Motherboard recommendation

[Chris X]

Dont ask anymore questions, if u take and go with my advice your answers will come to you. Abit KG7-Raid, IwiLL KK266R Plus, or u should wait till the nVidia "Crush" chipsets come out with Dolby DigitaL Audio, the "Crush" chipsets should be out in a month or 2. If you want the most TOP OF THE LINE, BEST notherboard out there now that I know of is the TYAN KT THUNDER K7, Its the Ultimate 2 Processor Workstation Motherboard http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk7.html. Man, all of those boards are Top of the line, Esp. The nVida "Crush" motherboards of the future. The K7 and "Crush" boards are the future however, I recomend u go AMD!!! They Smoke!!! and the Future P4 "prolly" wont be faster then the Future Polomatos will smoke the Hammer series of processors.

There are other many great boards out there now, but These 3 I listed are about the best.

_________________
Computers

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Chris X on 2001-09-20 19:57:44 ]</font>

[taco]

DDR memory is about 5-10% faster then SDRAM but a DDR motherboard will cost you $20-60 more then a SDRAM motherboard. If you go with DDR memory get the Epox EP-8K7A its faster then the KG7 and its $40 cheaper. If you go with SDRAM get the MSI K7T Turbo its not as fast as the IwiLL KK266R but its a lot stabler.

[Ktranmd_99]

I appologize for bring this topic up again but I could not find it anywhere by following the history trail. I plan to have a customize build for a new video/audio editting system and I'm looking for any recommendation for the Atlon 1.4 motherboard. Some says motherboard should be w/o raid capability, but DDR., other s say lot of SDRAM is suffice. Please let me know what you think. Thanks.

[Sefy]

I think you mean the EPoX 8KHA+, it's much newer and even has Raid support, and as for stability, well, EPoX are well known for their over the average stable boards.

If you don't need Raid, and you want a current board with support for Palomino and Morga CPU then get the EPoX 8KTA3Pro or +Pro for Raid, i'm using it myself and it's one amazing board!

[smakheads]

I'm glad to see someone asking a much more important question than the Intel vs AMD debate. All the motherboards listed above are good boards. I would also add the Gigabyte 7DXR which is a Tom's Hardware choice along with the Abit board. There are two things I'd look for. For now stick to boards with the AMD 761 chipset with DDR only memory (don't get a combo PC133/DDR board, may as well get a 133 board if you do that) and if you are going to do any video capturing and editing GO FOR A RAID Board.

[Ktranmd_99]

Thanks Smakheads,
I already order ed the Gigabyte 7DXR with DDR/ Raid support. Not knowing toomuch about RAID capabilities, it seemed very interesting to get a hand-on experience on this one. Thanks again.

[Sefy]

Let us know how it goes with that board, i'm not a big fan of Gigabyte myself (or Asus for that matter) so anything you mention would be great to know, like ease of installations

[thxkid]

OK I have a EPOX motherboard with a 1.2 thunderbird and 512 megs of SDRAM, 30 gig 100 ATA western dig. hard drive and a 20 gig UDMA 66 Maxtor, this motherboard has the 2 RAID IDE controllers, having no idea what this RAID is for, what, if any, advantage could I use these for? I use this setup mostly for Video capturing to burn VCD and SVCD's.
Any sugestions would be helpful.
Thank You

[Sefy]

IDE-RAID is to combine two identical sized HDD into one large drive and this will provide much more speed since the files are being read from both drives at once, I personaly don't recommand it because if one of the drives goes caput, then whatever is left is useless.
but you can use the IDE ports on the RAID as regular IDE so you get upto 8 IDE devices instead of the regular 4.

[thxkid]

Thanks Sefy for the reply.

[Sefy]

Glad to still be of help!

[Ktranmd_99]

Sefy,
I'm still waiting for the computer which I ordered last week. It should be here a day or two. Will post something next week or so after spending sometime to play around with it.

[Sefy]

Cool, let us know how easy was the installation of it! if you had any difficulties or compatibility issues, i'm very curious to know.

and Good Luck!

[Ktranmd_99]

Sefy,
As posted, with not much time playing around with the new system, here is what I've got so far.
My new system configuration:
1.4 Gig Athlon CPU
GigaByte 7DXR-RAID MB
512 DDR RAM
60 Gig IBM HDD
Miro DC Plus analog capture card.

The reason I got this system because I wanted to cut down on the converting time from AVI (704x480) to MPEG2 (480x480) format. Well, obviously the system did cut down sometime for me, but I expected much a faster and better result.
To convert 5 minutes of AVI(704x480) to SVCD (480x480):
* Use Premiere 6.0, AVIsynth -> TMPGenc ( with high quality) - takes 52 minutes (about 10 times).
My old system - Pent II, 300 M CPU - takes about 5 hrs (60 times).
* Use Ligos, LMX suite2.0 - takes 18 minutes
* Use CCE 2.5 prremiere Plugin - Bombed out.

I went from 60 times to 10 in converting AVI to SVCD. Yes there was a progress there, but I expected something like 5 times or even 2. Of course, I did not use the RAID cap and I beleive this will effect for the capturing only, not for converting.
I had run into a couple of minor problems while setting up with WIn2K. The system hung up twice during the set up, but after rebooting, it was fine. For some reasons I could not setup my dial-up modem working properly. Sometimes I've got 1.2/2.4Kbs connection, other times I've got over 38K, not sure what's going on. Still try to eplore my way with the system as much as I can.

[Sefy]

Ktranmd_99, First I always recommand before starting, to make sure you got latest drivers for everything, it would save you so much trouble later on!, also get latest BIOS for your mainboard, could solve problems with W2K, in this case, the freeze up is not the CPU's fault, it's either mainboard, or conflict in the system.

As for CCE, v2.5 has a bug in it's AMD optimization regarding the Audio I believe , I highly recommand you switch to 2.62, as all those bugs were fixed up, and it should work much faster.

[DiViNeLeFT]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-10-10 00:57:57, Sefy wrote:
IDE-RAID is to combine two identical sized HDD into one large drive and this will provide much more speed since the files are being read from both drives at once, I personaly don't recommand it because if one of the drives goes caput, then whatever is left is useless.
but you can use the IDE ports on the RAID as regular IDE so you get upto 8 IDE devices instead of the regular 4.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

sefy, this is just raid 0... if you are worried about losing data raid 1 just mirrors the drive so if one fails the other one is a backup... now there are no speed benifits of raid 1... now raid 0+1 will allow you to take 4 identical drives (out of my price range) and create an array which will stripe (raid0) two drives, and mirror (raid1) with the others... so you get speed and backup.

raid 0 is the shit if you have the time to set it up... a lot of trial and error setting up the right cluster size... but when you get it set up the benchmarks kick ass!

[DiViNeLeFT]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-10-17 10:21:05, Ktranmd_99 wrote:
Sometimes I've got 1.2/2.4Kbs connection, other times I've got over 38K, not sure what's going on. Still try to eplore my way with the system as much as I can.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

if this is dialup 56k there is no way in hell it is really getting 38k/s... the max a 56k connection can get is 7k/s... anything above that it is reading cached speeds or not taking into consideration compression. what speed does it say your connecting at??

[Sefy]

DiViNeLeFT, I know what Raid is, and personaly I find it to be a bit distasteful, besides all the configuration problems, in Raid-0 you combine two drives into one, if one drive goes, your entire system is basicly kaput, if you use Raid-1, you bought 400gb drives (4x100gb) and end up with only 200gb, gee, what a waste of money!
for that much performance, which basicly I think is best for servers, i'll prefer having the more disk space.

[DiViNeLeFT]

yeah, i agree with you on that... and i wasnt tryin to question your wisdom... just makin sure everyone knew that there are other kinds of raid that just raid0.

[Ktranmd_99]

Sefy,
Agree w you, according to what I'm doing, I don't find anything interesting about RAID either. Raid 0, will speed up the I/O for capturing video. But I don't loose any frame with the third party card. Besides, as you mentioned, if one drive got bad, no way to retreive useful data on the other drive . Raid 1 is just for backup purpose, and I have CD-RW for that purpose. So I'm not doing RAID at all. Thanks for suggestions. I'll check on that for sure.
DivineleFT,
My connection reading on the old system, WinMe, ISA US Robotic 56K card is 38-44Kb/s. For the new system, Win2K , PCI US robotic 56 card is 1.2, 2.4 Kb/s (sometimes I got 38kb/s).

[DiViNeLeFT]

oh, ok, i thought you where talkin about download speeds with the 38k... but damn 1.2-2.4 sucks! that is like circa 1980s! are the right drivers installed?

[Sefy]

Ktranmd, I know that according to reviews the US Robotics is considered among the best, but to be honest, i've had a friend with that modem, and he was so sick of it's performance and bad connections, that hedidn't even mind selling it for less just to buy a Conexant based modem, so he got a v.92 modem, and he has 48k connections and 54k connections which he never got with the USR modem.

[Ktranmd_99]

DivineleFT,
Yeap, this is a brand new USR modem I picked it up a week ago at the store. I have tried to de/reinstall driver several times, but no hope for it. Probably, Sefty's advise is the best way to go now...It's time to try different other brand name beside USR.
Thanks guys for all the recommendations/advises.

[DiViNeLeFT]

i work for an ISP doing tech support... and ill tell you USR modems are the BEST modem you can get... conexant/rockwell modems are one of our biggest problem modems, not to contridict you sefy, just from my experience... i think the only worst modems would be motorola and HSP... if it is connecting that low it IS because of a conflict or because of phone line conditions, not because the modem just plain sucks. check out http://www.modemhelp.net , it will give you a lot of good info on modems.

you may just have a defunk modem out of the box if it is new.

another thing to try... put in AT&F for an init string... it sets the modem back to manufacturers defualts... maybe there is just somethin screwy in the modem and that will take it out.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DiViNeLeFT on 2001-10-18 12:36:23 ]</font>

[el_mondo]

lot of suff going on in here, but I have to put tyhe records straight as it goes for motherboards. DV6AA from ECS (http://www.ecs.com.tw) its a dual Proc with onboard IDE RAID & 3 SDRAM (1.5gb). I brought one in the U.K for £89.00 inc postage. It costs $129.00 in the U.S with the optional RAID. Highly recomended !! (I've just ordered another)

site recomendation for dualy's http://www.2cpu.com

[Sefy]

DiViNeLeFT, you are not controdicting me, cause as i've said, it wasn't me, it was a friend of mine who bought the USR Robotics 56k PCI modem, so he was the one pissed off about it, I still have my good old trusty SupraMAX 56k modem, and i'm getting great connections with it

Besides, every advice and experience is a welcome, what might be bad for one, can be great for another, sharing experiences is what we are here for

[Ktranmd_99]

DiVineleFT,
Definitely it's not the phone line neither ISP server. Using old system ISA USR modem/winME, I can connect to at least 38 kbs download connection. Unplug the phone line from the modem connector and plug onto PCI USR/win2K and I got 1.2/2.4K. I'm using the driver come with the package. It's interesting, I'd never heard of "defunk" just because the modem is brand new, especially it's a USR. But I will try anything now. I'll swap out the modems to see if the hardware is the bad guy. Thanks guys.

[Ktranmd_99]

Guys,
My modem is working now after changing to different PCI slot. It did not make sense to me that the modem did not like to seat in the first PCI slot at all. As soon as I move it to the third/forth, the problem is gone. I'm more than happy with the connection over 42 Kbs. Hooray!

[Sefy]

I'm glad to hear your problem is solved without the need to spend more money! out of curiasity, check if your Modem's IRQ is being shared, cause it might have been shared before.

[Ktranmd_99]

Sefy,
It's really wierd. It happened again, when it tried to connect to ISP, I could hear the BROKEN hissing sound (as you were playing MORSE) and then it died. I have to install SP2 for 2K again and it's fine for now. Still watching for unforseen problems. About IRQ, I disabled port 2 on the MB, use port 2 on the modem. It should be setting itself automatically. I'll check it next time if the problem occur. Thanks.