Dragon+ PCI Slot question

[Broncho]

I am in the selection stage of a new build and I've heard that the Dragon+ is a good board with good onboard sound and lan. I've also heard that some people are having problems getting all the PCI slots to work. That shouldn't be a problem for me up front because I want to use its onboard stuff to save a little money, but I would like to upgrade to better sound, gigabyte ethernet, etc. eventually and want a board where all the PCI slots (in this case, all 5) work. Does anyone know anything about this? Does anyone who has a Dragon+ have their PCI slots fully populated? Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Broncho]

bump

 

[DefRef]

If you look around, you can find others experiences with this board and various configuration hassles. When I decided on this board, I read here and at the AMDMB.com and HardOCP forums to see what probs people were having. Using this research, I learned that an Audigy shouldn't be put in the first 3 PCI slots, etc.

I had a NIC, FireWire and SB Live!, plus an ISA modem on my BE6-II, but with the NIC on the mobo and FireWire on the Audigy, I've only got two PCI cards on my Dragon+ (WinModem and Audigy). With the on board RAID, that's another card yo may not need. (Your mileage may vary.)

 

[Broncho]

Thanks for the help. The most I had been able to find so far was to put anything by Creative (Soundblaster or Audigy) in slot 4 or 5, possibly 3. Some of the stuff sounded like the board also had trouble with the first three slots just working. I guess that was more my question than anything else, does all the PCI slots work ok. I was just trying to check my comprehension of what I was reading.

 

[DefRef]

The more stuff that integrated in the mobo means the more fights that may occur with add-in cards. When you have a NIC, audio, video, RAID and whatnot already demanding resources, it can get a bit weird.

On my Abit, I had problems with my ADS FireWire card and controlling my D8 camcorder. Win98SE saw the card fine in PCI slots 1, 2 & 5, but it would only see the CAMERA in the card was in Slot 1. The PCI card shuffle is part of the game these days. I guess WinXP can help a bit and IRQ steering is amazing. (How everything appears to be on IRQ11 and still works is wild!)

I've had some twitchiness with my system, but it may be related to WinXP and the other stuff I have loaded. There are so many ways to FUBAR a system, it's amazing when they work at all.

 

[Broncho]

DefRef, thanks for the help. I've got a better idea about stuff now. Thanks.