Steve Scrimpshire Posted July 26, 2003 Report Share Posted July 26, 2003 What is the difference between these two MoBos? http://www.microstorm.com/hardware/partinf...-id-478139.html <- Soyo Dragon Ultra (Platinum) K7VX4 http://www.microstorm.com/hardware/partinf...-id-478138.html <- Soyo Dragon Ultra (Black) K7VX4B Second one also seen here: http://www.motherboardhq.com/hardware/part...fo-id-4604.html I cannot seem to find a good description of the second one as far as features. I'm assuming it has the same? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted July 26, 2003 Report Share Posted July 26, 2003 Try the soyo sight. It looks like there is a dragon and a dragon platinum. I tried the side-by-side comparison page, but it wouldn't come up! It looks like "black" might be the regular board. I can't think there is much of a difference, maybe included software utilities? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted July 26, 2003 Report Share Posted July 26, 2003 Platinum has # Optional serial ATA support (rated at 150 MB/sec) through the use of riser cards # Four independent channels for 8 IDE devices (2 for RAID) # Provides IrDA with optional cable for transceiver these are pretty standard upgrades from a basic board. Maybe even the usb2 but that's pretty basic these days, and because of my KT400/usb2 I have to boot ML9.1 with noapic to get a usbmouse. I just compiled usb2 out of the kernel and I still have to do noapic at boot to get a /dev/usbmouse in ML9.1 (yes, with usb2 disabled in the bios). The Black is basic, though I'd bet it has usb2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted July 26, 2003 Author Report Share Posted July 26, 2003 I could not get a view of either one from the Soyo site to come up nor a side-by-side comparison...that's why I asked. Thanks for the info. I figured the more expensive one was the way to go. So, am I assuming by your post, bvs, that you have a Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted July 26, 2003 Report Share Posted July 26, 2003 Actually the Black does have ATA ...it says it in the decsription. RAID always causes a higher price/name (platinum). More expensive is the way to go if you want raid or IrDA support. Other than that no, go with the black. Then there's the question....what level raid? I'm no expert there but I know enough to no not to bother with the lower levels of raid. No, I have the Abit KD7, Via KT400 (80USD @ Fry's Electronics). I looked at the Soyo's in fact they had the Platinum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted July 26, 2003 Author Report Share Posted July 26, 2003 After doing some more research, it looks like the first one (Platinum) also has more USB ports (2 rear and 4 front) and a bonus pack of software/hardware included with it. Not sure about the Black. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted August 8, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 Ok, so I've been looking some more. I've always been an AMD fan, but someone I work with told me that Pentium 4s are better for multitasking. So, I was looking into P4 MoBos and I located this: http://shop.store.yahoo.com/upsource/775854.html Does anyone have any experience with these as far as Linux goes? Is this a good price? My setup, hopefully, would be a Pentium IV 2.4 (533 FSB) with 512 MB of PC2700 RAM. Along with this, I would have my hardware from my old setup (in my signature). TIA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted August 8, 2003 Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 P4 far better than XP for multitasking? ???? Sounds like FUD to me. There is no way that without benchmarking etc anyone can distinguish a P4 box from an athlon box (of similar rating/speed) by just using it, if properly / similarly set up and with the same other hardware (graphics card notably). I doubt anyone without a stopwatch (without keeping time) would actually be able to tell the difference between a P4 2.4GHz, an Athlon 2400+ and a P4 2.8 or even 3.2GHz, whereas your wallet will certainly feel the difference. Take the cheaper one, and add 1GB of mem instead of 512MB. Not having to use any swap makes much much more difference, the best way to seriously cripple a P4 is to put on only 256MB (or worse: 128MB ! ) of ram, and then open and use loads of programs at the same time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted August 8, 2003 Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=6318 aRTee and others give good detailed info at the link above. Also, IMHO, multitasking is more of the kernels job than anything else. Finally, the 2.6 kenel will allow itself to be interrupted when busy, which will help linux multitasking greatly.....I hope. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted August 8, 2003 Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 My general experience is to go for the most basic. Ive had tons with an IRda but never bought one. I feel the same with HW raid etc. I find unless I go out and buy it all together I never by the little addons... and by the time I think of it its easier to pick up a PCI HW raid controller etc. Jusy my 10c. Same for the Athalon vs P4 ... Even looking at the official benchmarks on SPEC I can't see justification. Ive currently got a Duron 1300 and Athalon 1400+ (1250) . Prices have come down pretty low for the ghigher spec Athalons but I'm still limited by the MOBO's so it looks like Ill probably wait out on the Operon prices dropping and upgrade the MOBO at the same time. END::::: Follows discussion of whether to buy HW raid built in:::::::::: Whilst Im at it I can put out my SCSI card and stick it in the new one. The benefit of it not being built into the MOBO. The benefit of RAID is mutliple. Data security is obviously important but RAID can give big performance gains too. HW caching is intrinsically unsafe but provides good speed if you find a card you can stick memory into. I haven't done this on a PC since the Vesa bus though when 16MB cache was huge..... Back in thiose days I had a promise DC4030VL (wow I remember the model). If they offer anything today I'd want at least 256MB on the HW cache. Disks come with 8MB :D now WOW I haven't experimented with the PC bus architecture for speed on RAID but I did on SUN servers. By example I changed some very expensive but old RSM2000 HW raid cabinets running Raid 5 to a bunch of JBODS running Raid 0+1 Bear in mind this is 5 years ago for the RAW figures. Performance went from 15MB/sec to 200MB/sec. This could have been doubled a year later by upgrading to SCSI U3 but we couldn't see the point for what they were needed for. Incidently they originally got 11MB/sec but this was increased to 15MB/sec by removing the cache. It wasn't big enough for the files we used and hence actually slowed them down. The specs might be old but the point is good SW raid can be better than poor HW raid. The 0+1 calculation is trivial. You don't miss the CPU cycles and achieving the same on HW raid was much more expensive. Because disk and processor prices continue to fall this makes HW RAID less attractive today unless you really need it. However I have yet to see if the bus on a PC motherboard can hack these transfer rates. The Machine was not powerfull by todays CPU standards. 2x450Mhz CPU's , roughly equaivalent to a couple of 1Ghz Pentium Xeons ... but the backplane bandwidth was able to cope with much more than a PC with a similar CPU power. Ultimately this is the endpoint for the 'traditional' Intel southbridge. A single PCI bus will never have throughput above 33Mhzx32bits/sec. A server grade might have a 64 bit bus thus doubling performance but I think we will soon be seeing a switched Intel/AMD Southbridge design to complement the 64 bit architectures similar to the Advances made of the Northbridge for memory BW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted August 10, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 10, 2003 Ok. This is what I've decided on: This MoBo: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?...4&refer=bizrate and an AMD processor. Either an XP 2500+ or an XP 2600+. My question about the two processors is that the 2500+ has a Barton cache (whatever that means) (512KB) and the 2600+ does not (256KB). The 2500+ runs at 1.83 MHz. I see conflicting reports about the cache sizes and FSB of each. The 2500+ is either 266 or 333 FSB, while the 2600+ is supposedly 333 FSB. I think that the Barton means that it has an L2 cache, while the 2600+ does not. Like I said before, I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy. :-) Anyway, can someone spell out to me what the benefits of each one are and whether the increase in MHz of the 2600+ is better or the 512KB cache of the 2500+ is better. I'm assuming that the increase in CPU speed is better. Am I right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted August 10, 2003 Report Share Posted August 10, 2003 In your two choices for chips, Barton is better. The speed increase will not equal the performance increase of the Barton. Check it out Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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