Question about KT-7 Raid

[Smellfunny]

I am about to buy a new MB/cpu. I am looking at the Abit KT-7 Raid and have two questions. 1) Should I order a 1.1 Ghz and stick with one 20 GB HD or would I be better off with a 1.0 Ghz and (2) 20 GB HD setup in raid mode 0? I can only afford the 1.1 by itself or the 1.0 with the extra HD. 2) Will the MB be capable of handling up to 8 IDE products if I am not using it for raid purposes? Like a cdr, dvd, cd-rom, and 2 Hard drives(but not in raid mode)

Thanks

 

[rmd2001]

You better get 1Ghz and two hard drives. Difference between 1 and 1.1G is very small. You can use 8 IDE with this board(with or without RAID). I have 2 HD on RAID with ATA100 as master on IDE 3 and 4 and CD and CDRW as masters on IDE1 and 2. Works great.

 

[jd in IL]

Depends on what you want. Yes the ATA100 channels can be utilized without Raid, at least it works for me. Yes you can have two devices on each ATA100 channel, but be warned it might slow down to the speed of the slower device. Is the 20gig you have currently at least ATA66? If you want to utilize the Raid function you need(for best results) at least 2 identical drives. At best this will yeild about 2000 points in SiSoft Disk score. A good ATA66 7200rpm drive will be close on the IDE Raids heals. With your CPU choice, it depends on if your going to overclock and what final speed is your goal. 1.1Ghz would be my choice, even if you don't overclock, it's still pretty darn fast.

 

[Smellfunny]

Well I have a IBM Ata66 20 GB now 7200 rpm and it is very fast. I was thinking of getting a ata-100 20 GB 7200 rpm IBM as well. I just bought a ATI All-in-one radeon and was going to raid the two drives if it was a lot faster or if not just use the new HD for recording TV, movies, etc...

 

[JustStarting]

1 vote for the 1ghz and twin hdd's.

 

[Pederv]

Something to keep in mind if you setup a RAID 0 system. The seek time on your RAID system will be slower than the seek time of your slowest hard drive, you see the performance increase because the transfer speed increases by 20 to 60%. So if you don't mind waiting a millisecond or so more, but want your video to run seamless, RAID it.

 

[Technosnob]

Go with the raid, only if you can attach only one raid drive on each raid channel (both master drives, no slaves). If you have them sharing a channel with each other, or other devices, you will take a large speed hit. If you need to attach 8 devices and share the raid channels, don't bother with the raid. My opinion is to go with the raid and eliminate some of the extra IDE stuff. You should also be able to get at least 1100 out of the 1000 by going with a 110 fsb. This will even give you better performance that the 1100 at 100 fsb. I am having great success with a 900 using a 10 multiplier and a 110fsb. Very fast and stable. Plan to have problems with USB devices with this chipset if you have any. Especially video and scanner devices.