Qs about motherboard/components for homebuild AMD system

[Milt Epstein]

Hi. I'm planning on building a PC and was looking for some
help/suggestions on some of the components to use.

While I have done a fair amount of installation/removal of components
on PCs, I have never actually built one from scratch. I have read a
lot recently to get more familiar with building systems, components,
cases, motherboards, etc. Still, there is plenty of confusion .

I intend to have the system be dual bootable, Linux (some recent
version of Red Hat) and Windows (probably either XP Pro or 2000 Pro).
I already have two hard drives (Western Digital 120 GB and 100 GB),
and plan to have each hard drive dedicated to one of the OS's.

The main uses of the system will be software development (e.g. Java,
..Net, Web), email, web browsing, some audio and video processing
(nothing heavy duty), some gaming (nothing heavy duty), and such.

I recently purchased an Antec Sonata case. I'm planning to use the
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton CPU.

Next choice is the motherboard. I'm considering the Asus A7N8X Deluxe
and the Gigabyte GA-7N400PRO2. They are similarly priced, have
similar features, and both have gotten good reviews. Both use the
nVidia chipset and support 400 MHz FSB, ATA 133, SATA and AGP 8X, have
onboard sound, multiple USB and Firewire ports, and five PCI slots.

As to differences, the Asus seems to have gotten somewhat better
reviews (that's my impression, at least), has a better chipset (MCP-T
vs. MCP), dual network capability, and better sound. The Gigabyte has
four IDE connectors as opposed to two for the Asus (if I'm reading the
specs correctly). The Gigabyte specs also specifically mention a FDD
connector, while the Asus' doesn't.

Both of these boards are probably more than I need right now, but
they're not much more expensive than their cheaper sister boards, plus
they add some more "future proof-ness" to the system.

So, my first questions are, do these boards seem like reasonable
choices, and any comments that would help me decide between the two?

Does it seem like a reasonable balance of cost between the major
components of the system (case was around $100, CPU is around $90,
these motherboards are around $120)?

I'm going to have two hard drives, a CD-RW, and a DVD-ROM. Do I need
a floppy drive? (I have a USB Flash/Pen/Jump/Whatever drive.) Will I
need any additional IDE controllers? If I understand things
correctly, those four drives will fill up the Asus' two IDE
controllers. So if I get a floppy, or want to add another drive in
the future (the Sonata can take nine), I'd have to get another IDE
controller, correct? But not with the Gigabyte, because it has room
for eight IDE drives (plus a floppy)? Also, what's the best way to
set up those drives on the two (or more) IDE controllers?

Is the sound on these motherboards sufficient so that I wouldn't need
to get a separate sound card?

How about suggestions for a video card. As mentioned, this machine
won't be used for serious gaming, so I don't need a high end card. I
was thinking of a good 64 MB card, perhaps with some nice features
like dual head. I was thinking at most $75 or so, because that should
be enough for a quite sufficient card.

Sorry for the length of the note, and the seeming barrage of
questions. Any help you can provide will be much appreciated!

 

[Gary L.]

I intend to have the system be dual bootable, Linux (some recent
version of Red Hat) and Windows (probably either XP Pro or 2000 Pro).
I already have two hard drives (Western Digital 120 GB and 100 GB),
and plan to have each hard drive dedicated to one of the OS's.

Be sure to create at least one FAT32 partition to share data between
the OSes. Linux will be much happier with FAT32 as compared to NTFS.
Of course, Windows won't recognize Linux ext2 or ext3 partitions.

Next choice is the motherboard. I'm considering the Asus A7N8X Deluxe
and the Gigabyte GA-7N400PRO2. They are similarly priced, have
similar features, and both have gotten good reviews. Both use the
nVidia chipset and support 400 MHz FSB, ATA 133, SATA and AGP 8X, have
onboard sound, multiple USB and Firewire ports, and five PCI slots.

As to differences, the Asus seems to have gotten somewhat better
reviews (that's my impression, at least), has a better chipset (MCP-T
vs. MCP), dual network capability, and better sound. The Gigabyte has
four IDE connectors as opposed to two for the Asus (if I'm reading the
specs correctly). The Gigabyte specs also specifically mention a FDD
connector, while the Asus' doesn't.

I'm reasonably certain that the Asus will have a floppy disk
controller.

Both of these boards are probably more than I need right now, but
they're not much more expensive than their cheaper sister boards, plus
they add some more "future proof-ness" to the system.

So, my first questions are, do these boards seem like reasonable
choices, and any comments that would help me decide between the two?

Asus has a little better reputation for quality/reliability, but
otherwise the two are pretty much equal. If the price was similar, I'd
go for the Asus. I ended up with an FIC AU13 nForce 2 board because it
was super-cheap at Fry's and it has worked perfectly from day 1. It
has the MCP-T chip set and a 3Com NIC like the Asus.

I'm going to have two hard drives, a CD-RW, and a DVD-ROM. Do I need
a floppy drive? (I have a USB Flash/Pen/Jump/Whatever drive.) Will I
need any additional IDE controllers? If I understand things
correctly, those four drives will fill up the Asus' two IDE
controllers. So if I get a floppy, or want to add another drive in
the future (the Sonata can take nine), I'd have to get another IDE
controller, correct? But not with the Gigabyte, because it has room
for eight IDE drives (plus a floppy)? Also, what's the best way to
set up those drives on the two (or more) IDE controllers?

Either board will handle your present needs. Future expansion will
probably be in the form of USB 2 or 1394 external drives or SATA hard
drives, so the extra IDE ports on the Gigabyte don't matter. Also, the
Gigabyte extra IDE ports are in the form of a software RAID
controller. Such a controller won't work with Linux and requires
matched hard drives, so you can't use it anyway. And I'm sure the Asus
has a floppy port (which is a different connector from the regular IDE
connector).

Best setup (IMHO): Hard drives as master and slave on primary
controller, DVD as master on secondary controller, and CD-RW as slave
on secondary controller. Install Windows first on the master HD; then
install Linux in the slave drive. Install the Linux GRUB boot loader
on the Master Boot Record on the master drive to permit you to choose
the OS at boot time. Create an extra FAT32 partition on either disk
for sharing data between the OSes.

Is the sound on these motherboards sufficient so that I wouldn't need
to get a separate sound card?

The Nforce 2 sound works well for me (with the MCP-T). Nvidia has a
patch file for Linux to get the sound to work using the AC97-Intel 810
driver.

How about suggestions for a video card. As mentioned, this machine
won't be used for serious gaming, so I don't need a high end card. I
was thinking of a good 64 MB card, perhaps with some nice features
like dual head. I was thinking at most $75 or so, because that should
be enough for a quite sufficient card.

Anything will work fine under Windows.

I've found that the Nvidia Linux drivers are more up-to-date and work
better than the ATI drivers. Also, you have an issue with the Nforce 2
chip set AGP "GART" driver. Nvidia includes a GART driver with the
Linux video drivers and it works well. If you don't install a proper
GART driver, then 2D will work fine but you won't get any 3D
acceleration at all under Linux (which you may or may not care about).
With anything other than Nvidia, you need to download a patch from
Nvidia and recompile the Linux kernel with the patch. I'm using an
Asus GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64 MB card and I'm pleased with it both with
Windows and Linux.

Dual head is another can of worms under Linux. I believe that the
Nvidia Linux drivers support dual head, but I haven't tried them. I
have used Matrox cards with dual head under Linux using the Matrox
drivers, and managed to get it to work with only a few hours of
fiddling. If you don't need any kind of 3D performance under either
Linux or Windows, then a Matrox G550 may be your best choice, even
though it has 32 MB of memory.

- -
Gary L.
Reply to the Newsgroup for the benefit of all

 

[Milt Epstein]

[Replying to myself ]

(e-mail address removed) (Milt Epstein) writes:

[ ... ]

I'm going to have two hard drives, a CD-RW, and a DVD-ROM. Do I need
a floppy drive? (I have a USB Flash/Pen/Jump/Whatever drive.) Will I
need any additional IDE controllers? If I understand things
correctly, those four drives will fill up the Asus' two IDE
controllers. So if I get a floppy, or want to add another drive in
the future (the Sonata can take nine), I'd have to get another IDE
controller, correct? But not with the Gigabyte, because it has room
for eight IDE drives (plus a floppy)? Also, what's the best way to
set up those drives on the two (or more) IDE controllers?

[ ... ]

I did some more research into the floppy drive issue, and I
discovered/decided a couple of things. First, despite it not being
mentioned in the specs (at Asus' site), the A7N8X does come with a
floppy drive controller. And it's totally separate from the IDE
stuff, so there's no conflict there. Second, while floppies are
almost passe, there are still times when you want to be able to use
one, so I will be getting a floppy drive.

So you can ignore the floppy drive related questions .

 

[O |V| 3 G A]

see below

Be sure to create at least one FAT32 partition to share data between
the OSes. Linux will be much happier with FAT32 as compared to NTFS.
Of course, Windows won't recognize Linux ext2 or ext3 partitions.


I'm reasonably certain that the Asus will have a floppy disk
controller.

speaking from 1st hand experience, and with the manual in hand, a7n8x does
have fdd controller

now on my 2nd asus board, with a breif transition for 3 weeks to an epox
8rda3+ which was total junk.

Asus has a little better reputation for quality/reliability, but
otherwise the two are pretty much equal. If the price was similar, I'd
go for the Asus. I ended up with an FIC AU13 nForce 2 board because it
was super-cheap at Fry's and it has worked perfectly from day 1. It
has the MCP-T chip set and a 3Com NIC like the Asus.

why dont you get SATA HDD's from day1? 120gb 7200rpm, 8mb cahce maxtor drive
for around $120

 

[Scott Alfter]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

why dont you get SATA HDD's from day1? 120gb 7200rpm, 8mb cahce maxtor drive
for around $120

He probably wants something that'll last longer than a couple of months.

(Just snagged a WD 1200JB for ~$130 today...after rebate, it'll be down to
just $80. 120 GB, 7200 rpm, 8 megs of cache, and a 3-year warranty...you
can't go wrong with that. The SATA drives Western Digital is selling are
10krpm drives derived from their SCSI products...they'll be a fair bit
faster, but they're considerably more expensive and the largest drive
available in that series is only 74 GB.)

_/_ Scott Alfter (address in header doesn't receive mail)
/ v \ send email to $firstname@$lastname.us
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ pkill -9 /bin/laden >What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (Linux)

iD8DBQE/cN9KVgTKos01OwkRAp/rAKDiLiPG/Lstbf5if/2j0Wunfe6x5gCfYXgP
MKCPYlSUAJc0qwF+1k8w8Jo=
=fbTg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

 

[Bas Ruiter]

I recently purchased an Antec Sonata case. I'm planning to use the
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton CPU

Good choice of case. I bought the Antec 660AMG just before the Sonata
came out. Also a nice case, but I would have gone for the Sonata
instead.

The choice to go for the Barton is also good as they consume less power
as compared to the previous versions of the Athlon.

Next choice is the motherboard. I'm considering the Asus A7N8X Deluxe
and the Gigabyte GA-7N400PRO2. They are similarly priced, have

The Asus motherboard made #3 on my own list, after the EPoX and Abit. I
eventually got the Asus because the others weren't available at the time
(December last year).

For my own PC (the previous one was for the parents) which I built 3
months ago I got the Abit NF7-S.

Basically all nForce2 boards have more or less the same features - you
just have to decide which is more important. I didn't need 2 NIC's (as
in the Asus), I liked the fact that the Abit had Soundstorm (absent on
the Asus non-Deluxe, if I recall), and the Asus is more expensive.

SATA I still consider a "non feature". This will only get interesting
when SATA II arives.

The Gigabyte has four IDE connectors as opposed to two for the Asus

If you have a lot (more than 4) IDE devices this is handy, otherwise it
matters little. You can also use SATA instead, if need be.

The Gigabyte specs also specifically mention a FDD connector,
while the Asus' doesn't.

Of course the Asus also has a FDD connector

So, my first questions are, do these boards seem like reasonable
choices, and any comments that would help me decide between the two?

Yes they do.

Tomshardware also seems to like the Gigabyte:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20030721/index.html

In that review you'll also find a table of features for 6 boards. Very
handy.

Do I need a floppy drive?

Only YOU can answer that. I know that *i* only used my floppy drive a
handfull of times in the last year (to make bootable floppies for my
FreeSco server). I still wouldn't like to be without one, and put my old
floppy drive in my new machine.

Will I need any additional IDE controllers?

You can put 2 devices on each IDE connector. The Asus has two of those,
and the Gigabyte has four. That's 4 or 8 ATA devices! And you could also
resort to using the SATA connectors (2 devices more each) for a total of
6 or 10 devices. I don't think you need more controllers.

So if I get a floppy, or want to add another drive in the future,
I'd have to get another IDE controller, correct?

The Floppy goes on the floppy controller, not a IDE controller.

But yes... if you run out you run out. But you could use SATA to add
more SATA HD's if need be.

But not with the Gigabyte, because it has room for eight IDE drives
(plus a floppy)?

Yep, 8 IDE devices, two floppy devices, and two SATA IDE devices.

what's the best way to set up those drives on the two (or more)
IDE controllers?

Boot HD on primary master, cd- or dvd-burner on secondary master.

As for the rest, try to match devices with the same transfer speeds (PIO
/ DMA modes) that are on the same cable as the lowest common denominator
will be used. (Not that this will really matter in practice if you have
all fairly recent stuff)

Is the sound on these motherboards sufficient so that I wouldn't need
to get a separate sound card?

I'm very happy with the sound from my motherboard. Unless you have
really specialist needs for input/output I think it'll be fine.

How about suggestions for a video card.

This is the thing I really saved on. I just bought a simple TNT2 32MB
card, and it plays all my games (MOHAA, Dungeon Seige, Half-Life, ...)
well. Note that I only have a 15" monitor and usually play at 800x600
(maybe 1024x768).

If you check www.pricewatch.com you'll notice a Radeon 9200 64MB for
$48, a GeForce 5200 128MB for $62, a GeForce 3 Ti 500 for $69 and a
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64MB for $75.

No idea wether these have DualHead or not.

Check out Tom's VGA charts for comparative speeds of the cards:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20021218/index.html


If I recall correctly, the Radeon 9100 is the same as the 8500, and the
9200 is the AGP 8x version. Or something like that.

 

[rms]

Be sure you get the A7N8X deluxe, which is the only version with the mcp-t2
soundstorm chipset. Either that or get the Abit NF7-S. Also you don't
mention if you will attempt overclocking. There really is no reason not to,
the 2500+ should run at 10.5x200 without even raising the core voltage.

rms

 

[zalzon]

you obviously know your sh*t when it come to computers.

sounds like good advice.

one question : why do people go for the Asus A7N8X when the Asus
A7V8XX is so much cheaper. Is there any great difference?

 

[spodosaurus]

I intend to have the system be dual bootable, Linux (some recent
version of Red Hat) and Windows (probably either XP Pro or 2000 Pro).
I already have two hard drives (Western Digital 120 GB and 100 GB),
and plan to have each hard drive dedicated to one of the OS's.

Good choice. No problems with partitioning when they're on separate HDDs.

The main uses of the system will be software development (e.g. Java,
.Net, Web), email, web browsing, some audio and video processing
(nothing heavy duty), some gaming (nothing heavy duty), and such.

What graphics card are you considering?

Next choice is the motherboard. I'm considering the Asus A7N8X Deluxe
and the Gigabyte GA-7N400PRO2. They are similarly priced, have
similar features, and both have gotten good reviews. Both use the
nVidia chipset and support 400 MHz FSB, ATA 133, SATA and AGP 8X, have
onboard sound, multiple USB and Firewire ports, and five PCI slots.

As to differences, the Asus seems to have gotten somewhat better
reviews (that's my impression, at least), has a better chipset (MCP-T
vs. MCP), dual network capability, and better sound. The Gigabyte has
four IDE connectors as opposed to two for the Asus (if I'm reading the
specs correctly).

That's because the Gigabyte board has IDE RAID. RAID allows some
interesting things to be done, and you are paying more for it. The ASUS
board does not have this.

The Gigabyte specs also specifically mention a FDD
connector, while the Asus' doesn't.

Look at the image of the board on the asus site. I see a FDD connector.

Both of these boards are probably more than I need right now, but
they're not much more expensive than their cheaper sister boards, plus
they add some more "future proof-ness" to the system.

Always a good thing.

So, my first questions are, do these boards seem like reasonable
choices, and any comments that would help me decide between the two?

If you don't want 'em I'll trade you my GA-7VRXP board for your
GA7N400Pro2 board! Yes, they seem like very good boards.

Does it seem like a reasonable balance of cost between the major
components of the system (case was around $100, CPU is around $90,
these motherboards are around $120)?

That all depends on your budget.

I'm going to have two hard drives, a CD-RW, and a DVD-ROM. Do I need
a floppy drive? (I have a USB Flash/Pen/Jump/Whatever drive.)

It's not a bad thing to have for only $10.

Will I
need any additional IDE controllers?

Unless you want to use RAID, then no. If all you have are 4 IDE
devices, then all you need are two controllers.

If I understand things
correctly, those four drives will fill up the Asus' two IDE
controllers. So if I get a floppy, or want to add another drive in
the future (the Sonata can take nine), I'd have to get another IDE
controller, correct?

Wrong: the floppy goes on its own connector.

But not with the Gigabyte, because it has room
for eight IDE drives (plus a floppy)?

You can only use these extra IDE connectors if you turn on RAID. You
need to read up on what RAID is, and what RAID options the gigabyte
board supports. I always meant to play around with RAID when I bought
my GA-7VRXP(rev 2) board, but never got around to it, so I've never had
to use the extra capabilities that having a RAID enabled board allows.
I should have bought a cheaper board, and then if I ever wanted to try
using a RAID configureation purchased a RAID add in PCI card. Then
again, I was thinking like you, and wanted to 'future proof' the new
system a bit

Also, what's the best way to
set up those drives on the two (or more) IDE controllers?

There's another thread in this news group currently discussing this, and
the google archives are just full of these threads across dozens of groups.

Is the sound on these motherboards sufficient so that I wouldn't need
to get a separate sound card?

What is 'sufficient' to you? I find these sufficient for my real time
strategy based computer games and playing some music on. Then again,
I'm not an audiophile at all! However, you have said that you're
planning on running a dual boot windows/linux system. Linux doesn't
always like onboard audio, but perhaps RedHat has worked on this a bit
with RedHat9. If not, you'll need to install ALSA drivers. If you
don't want to tinker, then buy a separate PCI sound card that is listed
as being supported by linux (and in particular the linux distribution
you're planning to use). That way you won't have to even take the
chance of having to play around with anything to get the sound to work.

How about suggestions for a video card. As mentioned, this machine
won't be used for serious gaming, so I don't need a high end card. I
was thinking of a good 64 MB card, perhaps with some nice features
like dual head.

That's a good thing to have: the ability to use two monitors. I find
this particularly useful when programming: code in one monitor and test
in the other. I'm not certain about this, but just because a card has
connections for two monitors, say VGA and DVI, does not mean that it can
actually support two monitors: it may only be able to use one of the
connectors at a time. Make sure you get a true dual head card, and if
you have any doubts, email the shop or the card maker and ask!

I was thinking at most $75 or so, because that should
be enough for a quite sufficient card.

$75 USD I assume?

Sorry for the length of the note, and the seeming barrage of
questions. Any help you can provide will be much appreciated!

That's what USENET is for. If someone doesn't want to read through and
answer, they're under absolutely no obligation to

Ari



--

Are you registered as a bone marrow donor? You regenerate what you
donate. You are offered the chance to donate only if you match a person
on the recipient list. Visit www.marrow.org or call your local Red Cross
and ask about registering to be a bone marrow donor.

spam trap: replace shyah_right! with hotmail when replying

 

[spodosaurus]

Dual head is another can of worms under Linux. I believe that the
Nvidia Linux drivers support dual head, but I haven't tried them. I
have used Matrox cards with dual head under Linux using the Matrox
drivers, and managed to get it to work with only a few hours of
fiddling. If you don't need any kind of 3D performance under either
Linux or Windows, then a Matrox G550 may be your best choice, even
though it has 32 MB of memory.

I've gotten a dual card setup to work under linux (nvidia geforce 2 and
tnt2 cards) and the tricky part was just editting the X11R6
configuration file. I even had desktop spanning, but because my
monitors were of two different sizes it was pretty crap. Windows
handled the two different size monitors better (it was a dual boot
system, like the OP wants to build). Just another note to the OP: if
you want to use dual monitors under linux, you might save yourself some
grief by useing two monitors of the same size. Also, another note to
the OP about video cards: if you're using a recent monitor or an LCD
monitor, make sure your new graphics card has at least a digital video
connector (as opposed to the standard old VGA connector).

HTH,

Ari

- -
Gary L.
Reply to the Newsgroup for the benefit of all

--

Are you registered as a bone marrow donor? You regenerate what you
donate. You are offered the chance to donate only if you match a person
on the recipient list. Visit www.marrow.org or call your local Red Cross
and ask about registering to be a bone marrow donor.

spam trap: replace shyah_right! with hotmail when replying

 

[spodosaurus]

You can put 2 devices on each IDE connector. The Asus has two of those,
and the Gigabyte has four. That's 4 or 8 ATA devices! And you could also
resort to using the SATA connectors (2 devices more each) for a total of
6 or 10 devices. I don't think you need more controllers.

Please check on this: it was my impression that you can use either both
IDE connectors or one IDE connector plus both SATA connectors, but not
both IDE plus both SATA.

Ari

--

Are you registered as a bone marrow donor? You regenerate what you
donate. You are offered the chance to donate only if you match a person
on the recipient list. Visit www.marrow.org or call your local Red Cross
and ask about registering to be a bone marrow donor.

spam trap: replace shyah_right! with hotmail when replying

 

[Tony Hill]

Hi. I'm planning on building a PC and was looking for some
help/suggestions on some of the components to use.

While I have done a fair amount of installation/removal of components
on PCs, I have never actually built one from scratch. I have read a
lot recently to get more familiar with building systems, components,
cases, motherboards, etc. Still, there is plenty of confusion .

I intend to have the system be dual bootable, Linux (some recent
version of Red Hat) and Windows (probably either XP Pro or 2000 Pro).
I already have two hard drives (Western Digital 120 GB and 100 GB),
and plan to have each hard drive dedicated to one of the OS's.

Personal recommendation here:

Put both OSes on the first hard drive, and then have the second hard
drive for data. Also have some swap space on each drive for both
operating systems. For your data, you'll also want at least some
FAT32 space, since this is the only file system that can be easily
written to by both Windows and Linux (current versions of Linux can
not write to NTFS, though they can read it, and Windows can't easily
read or write to any Linux file systems, though there are some
third-party utils that can kinda-sorta read ext2).

The main uses of the system will be software development (e.g. Java,
.Net, Web), email, web browsing, some audio and video processing
(nothing heavy duty), some gaming (nothing heavy duty), and such.

I recently purchased an Antec Sonata case. I'm planning to use the
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton CPU.

Next choice is the motherboard. I'm considering the Asus A7N8X Deluxe
and the Gigabyte GA-7N400PRO2. They are similarly priced, have
similar features, and both have gotten good reviews. Both use the
nVidia chipset and support 400 MHz FSB, ATA 133, SATA and AGP 8X, have
onboard sound, multiple USB and Firewire ports, and five PCI slots.

As to differences, the Asus seems to have gotten somewhat better
reviews (that's my impression, at least), has a better chipset (MCP-T
vs. MCP), dual network capability, and better sound. The Gigabyte has
four IDE connectors as opposed to two for the Asus (if I'm reading the
specs correctly). The Gigabyte specs also specifically mention a FDD
connector, while the Asus' doesn't.

The Asus board does have a floppy connector. It also has 2 serial ATA
ports in addition to it's two parallel ATA ports. The Gigabyte has
two serial ATA and four parallel ATA ports.

Both of these boards are probably more than I need right now, but
they're not much more expensive than their cheaper sister boards, plus
they add some more "future proof-ness" to the system.

So, my first questions are, do these boards seem like reasonable
choices, and any comments that would help me decide between the two?

Either of these two boards seem to be very good choices if you ask me.
Ordinarily my first choice of the two companies would be Asus, but
both are good, and in this case I might tend to favor the Gigabyte
board for it's IDE capabilities.

Does it seem like a reasonable balance of cost between the major
components of the system (case was around $100, CPU is around $90,
these motherboards are around $120)?

I'm going to have two hard drives, a CD-RW, and a DVD-ROM. Do I need
a floppy drive? (I have a USB Flash/Pen/Jump/Whatever drive.) Will I
need any additional IDE controllers? If I understand things
correctly, those four drives will fill up the Asus' two IDE
controllers. So if I get a floppy, or want to add another drive in
the future (the Sonata can take nine), I'd have to get another IDE
controller, correct?

If they are parallel ATA drives, yes. If you get one of the newer
Serial ATA drives (which I would actually recommend at this point in
time, that standard is slowly starting to replace parallel ATA) then
you can put another two on the Asus board.

But not with the Gigabyte, because it has room
for eight IDE drives (plus a floppy)? Also, what's the best way to
set up those drives on the two (or more) IDE controllers?

My initial thought would be:

Primary Master: 120GB drive (operating system and apps)
Primary Slave: DVD-ROM or CD-RW (doesn't really matter)

Secondary Master: 100GB drive (data)
Secondary Slave: DVD or CR-RW

However, there are some other options that you might want to consider
on the Gigabyte board. More to the point, this board comes with an
IDE RAID controller, which can allow you to do some rather need
things. You could do something like setting up a RAID1 array for your
operating system and important data, then a RAID0 array for your
applications and data that can be easily replaced from backups. RAID1
essentially doubles your reliability while giving a small improvement
in read performance (assuming halfway decent drivers). RAID0 reduces
your reliability, but gives you much better read and write
performance.

Be sure to take a quick read through the manuals (available on-line on
Gigabytes website) before doing this though. I know that the RAID
controller has Linux support (lack of Linux support used to be a big
issue for these drivers), but there might be some hang-ups, like
requiring a boot partition on a non-RAID section of the disk. It may
also need matched hard drives, though I think most new RAID
controllers can get away with unmatched drives these days.

Is the sound on these motherboards sufficient so that I wouldn't need
to get a separate sound card?

The sound on the Asus board is top-notch. The Gigabyte board has
comparatively quite weak sound, though for example it would be much
better than an old Soundblaster 16. Best bet is probably to buy the
boards and try them out for a while. If you find the sound on the
Gigabyte board to be a bit poor for your liking, you can always add in
an external card later. If you listen to music on your PC regularly
and have decent speakers, then I would probably recommend an add-in
card for the Gigabyte board.

How about suggestions for a video card. As mentioned, this machine
won't be used for serious gaming, so I don't need a high end card. I
was thinking of a good 64 MB card, perhaps with some nice features
like dual head. I was thinking at most $75 or so, because that should
be enough for a quite sufficient card.

First card that jumps to my mind here would probably be an ATI Radeon
9000. They are available for fairly cheap these days and have a
decent feature set and performance, even for gaming.

 

[Gary L.]

Be sure to take a quick read through the manuals (available on-line on
Gigabytes website) before doing this though. I know that the RAID
controller has Linux support (lack of Linux support used to be a big
issue for these drivers), but there might be some hang-ups, like
requiring a boot partition on a non-RAID section of the disk. It may
also need matched hard drives, though I think most new RAID
controllers can get away with unmatched drives these days.

The IDE RAID controller on the Gigabyte board uses an ITE chip and
Gigabyte has drivers for Red Hat/Mandrake, so I stand corrected on
this point. The Silicon Image SATA RAID controller does not have Linux
drivers. However, Linux drivers can be more difficult to deal with
than Windows drivers and some contortions may be required to get them
to work, especially if you want to install Linux on the RAID array.
And I'm not sure how well it would work to share the RAID array
between Windows and Linux. So the OP would be better off installing
Linux on a disk connected to the conventional IDE controller.

I think matched disks are highly recommended for RAID 0. You can
usually use mis-matched disks for RAID 1 and JBOD. Also, some RAID
controllers can be configured to act as a conventional IDE controller
and Linux has native support for some of these when used in a non-RAID
configuration.
- -
Gary L.
Reply to the newsgroup only

 

[Milt Epstein]

you obviously know your sh*t when it come to computers.

sounds like good advice.

one question : why do people go for the Asus A7N8X when the Asus
A7V8XX is so much cheaper. Is there any great difference?

[ ... ]

One obvious difference is that the A7N8X uses the nVidia chipset
(hence the N), whereas the A7V8XX uses the Via chipset (hence the V).
The nVidia is supposed to be the chipset of choice for AMD CPUs these
days. That's one reason (perhaps the main one) I focussed on it.

 

[Bas Ruiter]

one question : why do people go for the Asus A7N8X when the Asus
A7V8XX is so much cheaper. Is there any great difference?

The difference is in the chipset on the motherboard: one has the nVidia
nForce2 (Ultra 400), and the other has the VIA KT400(A).

The VIA chipset is cheaper, and therefor motherboards build around this
chipset are cheaper.

Features of the chipsets are similar. The nForce2 chipset beats the
KT400 chipset on performance.

 

[Milt Epstein]

Thanks for the responses, everyone, it's been quite helpful and
informative!

To address some of the questions that came up:

Yes, it's the A7N8X *Deluxe* that I'm considering (and leaning
towards, both before and after this thread).

No, I'm not planning on overclocking. Not that adventurous (yet .

Yes, I totally missed it on the FDD drive stuff, and yes, I am going
to get one.

I'm going to try the onboard sound and see how it is -- sounds like it
will be fine for me.

Still some things to sort out, as I got conflicting advise on how to
set up the OSes on the hard drives .

And I thought I had the video card picked out -- I saw the nVidia
GeForce FX 5200 cards, and that they had all the features I wanted at
a great price -- but then I researched things some more, and read a
lot of negative comments about that chipset, particularly with regard
to performance (as one post I saw put it -- "it's got everything
except performance"). So I'm going to continue to look into video
card options.

Thanks again for your help!

 

[spodosaurus]

And I thought I had the video card picked out -- I saw the nVidia
GeForce FX 5200 cards, and that they had all the features I wanted at
a great price -- but then I researched things some more, and read a
lot of negative comments about that chipset, particularly with regard
to performance (as one post I saw put it -- "it's got everything
except performance"). So I'm going to continue to look into video
card options.

Yeah, the 5200 chips are the dogs of the FX line, like the mx chips of
earlier geforce lines.


--

Are you registered as a bone marrow donor? You regenerate what you
donate. You are offered the chance to donate only if you match a person
on the recipient list. Visit www.marrow.org or call your local Red Cross
and ask about registering to be a bone marrow donor.

spam trap: replace shyah_right! with hotmail when replying

 

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, the 5200 chips are the dogs of the FX line, like the mx chips of
earlier geforce lines.

And like the MX line before them, the FX 5200 offers more than enough
performance for at least 90% of all computer users. It's only the
odd-ball hardcore gamers who really even make use of more performance,
let alone need it.

 

[Ancra]

Yeah, the 5200 chips are the dogs of the FX line, like the mx chips of
earlier geforce lines.

My impression is that it is starting to do better. Latest iteration,
275MHz/400MHz, with new drivers and new games has been well recieved.
Some recent testers went as far as mocking critics of this card.

Anyway, it's important to remember it is a cheap card.
Just like the MX.
It kinda looks like an 'underkill' for a XP2500/nForce2.
I think it may be outstanding in its market segment though.


ancra