edit: question relating to motherboard, but more about RAM--last question!

[DanFungus]

It's my birthday on the 9th, and I'm going to get a motherboard. Right now, I have a board made by Keystone , but it says the model number is MS-6389, by MicroStar. It only has 2 DIMM slots, 3PCI's, no onboard sound or anything. I want to get a new mobo, because I have 2 hard drives, soon to have 3, plus a CDRW, and one DVD ROM. I have 2x256 PC133 DIMMs. In my PCI slots, I have a firewire card, an ethernet, and an SBLIVE! sound card. 4 IDE devices, 3 PCIs filled, and both DIMM slots filled. Anyways, right now, I don't have anyway of upgrading, except to get a new mobo. I looked at newegg, and outpost, and Frys B&M, and not many places has mobos with PC133 anymore. I want to stick with it, since I have a lot of it.

My CPU is an Athlon 1.4 266MHZ FSB.

I looked, and Ideally, this is what I would want..

5 or 6 PCI
3 or 4 PC133 DIMM
onboard sound (video I don't need, I have a GeForce3)
and 4 IDE connections--(this has been a hard one to find. I've seen it for DDR boards, but not for PC133)

What I've found is this EPoX board:

EP-8KTA3+PRO

it has 6 PCI
4 DIMMS for PC133
onboard sound
but here's the thing. It has 2 IDE connectors (for 4 IDE devices) and 2 for RAID 0, RAID 1, or RAID 0+1
I'm not very familiar with RAID, so I did a quick search and found out what each one did. What my question is, is that can I get them to function as normal IDE connections, so to put 2 IDE devices per connector? Or am I able to have 1 hard drive on one channel of the connector, if I only have 1 more hard drive to put on it, instead of buying another just to match it?
edit: also, on the EPoX website, it says this: "Extra IDE Port by HPT370/Ultra DMA 66/100 & IDE RAID x 2 (Up to 4 Devices)" does this mean that it has 3 IDE ports, + the 2 RAID? or the 2 IDE + 1 RAID/IDE and 1 only for RAID?

If someone has experience with this board--good/bad please tell me! Or, if you suggest another board that have what I might be looking for, I am greatly appreciative!

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and help me out

 

[The Dancing Peacock]

I just picked up that same epox from frys this past friday. It's been pretty solid so far. The raid ports function like regular IDE ports, with the added option of raid arrayss. XP had the drivers natively so I didn't need to install them. I think I read somewhere to only put hd's on the raid ports b/c they have problems with ATAPI devices like CD-ROM's and zip drives. I have my boot drive in the regular IDE ports, along with my DVD, Zip and burner, then I have my 60 and 80 as the only device on each of the 2 raid spots. I have liked what I've seen so far, it does recognize my 1.2 duron as an athlon, probably a BIOS upgrade would do the trick, but I haven't bothered yet.

 

[DanFungus]

thank you VERY much for your input The Dancing Peacock!!



<< The raid ports function like regular IDE ports >>


this makes my decision on the motherboard

 

[retrospooty]

That epox board rocks !!! they are hitting 200 mhz at cas 2, 4 way interleave, 1T etc... all settings maxed out for performance. I've read several reviews already, Its generally known out there as the new overclock/performance champ, and its only $100.

edit.... oops was talking about this Epox board Epox 8K3A

 

[DanFungus]

Hmmm....I'm reading the manual of it from EPoX's website, and it says that DIMM slots 3 and 4 are shared, and they show the combinations to get maximum memory, yet they only have RAM in 1&2&3 or 1&2&4 but not all 4.....are you not able to fill up ALL of the slots?

 

[Boonesmi]

you can fill both of the last 2 slots if the ram in each of them is single sided

 

[DanFungus]

physically single sided, or is there a program to tell you? (not very familiar with "single sided", or "double sided")

 

[retrospooty]

physically single sided is what it means... dont let that deter you though... most mobo's have 3 slots anyhow, It is not recommended to do that on any motherboard though... for the best performance/stability you always want to get 1 LARGE stick of ram, not 3 or 4 small ones. Right now 512 megs of DDR333 (pc2700)ram is only $127 on pricewatch.com, why would you want more than 512k?

 

[DanFungus]

what I would be planning on doing is putting in 3 sticks of Kingston KVR133X64C3/256 (3x 256MB CL3 PC133 non ECC) into it, and then a PNY 128MB stick that I got for free from CompuSA a while ago. I would be satisfied with the 768MB of RAM, but more is always better I do a lot of video editing, and image editing, so this is why I want more RAM. Anyways, the only way to tell is to physically look at the RAM itself? Am I looking for chips on both sides or chips on one side, and green silicone on the other? What if the sticks are thin...is it for physical allowance of being able to put it in because of the room to put it in ie, not fitting because it's too fat?

 

[DanFungus]

bump because I have one last question...

 

[Boonesmi]

single sided ram almost always has all 8 chips on one side, and just bare on the other.... but i have seen a couple sticks where it has the chips alternate (4 on each side) this is also single sided ram

most ram is double sided and it has 8 chips on each side

 

[DanFungus]

so if it has 8 chips total = single sided
16 chips total = double sided?

I hope I have single sided....

thanks for the help!

 

[AndyHui]

8 chips is normally double sided, but not always.

16 chips is definitely double sided.

 

[DanFungus]

thank you everyone for your help!

 

[Boonesmi]

8 chips is normally double sided, but not always.

i think that was a typo... im pretty sure he meant 8 chips is normally single sided


hehe but i could be wrong AndyHui knows alot more about pc hardware then i do!!!

 

[AndyHui]

Yes, that was a typo. 8 chips is single sided.

 

[DanFungus]

i figured it was, because otherwise it wouldn't make much sense

 

[Boonesmi]

i really liked the kt133a chipset but its getting really old

true you dont have many options if you want to keep your current pc133
but you can either get a kt133a board (the epox you asked about is a very good board)

or you could get one of the few newer boards that have both sdr and ddr slots (so you could use your current ram and then maybe upgrade in the future to ddr)

problem is its hard to find a good board with both sdr and ddr.. but there are a couple
asus a7a266-e (not to be confused with a7v266-e )
epox k7s5a

 

[Boonesmi]

i kinda missed some of your question

onboard raid controller can either be used for raid, or it can be used as an extra ata100/ata133 controller... and "ata controller" is a single controller, but it has 2 channels each with a master and slave...

meaning 8 ide devices, 4 on the raid controller and 4 on the via

 

[The Dancing Peacock]

<< epox k7s5a >>



ecs makes the k7s5a. It's a good board, I've put together a couple of boxes with them and XP 1600's. I had one with my duron but I fried it when I plugged coax into my tv tuner card, which is why I got this same EPOX. Both very solid boards.

 

[Boonesmi]

hehehe i guess it was my turn for a typo

but yeah... ecs k7s5a

 

[DanFungus]

hehe, it's ok...I relaized that too, because when I was at Fry's a couple days ago, I saw the ECS k7s5a, and it was not EPoX