Crossroads: upgrades pending...DDR or not? RAID or not?

[NotoriousJTC]

Been thinking about this a long time, i need your guys's advice. I currently have the following setup:

ABIT KT7 mobo
Duron 700mhz
256mb PC133 ram
ASUS v7100 Geforce 2 MX
Soundblaster Live! Value
Maxtor DiamondMax 20gb HDD
Maxtor DiamondMax 60gb HDD
Toshiba 16x40 DVD-rom
Sony CRX140E 8x4x32 CDR/RW

I'm going to be ramping up to a 1.2 or 1.3ghz T-Bird soon, so I wan't a mobo that's Socket-A. What I'm not sure is about the 2 other situations im dealing with. I would like to add another HDD down the road, but all my IDE channels are full. Meaning i would either have to go RAID, or put in a add-in controller card. Now if i were go to RAID, id need a new mobo right? If that the case, then i might think about using DDR ram instead of SDR ram. But im not sure. This is were you come in. I see 2 possible scenarios:

1) Buy new mobo that supports RAID and DDR. Upgrade CPU.

2) Keep mobo, buy controller card, keep SDR ram (might add more later). Upgrade CPU

exrta question: 512mb pc133 ram OR 256mb DDR ram? Which would perform better? Is it worth dumping all my SDR ram? When i could just add more to get the equivalent effect of 256DDR ram?

 

[nicowju]

there's really no reason not to get DDR, since its almost as cheap as SDRAM now

You'll see memory scores improve if you go to a 133MHz FSB board though