Abit or Asus (KT400 motherboards) Which to buy?

[Civic2oo1x]

I'm looking to get a new motherboard to house an XP2100+ (most likely). One requirement I do want is the ability for IDE Raid, something the nForce 2 mobo's don't do. I do not require the ultimate performance for my computer, with no overclocking to be done, but I want a rock solid system. I'm pretty much down to these two boards. The Abit AT7 Max2 ($166 on newegg) or the Abit A7V8X with Lan and Raid ($126). The price difference as you see is pretty big. I've used Abit boards before and have no problems with them, but have not used Asus before, but I've heard good things. It's hard to try and factor features vs. price, but here's what I intend to do. Video editing, burning home movies on DVD, slight gaming, etc. My setup will be either of these two mobo's, the forementioned XP2100+, 512 MB of Corsair XMS 3200, and most likely the ATI AIW 9700 Pro. Anyone with experience with either of these two boards, I would like your feedback. Do the extra features on the Abit board warrant the extra $40? Money isn't really an issue, but then again I don't want to waste it. Also how does the Promise IDE raid controller compare vs the Highpoint? Thanks for all the help.

 

[Iron Woode]

Did you check out the DFI AD77 Infinity?

I have this board and it is amazing. Considered one of the most stable KT400 motherboards made. In fact under some serious stress tests this board didn't crash once over a 72 hour period.

The tests were 83 hours of Folding@Home and 39 hours of 3DMark2001SE loops.

It has 4 ddr slots for 4 gig of ram. 8x agp, 5 pci, Firewire ports, USB 2.0 and single channel raid (supports 2 drives). Raid 0,1,JBOD.

Make sure you get Revision B and put the newest BIOS in there. Rev A was not performing well. Rev B fixes that.

Is it the fastest performing boards? Not really, it is more middle. Not super fast but not slow either.

It is reasonably priced too.

 

[Civic2oo1x]

I'll look at the motherboard. I'm leaning towards the Abit. I plan on using this motherboard for the next year +.