20080503 Upgrade Questions

20080503 Upgrade Questions:
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H:

AMD 780G Chipset
Radeon Hybrid Graphics onboard
AMD Phenom Quad Core 9550 X4 CPU
Optional MSI GE Force 6800 DDR3 250 MB Use if better than Integrated?
Raid 0 2-Disk Bootable 4 Partitions 3 NTFS & Linux

1. Can Raid setup be done with USB drive (memory stick etc.) instead of a floppy? I’d prefer not to install a floppy unless necessary, and think the bios setup or boot preferences menus might work for installing raid II 0 drivers with windows xp . When installing windows xp you have to hit F6 to load raid drivers from a floppy, but I’d think doing it from a memory stick or cd drive should work, right?

2. I’m thinking about trying multi-booting xp pro 32 and 64, along with Linux Ubuntu. Any problems, or preferred order of insallation? I’m currently running xp pro 32, and so maybe I should start with that, and then try the Pro 64 and Linux installs. That sound OK?

3. Graphics card or not? This MB has a new integrated ATI Radeon Hybrid AGP, and I’m planning on installing 4 GB of 800 Ram, so there should be plenty to share. But I currently have a GE Force 6800 PCI Express card that I could install, if I could figure out which one would work better. Any thoughts about what, if any, graphics card upgrade would be needed to boost onboard graphics performance in a cost effective way?

I'm just about ready to power up, so any comments would be appreciated.