Re: Experience With Intel D815EEAL MotherBoard

["Rodolfo J. Paiz" <rpaiz gold guate net>]

At 3/28/01 09:37 PM -0500, you wrote:
> PS I just built an ABIT KT7A Raid system (already loaded with a MS OS) and
> was also contemplating using this type of mobo (w/o RAID), but am concerned
> about via chipset and Highpoint compatibility issues,so the I'm thinking
> intel might be a smarter choice?


My small webhosting business runs on two servers at the moment. Both have 
the Abit KT7-RAID mobos (100MHz FSB), 900MHz Athlons, 256MB RAM, and two 
(2) 20GB drives connected to the mobo's base controller. They are perfectly 
stable and fast (99.9904% uptime over 90 days now... total of three reboots 
due to user errors).

I most highly recommend the Abit board. You'll find reviews at 
www.anandtech.com also recommending this as one of the most stable boards 
out there. This, plus the cost and speed advantage of Athlon over PIII, is 
a Big Deal.

The Highpoint controllers run under Linux now, although I'm not using those 
on a *server* until they've been tested some more. RAID capability is not 
supported yet, but I'll wait. The cost difference of $15 to get a 
RAID-enabled board is so small that I felt I *had* to have it. Note that, 
even if you don't use RAID, you still get up to eight ATA/100 devices 
instead of four. That in itself is worth the $15, so I do recommend that 
you buy the RAID boards if possible.

I'm about to build new servers in a month or so, and they're all getting 
KT7A-RAID boards.

--
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz@gold.guate.net