect to the regular IDE channels.

One thing I noticed with using a bunch of IDE drives - CPU utilization gets maxed out doing the simplest things like moving files around, unraring, et cetera. I also often could then lock up the system (Win2K) by doing something like playing an avi or mp3 file at the same time. What helped the most was switching to the new WD special 120GB drive with 8MB cache and using Norton's Speeddisk to optimize the defragging. No more lockups, but then again, now I'm only using three hard drives instead of 4.

You may want to look at the Tom's Hardware review which mentions the new Gigabyte GA-8SRX. The review is quite taken with SiS as a better option than Intel or Via for DDR support at 166 MHz. Unfortunately for Gigabyte, they didn't go ape over their board, preferring the Soyo SY-P4S Dragon Ultra, MSI 645 Ultra, Soltek SL-85DRS2 and ASUS P4S333 over it. But then again, Gigabyte has never really been tops in performance. Just keeps doing it's steady thing.

I've got to chuckle here - when I saw your signoff as TP, I was thinking that "Toilet Paper" sure is an odd name to flaunt, but then I saw that instead you are "Toothpick". Is this "Skinny as a...." or perhaps you like to chew on them?

 

[ChrisADuffy]

GA-7VRX That is the one you want and it is the one in the banner ad.

 

[Barrei]

The Gigabyte8irxp is an exception for gigabyte it kicked the performance crap out of all those other mobo it went up against including Asus, abit and soyo .So get your facts right.

 

[claffeyb]

What a cogently valuable thought-train. Are you just trying to get your member status inflated by posting dribble?

I like Gigabyte. It has some very nice boards. I will probably buy another Gigabyte for my next board. But I don't believe it's normally thought of as a kick-butt performer. The statements made regarding the Tom's Hardware article were correct as far as I can tell, and certainly didn't deal with the board that you have, thus my comments hold water. Why don't you contribute something worthwhile when you add your words to the forum?

 

[Barrei]

Clayafebbe if you actually read what I posted , it was about the GA8irxp not the GA8srx, I am not familiar with that board so I wouldn't comment on it , the GA8irxp beat out every DDR mobo on anandtech"s test and was awarded editors gold choice , in toms the GA 8irxp was among the top three along with Abit and Soyo , in tweakers Australia it won the gold choice award in DDR boards , these weren't just Intel845d chipsets it included sis and via as well, so you should think a little before you try and put someone down , as far as trying to get member status inflated get a real life would you , do you think I could care less what an idiot like you would think?