I have been a big fan of HDTV for some time now. I have had a HiDTV Pro 2.0 HDTV PCI card on an Athlon XP based A7N8X Deluxe for quite sometime now. However, I would like to make this system a little more robust by moving Hard Drive subsystem off of the main PCI bus which tends to get saturated when my RAIDed Raptors are running at full speed. Now my understanding is that the only way to do so before PCI Express arrives is to use an Intel board which has ICH5-R support. I would like to get an Athlon 64, but my understanding is that there is no equivalent to ICH5 on AMD's side of the fence so all hard drive access will still hit the PCI bus if I choose AMD. Am I correct in this?
Assuming that my understanding of hard drive/PCI performance between AMD and Intel is correct (and please correct me if I am not), then I plan to get the Abit IC7-G as recommend from the Anandtech's March high-end buyers guide. Are there any opinions on this board? Is there one you feel is better? Is that board likely to remain on the guide for April?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts and opinions.
Assuming that my understanding of hard drive/PCI performance between AMD and Intel is correct (and please correct me if I am not), then I plan to get the Abit IC7-G as recommend from the Anandtech's March high-end buyers guide. Are there any opinions on this board? Is there one you feel is better? Is that board likely to remain on the guide for April?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts and opinions.