The question I'd have on this thread is: For none high end applications is it worth it to be on the edge? 1.0 of anything is usually not good. I also think about things like nics (I've fried a few) etc. Whereas a Linksys or Netgear can be bought for 15 bucks in the US it scares me to think that I could lose a mobo cause my nic went down. For personal use and for High reliability, I really like to stay one step behind the curve. Wait till the bug fix version comes out. (very important if you are buying closed source software!) Am I alone in this attitude?
James On Thu, 16 May 2002 14:20:09 +1000 Sridhar Dhanapalan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 15 May 2002 13:02:09 -0400, Lyvim Xaphir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Wed, 2002-05-15 at 01:18, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: > > With regard to IDE controllers, I can tell you that a HPT37X IDE > > controller is better than anything I've seen yet for IDE drives; > > including the Promise options. I've got my primary Raid 0 array on > > the integrated Highpoint controller. This frees up the vanilla IDE > > controller on the mainboard for such mundane stuff like CDrom or > > zip, or experimentation; keeping the Highpoint channels free and > > dedicated to soft Raid. > > > > Since you're board searching, check this out: > > > > http://www.enmic.de/www/produkte/boards/8ttx2+/8ttx2+.htm > > > > First board from a German company I've ever seen; impressive. In the > > Uncle Tom roundup OpenGL standings, here is where it stood: > > > > http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q2/020509/kt333-29.html > > > > Originally I was leaning towards the Epox, but the german Enmic > > board is touted by Pabst as being supremely stable; by comparison he > > said there were some crashes with the Epox 8k3a+. This is > > interesting since externally the Epox and the Enmic are virtually > > indistinguishable. The stability statement doesn't bother me much, > > (the Epox) I take that with a grain of salt, since he got a weeks > > worth of benches out of this board, after it went thru the standard > > burn in process. If he had gotten some real trouble he would have > > raised holy hell. Or I should say unholy hell. > > I must've overlooked the Enmic the first time I read the review. The > Gigabyte board (the review winner) initially looked the most > attractive to me. It has a good price, great performance and a decent > feature set. If i can find an Enmic supplier here is Australia, I > might buy one of those instead. > > > What does bother me is the same thing that might be attractive to > > you, namely the onboard sound. I'd rather not have onboard sound, I > > think it's evil; I've already got two sound cards here that are > > exceptional. > > This is the way I see it. Sound hardware has been reasonably decent > for almost ten years now, and advances in sound hardware since the > Sound Blaster 16 have relatively been minor in comparison to advances > in components like CPUs and video cards. I don't need Audigy-quality > sound, but I would like something nice and affordable. Integrated > sound seems to fit the bill well. My brother has an older machine > (circa 2000) with integrated audio. The sound tends to distort under > high CPU loads (e.g. when playing a game), and this has made me wary > of integrated solutions. Today, it seems as if manufacturers have > gotten around this problem (otherwise, I suppose, reviewers would > complain about it), and I find myself again considering integrated > audio. The Gigabyte board, for example, uses the same chipset as the > Sound Blaster PCI 128, which isn't too shabby. > > Another feature of the Gigabyte board is integrated ethernet. Most of > the boards in the review with integrated ethernet use the VIA chipset > for networking. I am wary of these -- I get the feeling that these > rely on the CPU just like a winmodem (I'm only speculating, though). > The Gigabyte board, on the other hand, uses a Realtek 8100BL, which is > of the same family as the 8139 (which I've been using for the past few > years without any problem). > > Thanks for the help! > > -- > Sridhar Dhanapalan > > "If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a > lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system." > -- Linus Torvalds > >
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
