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feature rich board

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WiNd

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Jul 25, 2001
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Paid Vaction in Iraq
Hi, im planning to make a multimedia PC for my buddy. I don't plan on overclocking, but currently im look for a board that can support a 3.4 ghz 800mhz FSB processor, with alot of features. what are your recommendation? Thanks.
 
my gigabyte board had a ton of features, but so do most new motherboards. what features are you looking for? most new boards have things like 6 channel audio, and optical sound, etc.
 
You could have a look at the Albatron PX865PE Pro II... It comes with:

7.1 sound with optical and coaxial SPDIF out (uses the ENVY24 chipset, very good)
PATA/133 raid 0 or 1 via Promise 20274 chipset built in
SATA/150 raid 0 or 1 via the Intel ICH-R chip
Intel 10/100/1000 ethernet on it's own 266mb/sec bus so it doesn't saturate your PCI bus devices
AGP 4x/8x
Firewire ports x 4
USB 2.0 ports x 6
PS2 ports for keyb/mouse
Active northbridge cooling with blue LED (heh, computer rice!)
Dual channel up to 4gb (the usual) with the normal overclocking options
Dual BIOS so it can recover itself after a bad flash
Standard pair of ATA/133 primary/secondary ports, standard floppy port, three different places to plug in fan monitor connections, supports 400/533/800 Northwoods and supposedly supports all Prescott Socket478 procs as well. No word on the truth to that...

Great board, uber-ton of features, not too expensive, three year warranty. I like mine :)
 
Albuquerque thanks for your suggestion.

I am mostly looking for harddrive (Raid or SATA) support, im not so concern with sound on the a motherbard because im planning to purchase a sound card but optical output sound great! Also i have a firewire / usb 2 card so im not worry about that either. Cost can be a consideration also, but i would like a stable and feature rich in terms of harddrive support motherboard.
 
Welp, you really don't need a "feature rich" motherboard then. If you have all these add-in cards, you really only need a board with SATA and RAID.

The Albatron PX865PE ProII board I mentioned has both Serial ATA and Parallel ATA (old standard IDE) RAID capability, but the price will be higher because the board also comes with all the other features I mentioned.

It sounds MORE like you just need to buy a decent RAID card and slap it into a relatively inexpensive P4 board of your choosing. Why purchase a "feature rich" board if you already have all the features already?
 
almost all new boards offer sata raid, so that won't limit anything. if you give a price range it might help narrow things down. a lot of people like asus boards. if you just want stable and won't be overclocking ever, then i have heard intel boards are rock solid.
 
IS7-E has no RAID at all (it uses the ICH5 southbridge, not the ICH5-R and doesn't use any external RAID chip either), has only 5.1 sound using the generic ALC650 chip, has only 10/100 ethernet, doesn't have firewire ports, and doesn't have a dual bios (so if you get a bad ROM flash, the board is dead -- think this isn't an issue? Have you read these forums lately?)

The IS7-E is a good board, but isn't a "feature rich" board by a long standard.

The real question though is, again, do you need a "feature rich" board if you already have all these add-in cards? If not, then maybe the IS7-E is the better option for you.
 
get the Asus P4S800D-E DlX.... comes with just about anything you need and at a fraction of the cost of other boards... with all and more of there performance.
 
id have to say not yet on the p4s800d-e deluxe, i realise you have had good luck with yours, but others have had raid issues and mem issues. its a good board, but needs some time before its excellent
 
In my opinion, yes the AI7 is better. Has pretty much the same features. The main benefits are official Prescott support and much higher vdimm options. Some people like the uguru thing, but that don't mean anything to me. Since the original poster said they were not planning any overclocking, then the higher vdimm settings of the AI7 don't mean much to them. Plus the IS7 is cheaper. If this was for overclocking, I'd say get the AI7 (I have one myself).
 
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