RAID or none RAID

[bryon]

I'm looking to up grade my computer and would like to know if it better to buy a KT266A motherboard with RAID or without and buy a RAID controller separate. My OS is windows XP.
Also which motherboard is best for working with 3D studio Max 4.2, photoshop, and wave editing. I've been looking at three boards: ASUS A7V266-e, ABIT KR7A, Epox 8KHA+. I do a little overclocking.

Thanks

 

[Boonesmi]

as far as raid controllers both onboard and addin cards perform about the same (meaning an onboard promise controller compared to a promise fast track card is basically the same)

the boards you have listed are all good... another you might want to consider is the soyo dragon+... same chipset (kt266a) onboard raid, very high quality onboard sound (cmedia).. toms hardware did a roundup of kt266a boards, and the dragon is totally kick butt

link to the roundup on toms hardware

 

[dunkster]

I bought the Abit KR7A-Raid board with no intention to implement RAid.

The on-board RAId controller allows two HDs on their own individual ATA133 ports at IDE3 and IDE4, allowing CDR and CDRW devices to be assigned individual ports at IDE1 and IDE2, for more efficient and flexible use of devices - in addition to providing ATA133 support at IDE3 and IDE4.

Also, I seemed to not have a choice to buy non-RAID KT7A at time of purchase - couldn't even find one listed when I made my purchase.

The only problems (6G Bios) I've found with this board seem to be common to other KR7As: 1)Can't read CPU cooler fan speed and; 2)Poor recognition of AMD XP processors by the BIOS. Neither problem is critical.

Hope this helps!

 

[goog]

I don't see any reason to get a separate RAID controller, when onboard is pretty much the same and cheaper. Of those three I'd also go with the Abit.
The ASUS won't allow use of the RAID IDEs for normal use like the KR7A-R. Plus Abit's always overclock easily.
Can't really go wrong with any of them, but none would be my first choice.

 

[DJOMCSE2000]

As a long-time user of the KT7-RAID and the KT7A-RAID boards, I recommmend them highly. The addition of the RAID allows you to not only have the extra drives on there, but to get better speed out of them. All three of mine have worked almost flawlessly. (only the most recent one gave me some grief with XP)If you create a strip set in the BIOS for the RAID controller and use 2 ATA-100 (7200rpm) drives, you will see a significant increase in speed over using the IDE channels in the normal mode. Also, and this is only my opinion, if you want to save a few bucks and not compromise much performance, go with a KT7A-RAID, rather than a KR7-RAID. The memory and the board are a bit less expensive, and you won't notice much of a performance hit, if any. A friend of mine has an Asus A7V266 with the Athlon XP 1600 with the DDR memory and mine seems to run circles around his. Just my thoughts.

Good luck!!

David

😉

 

[WhiteWizard]

I've changed my A7V133 for the new A7V266-E. Both have the same Promise RAID chip, wicht I found handy becouse I had a RAID in the A7V133 and need it to keep it going. I was doing a little overclocking myself on the A7V133, my Athlon 1200B was running at 1333Mhz, 10x133Mhz bus, simply set the mobo as JUMPERFREE and change the processor settings from the BIOS. I've changed everything becouse I buy a second hand 266-E with other t. bird 1.2 ,another cooler (Titan D5T) and 512Mb DDR 2100, all were working for 2 months. I negociate a change for my A7V133 with also 512Mb PC133.
The A7V266-E dind't accept 10x133 Mhz bus, its hangs after 20 mins but runs fine at 1266Mhz (9.5x133Mhz), however I raice the bus speed yesterday and now I'm working flawsly at 9.5x140Mhz = 1330Mhz, closer to my old A7V133.
Like I set, a LITTLE OVERCLOCKING, for me implies not to raice any voltages.