Crucial Stock 512MB PC2100 modules

[Paddy]

£112 per stick!

[mrtj1]

jesus! i though that ddr was supposed to be almost as cheap as sd-ram? hope the prices come down by the time i get my new comp.

[GT98]

Tell me about it...DDR RAM prices have gone up like 80% in the past 2 weeks...Kyle at HardOCP is staying its an artifical price increase because of Christmas. I was gonna get my old man 512mb of SDRAM but I'm thinking about getting it from someone else. I was even gonna treat myself to another 512mb to goto 1GB of memory for the hell of it but spending nearly $200 for all that is too much!

But then again I remember the days of when 2x 4MB Memory went for $300 bucks!


Scott

[Wombat]

From what I hear here at HP, this isn't just a Christmas increase. There may be some component of that here, but RAM is going to go up in price again.

[mrtj1]

oh great! i was going to buy a new athlon system when the 2000+ comes out and put about a gig and a half of ddr 2100 in there. if prices stay like this i am pretty much screwed cos no way will i be able to buy a whole new system (exp monitor) and that much for the ram. not on my student loan. i really hope the prices drop soon.

oh btw does anyone remember what the mobo was featuring the kt266a chip that won the battle of the boards on tomshardware a while ago? or if someone can suggest me a better mobo then please do so. bearing in mind it has to have 4 ide ports and be fast as f... since i cap a lot and so do a lot of video processing and 10 hours a night with my 1ghz tbird is a little tedious. worse if i cap more.

[Wombat]

If you're doing video cap, I wouldn't be using onboard connectors for that. Get a real PCI card.

[mrtj1]

i have a g400 tv now but am almost ready to buy a radeon aiw 8500 dv. why pci tho?

[Wombat]

Because the PCI IDE controllers (if that's where the confusion is) are much more robust and full-featured than the extra chips that are on motherboards. Look around here in GH, and you'll get a lot of posts about cheap but quality PCI IDE cards. Don't trust those "MB RAID" controllers.

[mrtj1]

ahh right. well right now i have a kt7-raid and tbh that works just fine. i have an 80 gig maxtor and an older 30 gig WD hard disk taking one port each. i capture to the maxtor and it's fine. i get 18 meg/sec on average with hard drive speed tests on it.

i know i could buy a non raid board and get an pci ide card but i also have loads of pci cards and depending on how many pci slots that particular board would give me, i may not have enough left over to place a controller there. besides i also have a 20 gig IBM scsi drive i cap to sometimes (if there's space on it).

do you have any recommendations as to which mobo i should look at?

[Pace]

mrtj1: Just think though, if you'd bought a KT7 non RAID, you could take your high quality PCI RAID card into your new system, which will save you £20/$30 each time you upgrade your board. I have a SA6R-RAID, and I'll never buy a RAID board again. I'll probably never buy PCI RAID either, but that's another issue

P.

[mrtj1]

Originally posted by Pace
mrtj1: Just think though, if you'd bought a KT7 non RAID, you could take your high quality PCI RAID card into your new system, which will save you £20/$30 each time you upgrade your board. I have a SA6R-RAID, and I'll never buy a RAID board again. I'll probably never buy PCI RAID either, but that's another issue

P.

if i had tho, it would support ata 100. what happens when the new ones suport 133 like the one for the new maxtor drives?

[Paddy]

You can play the waiting game forever.

ATA 100 is a marketing ploy. If you are after performance, go SCSI.

[Wombat]

Actually Paddy, ATA/133 does have differences. IDE performance would probably be just fine for him, however ATA/133 adds the extra addressing needed for very-large drive support.

However, with that said, mrtj1 doesn't have a valid argument here.

if i had tho, it would support ata 100. what happens when the new ones suport 133 like the one for the new maxtor drives?

So you'd rather buy a new $150 motherboard rather than a $35 card for your $120 motherboard? Your question applies to onboard controllers just as much as it does add-on controllers.

[mrtj1]

as far as getting a controller card goes, i would go for one, if i wasnt happy with the performance of the extra 2 ide ports on my kt7-raid. but i dont have a problem with them. they work as well for me as the first 2, and i have never had a problem with them in over a year.

btw, i do have a scsi drive, 20 gig 10000rpm ibm. and i do cap to that.

the next hard drive i will be buying (if i can find one) is the 100gig WD drive with the 8mb cache. i heard the performance was very good with it. i need a new big drive anyway since my 80gig maxtor is staying with this machine when i buy a new one.

i think the board i will buy will eithe be a
Soltek SL-75DRV2
or a
Soyo SY-K7V (Dragon Plus!)

the soltek only has 2 ide ports but the soyo has 4, and according to tomshardware guide has slightly better performance.

feedback?