MSI-694D Dual FCPGA Opinions Please

[darrenford]

How about it everyone?

I need reasonable price and stability more than speed, is this the board to get?
I am very pleased with the VIA 133 single cpu boards (I have a SOYO and love it), but I don't know if the 133 greatness carries over to the dual processor boards.

I am choosing the MSI over the TYAN mainly because of the on-board IDE RAID controller (plus FCPGA). Is the raid controller worth using?

Any comments regarding these mainboards or the onboard raid controller would be greatly appreciated. I am also open to other brands or chipsets.

 

[nexus9]

I built two systems for a customer of mine recently, using the 694D. The board seemed very stable. I didn't use the raid, so I can't comment on that... lots of comments on the forums over at www.2cpu.com and www.694d.com. Apparently this isn't the best board for overclocking. You might want to wait a week or so - reviews of the new Abit VP6 should be out soon.

-Nexus9

 

[darrenford]

Thanks for the info and the links.

This is going to be a development server and I will never overclock it.

I spoke with Humphrey at PcNut and he told me something quite interesting. Even though the board is advertised as on-board raid, the board that he bought for testing included a pci raid controller. How about the ones you got?

I really can't wait a week to order, but thanks for the heads up on the ABIT.

It seems everyone agrees that this is a stable board, and that's what I'm after (it will run Win2K server, IIS, and SQL Server).

 

[IsOs]

The board is stable, I used the latest VIA 4 in 1 driver with Windows 2000. A number of retailer still has the older version of the board, one that has only ATA-66 on board that might explain why a PCI add on card is bundled. Some of the web sites advertized them as on board ATA-100/raid. You might want to verify with the vendor.

 

[nexus9]

Yes, my boards came with Promise PCI controller cards.

-Nexus9