No experience with that particular board but I do know Knightfly is waiting on the manual for it and dont know if he ever got it or not..both of us tried to get the manual for it to look it over but couldnt find it or had to contact Abit in order for them to send one out to us!! Lame as that may be..
Anyhue...the board looks nice but we still have yet to find out if it supports the northwood .013 micron technology or not and if there is an updated BIOS that will support that! That's one of the things Steve(knightfly) found out for us..
I would hope that it does indeed support it..
The Abit board has the Hi Point ATA133 RAID which can be configured as RAID 0/1 and 0+1! Which is ideal for audio...Abit has always been a great board and is one of the best alongside Asus..I've always been an Asus person(ANUS Club!!!) and I probably will try different boards sooner or later but for now I stick with what I know works...ok, so I try new things every once in while(like the P4S333 board!!)
I'm sure Steve will put his two cents in as well soon!!
Opus

Hey Custom - I think most of the rest of the people on this forum are just following the crowd due to lack of knowledge/confidence/masochism... The BD7-raid made it into my top 3 MoBo's, and may still get the brass ring if Soyo doesn't get me a manual on their Fire Dragon MoBo pretty soon - The Soyo has all the stuff the BD-7 has, plus internal and external firewire on board, plus a header for a memory card reader I may or may not need.

The one thing all DDR MoBo's I've checked out so far seem to have in common: DON'T SLEEP when choosing ram! It seems that most (if not all) MoBo's with 3 DDR slots have rules that are just a little more crazy than the ones for English usage... IE: Slot 1 can take single or dual side ram, slot 2 can take single or dual but if slot 3 is used slot 2 only uses single side, slot 3 is single side only, etc - I probably got most of that wrong, just noticed it about 5 minutes ago and need to re-read a few times. Try searching this thread for the word "raid", you'll find some of my other comments on the particular brand of on-board raid controller, etc.

Bottom line - I see no major faults with the BD-7 raid MoBo, but remember this is still coming from research, NOT actual use. Also remember that on at least one site (RME) there is a warning about raid/audio usage, in which they had to "throttle back" the raid speed to get rid of audio glitches (PCI bus overload) When you do that, you may as well just use the additional connectors as extra IDE ports. (Still useful, but not as compelling)
I personally will still get one of the onboard raid MoBo's, because I am designing a DAW that will have close to half a TeraByte of internal storage plus two more 80 gig removables, so I need all 8 IDE devices that can be run from 4 IDE channels. I will use the firewire interface for optical drives inside the control room (hub) with the computer/ups/balanced power outside. Once I finalize all the details, I will build two machines, different only in case, # of drives - The second one will be for soft synths/samplers/MIDI, and will probably have just two of the 80 GB drives.

Hey Opus - You either had more coffee than me or you type faster - We both must have been "Columbus-ing" at the same time!

Cus, Opus, OIBSP - (That last stands for Other Interested But Shy People) Actually, I am still waiting info on BOTH the BD-7Raid and the Soyo. I will be calling both companies today to see if they can get off their ass and do what they promise. ABit's site sucks for some downloads, Soyo's North American site doesn't have the file, their Taiwan site does but is slower than a broken Commodore Vic 20 (operation keeps timing out before finishing) Soyo promised me a hard copy 3 weeks ago (to be sent out within 3 days, guess the pony (express) either died or found greener pastures), so I guess it's time for some phone sex (fuck you, gimme a manual)

Anyway, if it's business as usual, don't hold yer breath - As soon as I get new info, I will post it here, probably under a new thread so people can find it. Also, when (if) I actually start the build, I will use my new Nikon 885 to take pix. This should be an interesting machine, if you've been following my other posts - When I can, I'll find a place to upload all details including pix.

Toms Hardware, just yesterday posted this article on 19 motherboards with our fav Intel 845 controller chip. LINK

The Abit BD7- RAID was reviewed.

I like Toms Hardware for its insight and honest reviews.
Anandtech is in the toilet(Anand is only 19, and probably in his "all you can eat"pussy stage. :D He's been slacking off :roll:

Man....533Mhz FSB...god friggen hoogli pooo pie momma mia fishies.....I fucking hate technology!!!! It's friggen moving too fast for me!! Oh well....I'm a happy man as it is!!!
So there :p
Opus

Wow!! What a review. I'm half tempted to be the guiniepig and try the ABIT BD7-Raid Mobo. The Asus is in there as well, but the Abit seems to me to be a bit easier on the Oc'ing. Flexability that allows first time Oc'ers to get it right.

What to do, what to do!! Lol. Your right Opus, tech is changing to fast. When it comes to board selection, I guess it's time to shit or get off the pot.

I'll let ya know which way I'll go later today.

CustomProd :)

By the way Steve...I think it's the fact that here at work we have this coffee machine that you push a button and within seconds you have a cup of nuclear destructive speed enhancing coffee that makes a human type abnormally faster than usual!! lmao!
I'd love to try out the Abit board as well but to be honest I think my next setup is going to be Athalon based just to have it and truly compare it to the P4's.
Altho you truly cant OC an athalon system due to the RDRAM..oh well, it's still a good processor tho
Opus

Opus,

I decided to go with what is proven. Ordered the Asus P4B266-C w/aud and USB2.0 I came within a phone call of getting the Abit board, but I figured I had better go with the wisdom that you have provided. The Asus board is on it's way to me.

Now...What thoughts do you all have on Corsair Memory. I have a supplier that can sell me 2 sticks of 2700 DDR CAS2.0 333Mhz 256Meg for $50 bucks each. Should I get them too? :)

CustomProd

Originally posted by Opus2000:

Altho you truly cant OC an athalon system due to the RDRAM..oh well, it's still a good processor tho
Opus

Huh? What's RDRAM got to do with OC'ing an Athlon???

Better have another cup of that thar coffee.

Ummm...does the Asus board support 333 DDR? I'll look into that...I think you're better off running 266..It wont hurt the board to put 333 in, it'll just run at 266..or unless you OC it like us of course! lol!!
I'll get back to you on that one..Corsair should be fine tho
Opus

Nick..Nick..Nick....I guess you havent been doing your homework have you? lol!
Re-read the article on Tom's Hardware again..also I believe Knightfly(Ni!!) even mentioned that too about how RDRAM doesnt allow OC'ing!
Wouldnt just say something for the halibut ya know..snif snif..something fishy here or what?!!! lmao
Opus :D

Originally posted by Opus2000:
Nick..Nick..Nick....I guessyou havent been doing your homework have you? lol!
Re-read the article on Tom's Hardware again..also I believe Knightfly(Ni!!) even mentioned that too about how RDRAM doesnt allow OC'ing!
Wouldnt just say something for the halibut ya know..snif snif..smoething fishy here or what?!!! lmao
Opus :D

I must be missing something, or slow to get a joke or whatever. Athlons don't even use RDRAM, only P4 uses RDRAM.

The good Dr. Thomas Pabst doesn't know what the heck he's talking about when he says RDRAM won't overclock. The latest batches of production rambus, especially the 16-device PC800 Samsung RDRAM are reportedly handling 140MHz FSB speeds very well (even in excess of PC1066 spec) according to several of the OC gaming pc websites.
I just ordered some to go into the new machine I'm building, so I guess I'll find out if it's true or not.

I'm not aware of an Athlon system with RDRAM, either...

On the second note, my P4T-E/Kingston RDRAM/Costa Rica P4 1.6a at least boots and hums along with the frontside bus at 133 (ram @ 533)and the processor at 2.1-odd gigs. Haven't thrown anything heavy at it, though, as I am still waiting for Nuendo to get here. The whole thing may explode at some point, but it's a promising start!

Originally posted by Jon Best:
On the second note, my P4T-E/Kingston RDRAM/Costa Rica P4 1.6a at least boots and hums along with the frontside bus at 133 (ram @ 533)and the processor at 2.1-odd gigs.

That's about the OC speed I'm hoping to achive with mine... supposed to get delivered today by UPS but the detailed tracking info on the UPS website says it is still sitting in Dallas. I'm hoping the website is just slow to be updated and that my shipment is actually in the truck and on its way to my house as I type this.

At 133 FSB, can the PCI bus can be set to run at the standard 33MHz on the P4T-E?

If I can get 2GHz out of my new 1.6a/P4T-E with Samsung RDRAM, I'll be a very happy man.

Last nite I came across this link

http://www.ocsystem.com/

They offer a OC'd Northwood system (too much money for some of the components, wrong power supply, wrong case, etc, not my point)

My point is, if you pretend to order it, you get choices on cpu, ram, drives, etc, and one of the CPU choices is a 2.2 gHz OC'd to 3.04 gHz. These guys are also doing the 1.6a bit at the same results as Opus et al are getting, so the 3.04 gHz is probably real. The ram still runs at 552, so no gain there, just 30% faster CPU. This should translate to more plugs/eq's, etc, so I think I'll go the extra bux for the 2.2 -

Like I said, their prices are not the best, so I,m gonna wing it with the Soyo Mobo (still no manual, but a couple of bitchin' reviews) and the PC PowerCooling 450 ATX. (The BD-7 raid mobo got knocked down some by one review, forgot which one, because it supposedly DEFEATS OVERVOLTAGE when you plug in a Northwood!) That may be fixed in a BIOS update, but not as yet, so I would think OC'ing could be limited with that board.

I'm gettin' fed up with research, think I'll just go buy a bunch of shit and put it together, then bitch about it not workin'... (Shut up, tedancin, remember advice is for giving, not taking...:=))

JK, actually I think the research part is almost over, thank Neve (can't be bad stuff, spelled almost like Steve)

Gotta start chargin' more than $.02, even farming pays better than this... Steve