Ok guys, I have been doing some research on prices for the ASUS A7V333. Some are with and without RAID. What is RAID?
BTW, You guys have been so helpful, thnx :)
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Ok guys, I have been doing some research on prices for the ASUS A7V333. Some are with and without RAID. What is RAID?
BTW, You guys have been so helpful, thnx :)
RAID
it's not your fathers bug killer
Abit KX7-333 = $89.00 + S/H
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ Retail Boxed = $79.00 + S/H
(These prices were found on www.compuplus.com , www.pricewatch.com may yield better results.)
On price and performance, there isn't much that compares to the Abit motherboard. It's rock solid as well.;)
Hmm.. interesting. One thing about pricewatch is that they have a lot of good deals but many of their links take you to the site and the price is totally different.
Ok, so which board do you guys think is better? The ABIT KX7-333 (which is cheaper) or the ASUS A7v333?
I will go with the ABIT if there is not too much difference in the ABIT from the ASUS. I’m not one of those guys who are loyal to a specific company. I just care about the quality and performance. Oh, and I will be able to use DDR pc2100 ram right? I should be able to, but just to make sure from the experts ;).
The thing with the pricewatch companies is that you have to mention pricewatch when you order from them, otherwise they charge you their regular price. If they don't charge you the price advertised on pricewatch, contact pricewatch.Quote:
Originally posted by PacMan
Hmm.. interesting. One thing about pricewatch is that they have a lot of good deals but many of their links take you to the site and the price is totally different.
Ok, so which board do you guys think is better? The ABIT KX7-333 (which is cheaper) or the ASUS A7v333?
I will go with the ABIT if there is not too much difference in the ABIT from the ASUS. I’m not one of those guys who are loyal to a specific company. I just care about the quality and performance. Oh, and I will be able to use DDR pc2100 ram right? I should be able to, but just to make sure from the experts ;).
You shouldn't have any problem with the DDR 2100 RAM, just make sure that the memory speed is set to 266MHZ.
I like the Abit board because there is nothing built-on. Nothing to disable. Although the built-on sound for the ASUS A7V-333 sounds good (6-channel), I've never been a fan of C-Media chips. I mentioned Compuplus because their price is usually near the lowest. However, I need to give you a warning. They charge fairly high prices for shipping. The reason being is that they ship second-day Fedex. That means you could expect to pay an additional $25.00 for S/H for a mobo and processor.
I mentioned Pricewatch because it is a good tool to find good prices. As mentioned, you do have to be careful about what you find and from who. They won't always give you the price on their website as they do on Pricewatch. That's why it's only a tool. I actually found Compuplus on Pricewatch to begin with. Now I make quite a few purchases through them. Even with the shipping being higher they are generally still on the low end of the price scale and it gets here in two days. I haven't had a problem with them yet.
You should probably stay away from Raid equipped boards. In order to use raid you need a second hard drive. It sounds like you are pretty new at this and you might wish to keep it simple. I have owned 2 different Asus boards for Athlons. They are very fast boards but in my opinion not as stable, or simple as some other brands. Also, because of their name they tend to cost more than some others. I have had good luck using Gigabyte boards. Tomshardware rates their board (with raid) very highly, but you can get the model GA-7vrx without raid. It comes with sound on board and usb2.0. It also has a dual bios which can be a lifesaver(especially for a newcommer who might want to learn)Mwave has it for 77.00 (u.s.).
I just built a pc for a friend using the Asus A7N266-VM. Onboard gforce2, 5.1 sound, and nic. So far no problems what so ever.
Since my mobo just died, I was considering getting this one, it's only $89 or less depending on where I buy it...
You can get the A7N-266 VM at www.googlegear.com for $80.00 with free second-day Fedex, Lycia.:D
Yeah, but I never buy online, I bought the pc as parts from one shop. When my own mobo died, I looked around for the A7N266-VM and found it for $76 at Spectrum Peripherals in SF...Quote:
Originally posted by Hippie_Tech
You can get the A7N-266 VM at www.googlegear.com for $80.00 with free second-day Fedex, Lycia.:D
The advantages of living in or near a big city...Quote:
Originally posted by Lycia
Yeah, but I never buy online, I bought the pc as parts from one shop. When my own mobo died, I looked around for the A7N266-VM and found it for $76 at Spectrum Peripherals in SF...
I live out in the middle of nowhere and am forced to order the majority of parts on-line.:(
Ok, I do have a second hard drive. Should I go with raid? I read some (until I was lost) of the link Rellik put on. How do I know what type of raid is on those MOBOs?
This is getting to me.. is it worth getting a raid board for extra $20-$30 ?
Cool, I’ll use pricewatch as a tool Hippie, thnx.
In addition, I tried to fill out an order form after going through pricewatch and I didn’t see anywhere where I could mention I saw it on Pricewatch.
A little bedtime reading on RAID
Enjoy :D
Yeah NooNoo, your right. It is making me sleepy reading it. But seriously, it is interesting. So Raid is good with any Operating system (XP pro)? What I get out of it is that it will combine several physical disks into one larger ``virtual'' device (if I want), performance improvements. Do I have to install the software or is it like Bios, already installed?
There is one thing you have to be careful with when it comes to IDE RAID. Drives SHOULD be the same size and preferably the same brand. If you have a 20GB and a 30GB hard drive, when you stripe, the RAID controller will default to the smaller drive size (20GB) and you will be left with a total of 40GB (20GB x 2). You could mirror (RAID 1) and it will help your read speeds, but your write speeds will still be the same. Mirroring is a good method to improve performance and have redundancy if anything should happen to one of your drives. The only problem with RAID 1 is that the second hard drive can't be used for extra space. Striping (RAID 0) gives you the best overall performance, but at a price. If one drive fails, all of your data is lost, so backing up important data on a regular basis is a must when striping.
As far as needing anything special (besides the RAID controller) for software (they'll have a driver disk for the RAID controller), the answer is no. The RAID controller (on-board chip) will initially take you through the setup when you first turn on the machine (although you may have to enable it in BIOS for on-board RAID). If you do it, I'd stick with default settings.
IDE RAID is a great way to get a good performance boost and it's not too difficult to setup. I think it's worth the extra expense. It's made a big difference in the machines I've used it in. I haven't used the on-board RAID, but rather the Promise PCI RAID TX2 card. Performance should be the same with on-board. It won't get you a boost of 100% in hard drive performance, but it will make a very noticeable difference.