Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Oh yeah, to the other poster that wondered why 6 PCI - I've had all of the slots on my machine filled too, so it's definately possible. Think multi-monitor, and TV-capture, and multiple soundcards. (Or really, just a PCI soundcard to replace the crappy, noisy, CPU-wasting, on-board sound support.)
Edit: For example, Promise Ultra100 TX2 for 4 HDs, 4 opticals go on mobo IDE controllers,
Unneccessary. 2 optical drives is enough, more is just a waste.
Says who? Some people actually like to copy disc-to-disc, while using a third optical drive for other uses, like listening to music, watching a DVD movie, or just running tests on the disc you just burned. Heck, I used to have more optical drives, all hanging off of a SCSI controller, and a bunch of external SCSI gizmos (CD-changers) to boot. I nearly ran out of DOS drive letters at one point. Heck, I used to burn CDs while playing Bleem! (an early commercial PSX emulator) at the same time.
WinTV PCI for video-in/tuner, Aureal Vortex2 for 3D sound/better sound/better emulated DOS SB compatibility, PCI GigE card because board lacks GigE support,
Get a better board.
What do you mean, a better board? Sound card? Or motherboard? No onboard sound can rival a seperate sound card in terms of noise immunity. The laws of physics prohibit it. Having the DACs and analog traces further away from the high-freq noise sources on the mobo allows for less noise in the outputs. (If you can afford a digital reciever, with seperate outboard DACs, then this may not apply. Just use the digital-out port on your onboard sound, and you'll be golden.) I've found that the DOS SB-emulation drivers for the Vortex2 are a lot better than even Creative's own PCI-based sound cards. IMHO the Vortex2 sounds better too, and A3D was always better than EAX for true 3D positional-audio. UT sounds *incredible* with one of these cards.
AGP primary 3D card, 1-2 PCI secondary 2D cards for multi-mon.
Why not get a multimonitor video card?
Actually, I did just put in a Radeon 9200, but in the past, I've run three monitors, one multi-sync VGA, and a twin pair of DEC/Sony tubes. The problem with those is, they are fixed-freq sync-on-green, and require an pair of older Maxtrox Millenium cards to drive them, along with some minor driver tweaking.
If you only use one additional PCI video card, that leaves one slot left open for future needs, like a PCI 56K modem. I use an external serial modem, it disturbs me slightly that the Albatron board appears to be missing one of the two default COM ports, for no good reason. (Not replaced with anything else on the I/O bracket.) That alone is enough for me to skip it, I need a second serial port free for a PSX memcard reader, and/or my PDA sync connection.
USB.
My "PDA" is cheap, it only supports a serial port. Same with my PSX memcard reader, etc.
Oh well. The quest continues on for the "perfect" board. (I miss my Abit BX6-r2, that was quite possibly the closest that I've come to obtaining a perfect mobo. If only it supported DDR, AGP 4x, ATA-100, and USB 2.0, it would be indeed perfect.)
this board has gigabit ethernet, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 6 PCI slots, 1 ATA133 channels, 2 SATA channels, and supports up to DDR400. Of course, it only has 1 serial port, but with an empty PCI slot, you can get a pci serial board.
Facebook
Twitter