Need an Athlon Mobo with RAID and USB 2.0 Fast!!

[SNoWyV82]

Hi, I've been researching mobos for my computer and now I realized how badly I need one. I have everything else on order for my computer except this! I want to go with the Gigabyte GA-7VRXP however I have heard one major complaint-If you are not using RAID you still can't disable the controller and so it takes an additional 30 seconds to load. I definetly don't want 30 seconds tacked onto my boot times. I won't be using RAID but I want to set up each component on an individual channel so I want RAID. If this is true, what other Athlon mobos are out there that have RAID and USB 2.0 (need it b/c my Lian Li case has front USB 2.0 ports so need USB 2.0 headers on the mobo) and possibly a NIC (onboard sound is not needed, but if it's included no biggie) while letting you disable the RAID controller?? Price is not an issue. Please help as much as possible, someone told me to wait for the latest Epox board at the end of June but it's not here!! If anyone has quick solutions please let me know! Thanks!

 

[mechBgon]

Hang on and I will look at the 7VRXP manual and see if it says whether RAID can be disabled. But why would it matter, if you need it enabled to accomplish your goal anyway? Keep in mind the RAID controller will only run hard drives, not LS-120, CD or DVD drives, by the way.

I would also like to mention my experience with VIA-based USB 2.0. It chops 20Mb/sec off my SCSI card's top speed. :| Heck with that, I'd rather get an add-in USB 2.0 card for $25 and take my pick of motherboards, instead of limiting myself to ones that have it onboard. You can read a description of my problem here if it interests you.

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, from page 50 of the manual, it says

Onboard PROMISE Chip

RAID Enable onboard RAID Device.
ATA Enable onboard ATA Device.(Default value)
Disable Disable onboard ATA/RAID Device.

So it appears that this option is present in the BIOS.

 

[SNoWyV82]

Hmm...thanks a lot for the help. Yeah, I guess I would put my WD SE hard drive on one of the RAID ports and my DVD and CDRW on the normal ports. Is the boot time long? Yeah, I have USB 2.0 ports on the front of my case and so I need USB 2.0 on the mobo to support them. Otherwise, my front ports will only run at USB 1.1. It would be nice to get them to run at USB 2.0. Hopefully this Gigabyte will be the mobo for me. I don't have any SCSI cards, I wonder if the USB 2.0 chip affects other devices as well. Once again, are the boot times long with RAID enabled? Thanks for the help!

 

[SNoWyV82]

Lately a lot of people have been having problems with the Giga-byte boards. Hopefully I won't get a bad one.

 

[mechBgon]

In my experience, the boot times are long only when the Promise RAID chip can't find any drives. If it has some drives to find, it doesn't take very long. So that's a good solution, just enable it when you have drives, disable it when you don't.

AntecCSR told me that Antec may offer an adapter that would allow you to plug internal case wiring into a standard FireWire port like many FW cards have, an internal jack like the external ones. Could be a viable alternative to USB 2.0, if the case has FW outlets too.

Also, nForce2 is rumored to be announced around July 15 and some flavors of its southbridge are going to have FireWire and USB 2.0, if I understand right. Should have native DDR333 support (I speculate it will have de facto DDR400 support too) and AGP 8x. Might be a contender if you are looking for excuses to wait a month...