upgrading from Intel845 mobo

[andy-in-ottawa]

I built my current computer 2 1/2 years ago to edit video and now want to upgrade so I can handle Standard Definition TV (roughly 25 MB/sec) and the new HDTV video, going in and out of the hard drives.

The big necessities for me are the FSB (I want at least 800 MHz) and SATA drives in a RAID configuration. I don't care about bleeding edge.

Here's what I have now:
Gigabyte GA-8IRXP mobo with Intel Brookdale i845D chipset, socket 478
(6 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 CNR, 3 DIMM, Audio, Lan)
Intel Pentiun 4 1.8 GHz
2 x 512 MB DDR SDRAM PC2100

What I'd like to get is:
a 2.8 GHz or greater Pentium processor,
a mobo with 800 MHz FSB and capable of four SATA hard drives and 3 IDE drives (Might need a SATA PCI card to do this??)
2 Gigs of high-performance RAM (Are 4 x 512 MB sticks OK??)

I want to put the four SATA drives into two striped 2-drive combos, put the source video on one RAID setup and render it to the 2nd RAID setup.

Does anybody know of a mobo that could do some or all of what I want? Thanks for your time.

[saphalline]

If I may make a suggestion? There are several mobo's based on the i915P Express chipset that would handle your needs no problem. They have 4 SATA ports for RAID, but they also have two extra IDE channels in RAID (in addition to the one normal IDE channel provided by the chipset). Might not it make more upgrading sense to put two SATA hard drives in one RAID array, and two cheap IDE hard drives on the IDE RAID? You'd still have your two RAID arrays, but you'd also have two SATA ports left over for future upgrading.

Just a thought.

EDIT - you know what else I forgot?

Welcome to the PC Guide Forums!!! :D

[andy-in-ottawa]

Thanks for the welcome. I really appreciate the attention to detail and level of expertise that I see in these forums!

I don't think I'm ready for the new Intel chipset. I checked it out at tomshardware and it seems to hold a lot of promise, at least it promises a lot. I would prefer to let things mature for a year to allow the motherboard, RAM and graphics card manufacturers ramp up production, get their own product line in place, put out some good mid-range products, and then see what the feedback is from the user community. Hey, this might even take two years to happen!

What can I say? I'm cautious, I'm Canadian, my dollar is only worth 80 UScents. So if I replace my processor, RAM and mobo every 2+ years, and if I stay with mature products, at least this is a more affordable habit.

Back to my original question - I want a mobo that will provide 800 MHz FSB (my preference is a Northwood Pentium) and can carry two x 2 SATA RAID 0 hard drive arrays plus 3 more IDE drives. Any sugestions?

I guess you could say I'm shopping for an Oldsmobile - solid performance but zero flash.

[Steve]

Boy, you sure there's nothing else you'd like this motherboard to do? ;)

I feel the same way about the 865 chipset. It's as well tested as you can get. A known item. (I liked the 845 too.) I think you are kind of pushing it, but it can be done. Take a look at the ASUS "P4P800-E Deluxe" HERE (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-492&depa=0) . I haven't used this board so I can't give a recommendation but it looks like it might work for you.

[saphalline]

So if I replace my processor, RAM and mobo every 2+ years, and if I stay with mature products, at least this is a more affordable habit.
Ask for whatever you want, it's your money. :D And I can understand where you're coming from. Not everyone jumps the gun like I do, but not everyone plays games like I do, either. ;) Doom 3, FarCry, and HL2 Plat? Been there, done that, what else you got?

I second the recommendation by Steve, that mobo looks good and performs better. Asus has some of the best high-end mobo's around - and to do what you want it to do, the mobo will have to be high-end! Stick a nice Northwood C into it, pair it up with dual-channel RAM (4 x 512MB sticks are fine), and you'll have one awesome video editing machine!

Also make sure to check the BIOS version when you get it. I recently got my BIOS updated, and boy did it make a difference! I can now use all my IDE and my SATA together for up to 6 drives! :D Yay for me! But on the other hand, be warned - updating the BIOS is not always the best thing to do. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" Mine was broken, so I fixed it, but if yours isn't, don't touch it.

[andy-in-ottawa]

Thanks for the advice. The Asus mobo seems like what I'm asking for and the price is reasonable.

I'm not a gamer but for video my experience is that the most common bottleneck and cause of dropped frames is getting data to the processor and video card, in other words pulling it off the hard drive. That's why I'm putting the SATA drives in a RAID 0 array.

RAID 0 carries the risk of drive failure but I always keep copies of the original source material on a separate drive and the instruction file (NLE editing is non-destructive, you basically construct a set of instructions that you then use to render the finished product at the end of the process) is on a separate drive so I can easily recover my workflow.

Many thanks. As we say in Canada, un grand merci.

[saphalline]

the most common bottleneck and cause of dropped frames is getting data to the processor and video card
Eh, sorta. The vid card makes very little impact, unless it's older onboard video which can drag the whole system down. Depends on what you use to put video into the computer in the first place, but modern vid cards sport dual 400MHz RAMDACs, so that's plenty. The onboard RAM and 3D graphical power aren't even touched, so they have no impact. Most of the number-crunching then falls to the CPU and RAM, and then the hard drive.

Hard drive performance itself has skyrocketed lately, far exceeding the paltry 25MB/s you require. A single 7200rpm 8MB cache SATA drive, for instance, can often hit 50-55MB/s, so a RAID 0 array of two of these could easily hit 80-85MB/s. Also, you might want to experiment with stripe size, as that can make a big impact on RAID 0 performance. A stripe size of 16-64KB is often best for a two-drive RAID 0 array, so test these values to see which one performs best with that particular mobo.

For price, 160GB seems to be the sweet spot right now at less than $100 (USD) per drive. I figure this is important to anyone buying 4 hard drives! :D For a bit more storage, 250GB is also very reasonable at about $130, tho it will cost more for drives boasting SATA II, NCQ, and 16MB caches. These things are nice to have, but you don't seem like an early-adopter :p so ignore them.

I don't think you'll have to worry too much about drive failure. Sure, RAID 0 doubles the odds, but still, hard drives today carry 3-year warranties. That shows a lot of confidence in the hardware!

Yes, I've heard you use a lot of French up there. Not a bad thing, but certainly quite amusing when reading Canadian signs. Everything twice. ;)