SATA or GIGARAID ??

[Kurl3y]

Hi All,
looking for some advice on putting this box together for 1 of my kids. I've currently got the big switcheroooo getting ready to happen at the home front. With 4 gamers I'm constantly fighting the upgrade battle. I just picked up the new asus sli board for myself (yup spoiled brat) and I'm looking to re-build this other mobo for my son. The new mobo I picked up for my son is a gigabyte GA-7N400 pro2 http://www.giga-byte.com/Mothe...c_GA-7N400V%20Pro2.htm . My question is regarding the SATA or the gigaraid. Coming out of my current teardown I will have available 2 - 120 gig maxtore 7200 spin 8mb cache + 2 80 gig same specs drives. An xp2400+ and a 128 mb BFG 6800 gtoc video card + 1 512 meg pny pc2100 simms. I dont know if it is worth the extra cash to invest in SATA drives or should I use the ones I have available?? I'm waiting for his new case from newegg http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=11-144-007&depa=1 which should be here by Tuesday. The board supports Gigaraid and SATA Raid and I'm unsure as to the best direction to proceed. I've put several boxes toghether but never a machine that supports SATA. Thanks in advance for any suggestions. Oh .. I also have a Thermalake volcano 12 for cpu cooling. This boy Luves his games so I need as much space as I can get.

 

[SunSamurai]

Seeing as how gigaraid on that board is a peice of shit, I would try SATA. Ohh you better believe I an use foul language! I have that very board, and believe you-me, I wasn't thrilled that RAID0 gave _no_ preformance boost over a single drive. In any testing. Nothing. Didnt feel faster either. Bad raid chip on those boards I later found out. I never tried the SATA RAID on it but it should be alright as it use a more trusted chip.

 

[Kurl3y]

Hmmm...well i guess i was trying to see if the performance gain would be worth laying out the extra $$$ on SATA drives. How has your experience with the board itself been ..outside of the gigaraid configuration...I'm asking because I havent even opened the board at this point and I could return it for say an asus a7n8e-deluxe. The shop I deal with would swap me even up.

 

[SunSamurai]

Return it. The only good points on the board were the dual bios (that actually DID NOT save me when one bios messed up) and I really like how it looks. It also did not overclock well and didnt play well with my kingston Hyper X ram etc etc.. Basically pretty looking junk.