- Joined
- Feb 18, 2006
- Location
- Ellensburg, WA
My IC7-G is gurgling a horrible death by some weird power problem. (charred ATX, low power readings, AGP glitches, system lockups, etc., but that's another story). So... Time for an upgrade! I know Conroe is just around the corner, but isn't that always the case? Anyway, I can't wait a few months, I need a working machine. My IC7-G also took my video card with it, so I'll need an new one of those too. I've been searching around, and scratching my head, and it just seems there are so many more options than there used to be... Do I get a regular 939 A64? An Opty? An X2? An SLI board? Is crossfire worth it? I play a lot of games, but I also just need a stable fast computer for other applications too.
My main question is about the raid chips. I have my hard drives in a raid-0 on the IC7-G. Has anybody out there had any luck with putting a raid array in a newer board and having it recognize the raid array? Looking at, say, the AT8 32X, they both have a SATA pair on a 'silicon image' chip. Formatting is not an option, and we're talking about ~400 GB of data, at least 100 of which I'd not like to lose. (financial data, photos, music, etc.). My old system still runs... but that's a lot of DVDs to back it all up... It'd be nice to find a new motherboard that will recognize my raid.
Budget is a concern. I'd like to get a new motherboard, CPU and PSU for around $500-$600. Then a video card for a couple hundred or so. I don't need the newest $500 video, I can make due with the latest and greatest from 6 months ago for half the price.
Processors I'm thinking of:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ -- ~$300
AMD Opteron 165 -- ~$330
Of course, last time I spent $300 on a CPU, I realized I was dumb and could spend half that on a lower one and overclock it to nearly the same speed. Is dual core really worth it? An Opteron 146 is only around $200, and a little faster than the 165 (but single core).
So... crossfire? I can only afford one card right now (but a fairly nice one). Is it worth getting the crossfire ability so that a year or two down the road I can buy another card for cheap to up my output (or a new primary card and use this one as secondary)??? Xfire motherboards seem to be about twice as much. I've been an Abit/Gigabyte/MSI fan in the past, but now everyone seems to talk about DFI, Epox, and Asus. (well, they've always talked about Asus, but I won't buy 'em) Has Abit gone downhill? How's the AT8/AN8 line? (Feel free to recommend me a video card to go with all this too, since I've asked so many other questions...)
Well, from all of this, really my main question is about the raid, but I really could use some help on what to get for the rest of my stuff.
Thanks
My main question is about the raid chips. I have my hard drives in a raid-0 on the IC7-G. Has anybody out there had any luck with putting a raid array in a newer board and having it recognize the raid array? Looking at, say, the AT8 32X, they both have a SATA pair on a 'silicon image' chip. Formatting is not an option, and we're talking about ~400 GB of data, at least 100 of which I'd not like to lose. (financial data, photos, music, etc.). My old system still runs... but that's a lot of DVDs to back it all up... It'd be nice to find a new motherboard that will recognize my raid.
Budget is a concern. I'd like to get a new motherboard, CPU and PSU for around $500-$600. Then a video card for a couple hundred or so. I don't need the newest $500 video, I can make due with the latest and greatest from 6 months ago for half the price.
Processors I'm thinking of:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ -- ~$300
AMD Opteron 165 -- ~$330
Of course, last time I spent $300 on a CPU, I realized I was dumb and could spend half that on a lower one and overclock it to nearly the same speed. Is dual core really worth it? An Opteron 146 is only around $200, and a little faster than the 165 (but single core).
So... crossfire? I can only afford one card right now (but a fairly nice one). Is it worth getting the crossfire ability so that a year or two down the road I can buy another card for cheap to up my output (or a new primary card and use this one as secondary)??? Xfire motherboards seem to be about twice as much. I've been an Abit/Gigabyte/MSI fan in the past, but now everyone seems to talk about DFI, Epox, and Asus. (well, they've always talked about Asus, but I won't buy 'em) Has Abit gone downhill? How's the AT8/AN8 line? (Feel free to recommend me a video card to go with all this too, since I've asked so many other questions...)
Well, from all of this, really my main question is about the raid, but I really could use some help on what to get for the rest of my stuff.
Thanks
