Rubbing my hands in anticipation
 

Yup, I am itching to upgrade my slowest machine with an AMD64.
I'm anxiously waiting 'til the next price drop for AMD64 CPUs - which
I have read hereabouts will be after the Venice processor is
introduced either at the end of this month or early next month. I'm
not really interested in OC'ing, so I probably will shoot for a 3500
Winchester (heh, no pun intended there...really!).

Also, I definitely want to be able to raid my 4 existing 80 GB
parallel ATA drives - probably just RAID 0, tho. Earlier, I was
thinking of using a promise sx4000 raid board to do some dedicated
raid 5 for a bit of data security, as it just means a loss of 1 drive
for the parity checking. However, in order to have good performance
with that setup, the Promise sx4000 raid card should be in a 64 bit
slot. That would then limit my options somewhat for mobos - so I
guess I have pared my plan back to just raid 0, which many mobo's
handle quite well, and will swear a solemn oath to backup my system
more frequently.

So, anybody have reco's or such on mobo's that I should look at?
Thanks.

if you're going to wait then wait for newer better mobos. I took the amd64
plunge on monday, athlon 64 3000+, went for the socket 939 motherboard,
tight budget meant I spent on only the cheaper cpu and motherboard (a
gigabyte ga-k8ns-939). The thing about waiting is, you'll be tempted to
spend more on the better motherboard and faster cpu anyways since everyone
will tell you the components you waited for the price drop are crap

"Ben Chilluns" wrote in message
...
Yup, I am itching to upgrade my slowest machine with an AMD64.
I'm anxiously waiting 'til the next price drop for AMD64 CPUs - which
I have read hereabouts will be after the Venice processor is
introduced either at the end of this month or early next month. I'm
not really interested in OC'ing, so I probably will shoot for a 3500
Winchester (heh, no pun intended there...really!).

Also, I definitely want to be able to raid my 4 existing 80 GB
parallel ATA drives - probably just RAID 0, tho. Earlier, I was
thinking of using a promise sx4000 raid board to do some dedicated
raid 5 for a bit of data security, as it just means a loss of 1 drive
for the parity checking. However, in order to have good performance
with that setup, the Promise sx4000 raid card should be in a 64 bit
slot. That would then limit my options somewhat for mobos - so I
guess I have pared my plan back to just raid 0, which many mobo's
handle quite well, and will swear a solemn oath to backup my system
more frequently.

So, anybody have reco's or such on mobo's that I should look at?
Thanks.

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 20:06:59 -0500, "Predator"
wrote:


"Ben Chilluns" wrote in message
.. .
Yup, I am itching to upgrade my slowest machine with an AMD64.
I'm anxiously waiting 'til the next price drop for AMD64 CPUs - which
I have read hereabouts will be after the Venice processor is
introduced either at the end of this month or early next month. I'm
not really interested in OC'ing, so I probably will shoot for a 3500
Winchester (heh, no pun intended there...really!).

Also, I definitely want to be able to raid my 4 existing 80 GB
parallel ATA drives - probably just RAID 0, tho. Earlier, I was
thinking of using a promise sx4000 raid board to do some dedicated
raid 5 for a bit of data security, as it just means a loss of 1 drive
for the parity checking. However, in order to have good performance
with that setup, the Promise sx4000 raid card should be in a 64 bit
slot. That would then limit my options somewhat for mobos - so I
guess I have pared my plan back to just raid 0, which many mobo's
handle quite well, and will swear a solemn oath to backup my system
more frequently.

So, anybody have reco's or such on mobo's that I should look at?
Thanks.

if you're going to wait then wait for newer better mobos. I took the amd64
plunge on monday, athlon 64 3000+, went for the socket 939 motherboard,
tight budget meant I spent on only the cheaper cpu and motherboard (a
gigabyte ga-k8ns-939). The thing about waiting is, you'll be tempted to
spend more on the better motherboard and faster cpu anyways since everyone
will tell you the components you waited for the price drop are crap

Super, glad you took the plunge!

Yup, waiting almost always yields a better deal with better stuff.
But for me I don't think waiting will bring any technologies that I
will want. I'll be reusing my existing hds, memory, and graphics card
- so I will want my mobo to have an AGP slot. I'll want to have PCI
slots for my miscellaneous cards, and will want RAID on the IDE side.
Not gonna have any SATA drives just yet. Definitely like the new crop
of mobos reviewed at Toms. Several have onboard firewire, which I
like. Probably will select from that crop.