Pleas help -- have to choose THE BEST motherboard for a good friend.

A friend up in the wilds of Alaska recently asked me to find THE
best motherboard for him. Can you help?

He runs Windows XP Pro.

He uses an ATI AIW 7600(?) video card because editing high-quality
nature videos is important to him.

He would like to have as many expansion slots as possible for future
accessories.

Most of his external periphs are USB 2.0.

He would like one that has more than 2 EIDE ports for up to 8 or
more hard-drives/DVD-burners/CD-burners/etc. (he's a
photo/video-editor-holic).

Gaming is not important to him at all, stability and peripheral
options are. (though the three often go hand-in-hand-in-hand)

Cost is not so much an issue as is dependability, performance, and
stability, but it would help if it was reasonable.

I don't think AMD vs. Intel is an issue with him. He already has a
Pentium-4 for now. I personally like AMD, but 2 years have gone by
since I played that comparison war.

I have not researched motherboards for over 2 years so I don't know
where to even start looking or what brands and models are good these
days.

He needs a new board A.S.A.P.! He left his old one in the lower-48
states recently and needs to build a new system within a month.
(Waiting until newer models come around is not an option.)

I personally have an older Soyo Dragon K7V Plus (AMD). While I like
it, I have a love/hate relationship with it (infrequent sound and
video lock-ups with my older ATI-AIW 128-Pro video card, using the
onboard sound) and am not sure if I should suggest this brand to him
(it has many of the expansion features he wants, minus dependability
and performance).

Could you at least point me to a brand that is renowned for
stability and performance? I could then see if they at least make
one that has as many expansion options (PCI & EIDE) as he desires.

He has no net/phone access where he lives so he has to do this by
proxy (through me in snail-mail). I only have a 1.4k dialup
connection where I live in a(n also) remote area, so surfing online
trying to find the info I need is tedious, to say the least.

Thank-you very much for your time and assistance.

The Asus P4C800-E Deluxe is the perfect board for him. It's their high end
P4 card and is has all the bells and whistles and is VERY stable.

--
DaveW



"Confused" wrote in message
...
A friend up in the wilds of Alaska recently asked me to find THE
best motherboard for him. Can you help?

He runs Windows XP Pro.

He uses an ATI AIW 7600(?) video card because editing high-quality
nature videos is important to him.

He would like to have as many expansion slots as possible for future
accessories.

Most of his external periphs are USB 2.0.

He would like one that has more than 2 EIDE ports for up to 8 or
more hard-drives/DVD-burners/CD-burners/etc. (he's a
photo/video-editor-holic).

Gaming is not important to him at all, stability and peripheral
options are. (though the three often go hand-in-hand-in-hand)

Cost is not so much an issue as is dependability, performance, and
stability, but it would help if it was reasonable.

I don't think AMD vs. Intel is an issue with him. He already has a
Pentium-4 for now. I personally like AMD, but 2 years have gone by
since I played that comparison war.

I have not researched motherboards for over 2 years so I don't know
where to even start looking or what brands and models are good these
days.

He needs a new board A.S.A.P.! He left his old one in the lower-48
states recently and needs to build a new system within a month.
(Waiting until newer models come around is not an option.)

I personally have an older Soyo Dragon K7V Plus (AMD). While I like
it, I have a love/hate relationship with it (infrequent sound and
video lock-ups with my older ATI-AIW 128-Pro video card, using the
onboard sound) and am not sure if I should suggest this brand to him
(it has many of the expansion features he wants, minus dependability
and performance).

Could you at least point me to a brand that is renowned for
stability and performance? I could then see if they at least make
one that has as many expansion options (PCI & EIDE) as he desires.

He has no net/phone access where he lives so he has to do this by
proxy (through me in snail-mail). I only have a 1.4k dialup
connection where I live in a(n also) remote area, so surfing online
trying to find the info I need is tedious, to say the least.

Thank-you very much for your time and assistance.

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 22:40:25 GMT, "DaveW" wrote:

The Asus P4C800-E Deluxe is the perfect board for him. It's their high end
P4 card and is has all the bells and whistles and is VERY stable.

Thank you very much for your reply. I'll take a look at that model
online. I've heard the brand Asus mentioned a lot over the years,
but have no personal experience with them. Just out of curiosity I
was going to see how they compared to others eventually.

Again, thanks.

On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 03:43:16 GMT, Confused
wrote:

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 22:40:25 GMT, "DaveW" wrote:

The Asus P4C800-E Deluxe is the perfect board for him. It's their high end
P4 card and is has all the bells and whistles and is VERY stable.


One quick question. (sort of) Apparently I've been out of the
computer hardware world longer than I thought. After reading the
reviews and specs on this board, I don't understand what an SATA
port is.

While this board appears to have many ATA options (and appears in
all reviews to be a top performer). I'm at a loss to recommend this
card to him now until I educate myself more.

He has 2 DVD burners, 2 CD burners, 2 Hard Drives (more intended)
used as individual storage space, all working on an older board that
only has ATA133 lines on it (2 provided by an expansion card). Will
he be able to use all those peripherals with these SATA ports and be
able to do away with his ATA(EIDE) expansion card? Are they
backwards compatible with older ATA devices? Can these SATA ports
all be used like normal ATA (EIDE) lines or only configured as RAID
devices? (Which, I'm sure he'll take advantage of that option one
day, but if not, for now, those RAID SATA ports would be useless to
him and he wouldn't be able to connect all the peripherals he has
now, not to mention the ones he wants in the future to use as
independent storage or burning devices.)

Thanks for any further info you might have in this matter.

SATA (Serial ATA) is not compatible with any ata devices. The cable is
a completely different form factor, and it is not covertible. The
technology is different.

This Asus P4-C800 -e deluxe is a great mobo. It should have enough ata
inputs for your friend to run that outrageous number of peripherals
too... I believe that you can use the ATA raid input as a normal ata
input. The SATA inputs are useless to him however until he gets some
hardware made for SATA.

With all of those peripherals he should have at least a 400 watt power
supply too. 400 watts would be the minimum.

That's a great mobo though, probably the best thing you could get for
him at this point.

(Ender) wrote in message . com...
SATA (Serial ATA) is not compatible with any ata devices. The cable is
a completely different form factor, and it is not covertible. The
technology is different.
Umm, actually he can here is one adapter.

http://shop.soyousa.com/customer/pro...&cat=12&page=1

On 21 Apr 2004 14:21:58 -0700, (jamotto) wrote:

(Ender) wrote in message . com...
SATA (Serial ATA) is not compatible with any ata devices. The cable is
a completely different form factor, and it is not covertible. The
technology is different.
Umm, actually he can here is one adapter.

http://shop.soyousa.com/customer/pro...&cat=12&page=1


Wow, thanks again for the input guys. I'll write to him again with
your extra information. This will be great news for him.

THANK-YOU!!!