Which board?

[thecornflake]

Imoved this post from the Abit section as I've added a couple of non-Abit boards I found.

I'm replacing core components in my homebuild system and trying to find a motherboard that has the following at a budget up to about £100 -

IDE connection to transfer data/initially boot from IDE HDD (essential)
SATA connections for new SATA HDD
PCI-Express graphics
Core 2 DUO processor
DDR2 RAM (up to 800 if poss, not fussed about having 1066)
Able to run XP Pro without too much messing around with boot disks and drivers.

I know most of these will come with a Core 2 DUO board anyway.

I'm not fussed about overclocking too much, stability and reliability is more what I'm looking for. I was looking at the Abit FP-IN9 but can't find much info on it. I also found the Abit AB9 Pro for £90, this seems to fit the bill but I was wondering how good it is compared with the FP-IN9 or others around the £90 mark.

I also found the Asus P5B for £63, presumably this doesn't have as many features as the ones above but they may not be things I'd need anyway.

My last one is the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 - I read a good review here on the DS3 and presumably this is the follow up, but it's abit more than the others at £107. I'm willing to pay this if it's worth the extra.

 

[BUFF]

Let's do this in reverse :twisted:
If you are prepared to pay £107 for a DS4 then you're prepared to pay £112 for an AB9 QuadGT?
I had a DS4 & it's a nice board but I'm not sorry that I switched to a QuadGT.
However, it doesn't sound like you need what they offer over & above cheaper boards like the DS3 or the basic AB9 (£80).
The DS3 overclocks better but imo the AB9 has more worthwhile features for the average user (firewire, far superior hardware & fan monitoring/control).

Since Intel removed support on the chipset any 965 mobo is going to have an addon IDE controller & that adds a little complexity to things.
650i boards like the FP-IN9 or the P5N-E have native IDE support which makes things slightly simpler.

 

[thecornflake]

How does the add on controller/native support for IDE work? Presumably I will need to do something to the ones with add on controllers to get my IDE drive working.

 

[BUFF]

you usually need to supply a driver (usually from a floppy using F6 during OS install) for Windows to recognise an addon controller.
Where the fun can come is that several mobo mfrs no longer supply the floppies but instead have utilities on the system CD to create the floppies.
Which is great unless you only have a system with a 965 & an IDE optical - how can you create a floppy for the IDE controller driver when you only have an IDE optical that needs a driver for the controller to work ...?

 

[thecornflake]

How does the add on controller/native support for IDE work? Presumably I will need to do something to the ones with add on controllers to get my IDE drive working.

 

[thecornflake]

you usually need to supply a driver (usually from a floppy using F6 during OS install) for Windows to recognise an addon controller.
Where the fun can come is that several mobo mfrs no longer supply the floppies but instead have utilities on the system CD to create the floppies.
Which is great unless you only have a system with a 965 & an IDE optical - how can you create a floppy for the IDE controller driver when you only have an IDE optical that needs a driver for the controller to work ...?

In the end I went for a MSI P6N, which I think has native IDE support as it's the 650i chipset. However, with the issue above I've got a laptop with CD and floppy drives anyway so I would be able to use this to create the floppy.