it7 max 2 serial raid ?'s

ok well i have run raid 0 on a amd board before. was the promise fastrak lite i had on a mobo.

couple questions.
1-what is serial raid?
2-what speed increases will i get with 2 maxter 133ata hd's in serial raid over ide or ata133?
3- most said "raid is useless" when i ran my 0raid before. i did see a speed increase but i didnt feel it was worth the cost. is why im hesitant to use raid again.is the highpoint raid differant in what size stripes u can use?.
4- my last raid corrupted my drives 3 times. prolly due to over ocing my mobo. will i get a stability issue with this also?

excuse some of my ignorance in this. its been a few months and i have forgoten alot of knowledge i learned about raid and some of its terms.

For now the RAID performance would be exactly the same on this board [IDE Parallel vs Serial ATA]. Your drives are 133s and that is fast as they go. When true Serial ATA 150 drives come out they would be faster. But since Abit decided NOT to include a second adapter and serial cable, and beings for now no one seems to sell them seperate... you are stuck with only 1 Serial ATA drive for this board.

Dateline:Satuday Morning 9/8

I held out for several weeks waiting for an IT7Max2 instead of the regular IT7MAX. Then yesterday the MAX2 was for sale and in stock! I almost pushed the 'ADD TO CART' button at NEWEGG! Then I recalled reading at The Tech Zone it had only 1 adapter and 1 serial cable in the box. So I started looking for one... Thought, hey, don't order it till you find a second adapter and cable. I posted here, HardOCP, searched, asked around. No one has them.

BUT I DID find out some VERY interesting things! What I read:

1] The Serial ATA on th Max2 is 'REALLY' not a 'true' Serial ATA controller. It is Serial ATA running off the HighPoint Controller.

2]One post I read on a hardware board REALLY caught my eye. A guy has a IT7MAX. He got the MAX2 and put all his componets from the MAX on the MAX2, The MAX2 would not overclock near what the MAX does!

3]People start replying to his post. REMEMBER READING THIS???? ECS is now building boards for ABIT! And the MAX2 is PROBABLY one of them! BUMMER!

OK, so my money is burning a hole in my pocket. I have sitting here all the parts waiting for what I thought was gonna be the WORLDS GREATIEST OVERCLOCKING P4 MOTHERBOARD...IMPROVED!!! I want RAID0 and I want to overclock. I am getting impatient. All this great stuff sitting here:

A week 24 MALAY 2.26 P4
Swiftech MCX4000 heatsink with YS Tech magnetic tip fan
[2] 512MB sticks of CorsairXMS 3200 CAS2 memory
[2] 40gb Western Digital Special Edition JB 8mb hard drives, just out and hard to find. They only cost $10 LESS than the 80gb JB [Newegg $105] drives but I decide I will NEVER need 160gb on a gaming rig. Yea... 80gb [RAID0] will be plenty.
A PNY Ti4600
Thermaltake aluminum Xaser II A6000 B Plus case [one with the small window]. It is a silver beauty! Sw33t!
Thermaltake Silent PurePower, 420W, ( Active PFC ), ATX power supply
Lite-On 48X Burner
Toshiba 16X DVD
Phillips Acoustic Edge sound card

Damn... I want a board... NOW! It is afternoon now. All day trying to find that extra adapter and serial cable. No luck. Now I am afraid to get the MAX2 cuz of the stuff I read. I go back to Newegg...

I order the IT7MAX
I order a ABIT MEDIA XP 5.25" Driver bay to go with it
I am glad! The MAX dropped from $152 to $135 in 6 hours!

And...I notice the MAX2 is sold out now with an ETA of 9/15!
I ain't looking back. I did the right thing. Or did I? hehe

do the wrong thing? id say no.
i dont know if id would base a product off of one persons experiance tho. the reviews ive seen is that the max 2 is steller in its oc capabilitys.pretty reliable sites also did the reviews.

but i also have read the it7 is a great board also. and cheaper,and in stock!the max2 has never arrived at newegg yet.another week i think. 2 places on price watch $185 so the it7 is the deal id say.

also give a report back on how your rig does.its exactly what im wanting to do.right down to the exact cpu and ram.mabey ill try geil 3500 after i see a report back here in forums from a guy doing a review.

but i may still go for the max2 its just eaten at me.

btw thanks for the raid info . its got me thinking ill just wait on raid and run ata 133 for now till i get it set like i want it. raid seems a pain when im testing and ocing. mabey after thats set ill go back.

Early Saturday morning I was on Newegg's website.
I was surprised to see the ITMAX2 there.
It said YES to In Stock and the Add To Cart button was there to push. Now if they actually WERE in stock, I do not know, cuz I did not hit the button. But it was there to hit.

I have been trying to keep on top of the MAX2 for awhile. As far as ordering one I think no one has em in stock. And one website:
http://www.isquaredinc.com raised the price from $169 to $182 on Saturday. I had emailed them few days ago and they say they expect them in tomorrow. I hear the crooks at Atacom let you order the board, THEN tell you they are out of stock after they take your money.

As far as having the latest and greatest... it is a VERY fleeting thing. Maxtor, in an industry suprise. announced a new line of drives Sept 5th. http://www.shareholder.com/maxtor/news/20020905-89398.cfm
And Serial ATA drives are on the menu, albeit the Serial ATA verions are 2 months away. And almost everyone thought the soon to be relased Segate Cuda 5s were going to be first. They will be avaiaible with Serial ATA interface.

I wanted to build NOW. Everyone knows Dual Channel DDR is at the doorstep, Opteron and Prescott CPUs, and DDR2 are around the corner and WHO knows what else. Hell, just the Dual Channel DDR will make all current boards obsolete in a few short months. But if we wait for the latest and greatest we would never build anything, right?

BTW,,,, the MAX and the MAX2 have the option to lock the FSB on the PCI and AGP. You can run the CPU/Memory bus up then. There are HUGE debates about Stripe/Cluster size. And believe it or not, WindowsXP and Windows 2000 software RAID0 is as fast or faster than the Highpoint and Promise onboards!

Terry said:

For now the RAID performance would be exactly the same on this board [IDE Parallel vs Serial ATA]. Your drives are 133s and that is fast as they go. When true Serial ATA 150 drives come out they would be faster. But since Abit decided NOT to include a second adapter and serial cable, and beings for now no one seems to sell them seperate... you are stuck with only 1 Serial ATA drive for this board.

Dateline:Satuday Morning 9/8

I held out for several weeks waiting for an IT7Max2 instead of the regular IT7MAX. Then yesterday the MAX2 was for sale and in stock! I almost pushed the 'ADD TO CART' button at NEWEGG! Then I recalled reading at The Tech Zone it had only 1 adapter and 1 serial cable in the box. So I started looking for one... Thought, hey, don't order it till you find a second adapter and cable. I posted here, HardOCP, searched, asked around. No one has them.

BUT I DID find out some VERY interesting things! What I read:

1] The Serial ATA on th Max2 is 'REALLY' not a 'true' Serial ATA controller. It is Serial ATA running off the HighPoint Controller.

2]One post I read on a hardware board REALLY caught my eye. A guy has a IT7MAX. He got the MAX2 and put all his componets from the MAX on the MAX2, The MAX2 would not overclock near what the MAX does!

3]People start replying to his post. REMEMBER READING THIS???? ECS is now building boards for ABIT! And the MAX2 is PROBABLY one of them! BUMMER!

OK, so my money is burning a hole in my pocket. I have sitting here all the parts waiting for what I thought was gonna be the WORLDS GREATIEST OVERCLOCKING P4 MOTHERBOARD...IMPROVED!!! I want RAID0 and I want to overclock. I am getting impatient. All this great stuff sitting here:

A week 24 MALAY 2.26 P4
Swiftech MCX4000 heatsink with YS Tech magnetic tip fan
[2] 512MB sticks of CorsairXMS 3200 CAS2 memory
[2] 40gb Western Digital Special Edition JB 8mb hard drives, just out and hard to find. They only cost $10 LESS than the 80gb JB [Newegg $105] drives but I decide I will NEVER need 160gb on a gaming rig. Yea... 80gb [RAID0] will be plenty.
A PNY Ti4600
Thermaltake aluminum Xaser II A6000 B Plus case [one with the small window]. It is a silver beauty! Sw33t!
Thermaltake Silent PurePower, 420W, ( Active PFC ), ATX power supply
Lite-On 48X Burner
Toshiba 16X DVD
Phillips Acoustic Edge sound card

Damn... I want a board... NOW! It is afternoon now. All day trying to find that extra adapter and serial cable. No luck. Now I am afraid to get the MAX2 cuz of the stuff I read. I go back to Newegg...

I order the IT7MAX
I order a ABIT MEDIA XP 5.25" Driver bay to go with it
I am glad! The MAX dropped from $152 to $135 in 6 hours!

And...I notice the MAX2 is sold out now with an ETA of 9/15!
I ain't looking back. I did the right thing. Or did I? hehe

Click to expand...

I'd say the jury is still out based on the overclockability of this board. No one has one to confirm, nor deny, the actual facts. As far as the Serial ATA goes, it is bleeding edge technology and does not appear to be an issue for a few months. As for your decision, I think the IT7 is a wonderful choice and will bring you long term peace and hapiness. Let us know what kind of damage you can do with that bad boy once you get it.