Gigabyte GA-7n400 Pro 2 motherboard

Anybody use this board? I'm thinking of picking it up for my secondary
system. I picked this out out because I see it has 4 IDE ports and I need
this system to be able to run 8 IDE devices for now, plus it has SATA for
future use.

So, am I correct in assuming that the bottom two IDE ports work like a
normal IDE controller and can run 4 IDE drives?

Yes all the raid controllers I have used will run hdds in non raid mode.
They might not support DVD's or cdburners tho.
I got a Sil680 controller to run my DVD-R and CDR , and it really sucks the
DVD's skip and the 52x burner will only burn at 32, both devices will only
run at "Multi word DMA mode 2" on this crappy controller.
I got the latest bios for it and the latest drivers and it still don't work.
And I am not putting my HDD's on it as I use a AMD mpx chipset that has a
write speed limit of 20mbps on the 2nd pci bus, I even tried it in the 66mhz
64bit pci bus and the computer would not even boot with it in that one.
So I guess I will put the card into my stock and sell it next time someone
wants a cheap pci ATA 133 controller.
One of the same models is working in my friends SIS 645 P4 system ok, he has
his HDD's running off it and his DVD-R CDR and DVD-Rom connected to the
mainboard's ide ports.
The difference between the Sil680 ATA 133 and the Sil680 Raid controller is
the Bios/Firmware, they can be changed over by simply flashing the type of
firmware that you want.
"Pug Fugley" <> wrote in message
news:zE9Ab.673$ k.net...
> Anybody use this board? I'm thinking of picking it up for my secondary
> system. I picked this out out because I see it has 4 IDE ports and I need
> this system to be able to run 8 IDE devices for now, plus it has SATA for
> future use.
>
> So, am I correct in assuming that the bottom two IDE ports work like a
> normal IDE controller and can run 4 IDE drives?
>
>

hi

yes. (but not atapi devices) not the best mb and bios is not good (made to
easy) no smart (disabled by bios, nonchangeable)
stable tho.

coco

"Pug Fugley" <> skrev i meddelandet
news:zE9Ab.673$ k.net...
> Anybody use this board? I'm thinking of picking it up for my secondary
> system. I picked this out out because I see it has 4 IDE ports and I need
> this system to be able to run 8 IDE devices for now, plus it has SATA for
> future use.
>
> So, am I correct in assuming that the bottom two IDE ports work like a
> normal IDE controller and can run 4 IDE drives?
>
>

As you have posted this to a O/C forum I would suggest that this board is
not the best for those purposes.

IIRC when I had this board, lasted for two days before returning, you
can't....

Have no manual control over the voltages within the bios, in increments.
No manual control over the multiplier settings from within the bios.
Continually over volting of the Vcore - mine was 1.73v rather than default
of 1.65v.
Dual bios feature - not sure on the usefulness of this as I got into a
situation of needing to remove the battery to get the thing to reboot - no
reset cmos jumper.

The Pro board has been considered to be a better choice than the Pro 2...!!!



--
Regards

Morgan

My noisy drive is noisy no more...
www.flyinglizard.freeserve.co.uk

On Sat, 06 Dec 2003 00:45:19 GMT, "Pug Fugley" <> wrote:

>Anybody use this board? I'm thinking of picking it up for my secondary
>system. I picked this out out because I see it has 4 IDE ports and I need
>this system to be able to run 8 IDE devices for now, plus it has SATA for
>future use.
>
>So, am I correct in assuming that the bottom two IDE ports work like a
>normal IDE controller and can run 4 IDE drives?
>

FWIW: I have 3 f these boards and like it overall; from the features
for the buck standpoint, it's tough to beat.

Regarding your specific question:

Yes, you can run a total of 8 IDE devices with this board. I even had
a CD-ROM and a DVD-Writer connected (somewhere) on the bottom 2 and
they seemed to work just fine there also.

The ONLY 'problem' I came across using IDE3 and 4 in terms of hosting
my CD-ROM and DVD-Writer was that I could not seem to find a way to
BOOT from a CD (eg. during an OS install) if they were connected
there. So, I moved them to IDE2. (No big deal).

I have 5 HD's on my system (in addition to my CD-ROM and DVD-Writer)
(480GB Total):

1. One drive on IDE 1 (Primary Master; 'Boot').

2. 3 more on IDE3/4.

3. A fifth, a 160GB drive, running off a PCI HD Controller; ONLY used
the controller since I could not seem to get IDE3/4 to enable me to
use the FULL 160 GB space. (I was 'stuck', 'seeing' only something in
the 133 GB range; a common problem even today with most boards).

Overall, I really like the board. VERY stable; prob the best I've ever
had from the stability standpoint. (FWIW; I'm running an XP2500+ OCd
via a 200MHz FSB setting to XP3200+ perf levels with 100% reliability
over the last 6 weeks since I got the board.

"CoCo" <> wrote in message
news:43gAb.8099$...
> hi
>
> yes. (but not atapi devices) not the best mb and bios is not good (made to
> easy) no smart (disabled by bios, nonchangeable)
> stable tho.

Well I could really care less about overclocking, this is just for my
secondary system. I have a chance to replace the Soyo Dragon VIA board and I
want to get an Nforce2 Pro 400 based board.

So, I'd be happy to take suggestions for other boards based on the Nforce2
Pro 400 with 4 IDE ports and a SATA controller built in that doesn't go over
$115. I'm looking at this Gigabyte simply because it's the only one I've
found that meets my needs.









>
> coco
>
> "Pug Fugley" <> skrev i meddelandet
> news:zE9Ab.673$ k.net...
> > Anybody use this board? I'm thinking of picking it up for my secondary
> > system. I picked this out out because I see it has 4 IDE ports and I
need
> > this system to be able to run 8 IDE devices for now, plus it has SATA
for
> > future use.
> >
> > So, am I correct in assuming that the bottom two IDE ports work like a
> > normal IDE controller and can run 4 IDE drives?
> >
> >
>
>

"Pug Fugley" <> wrote in message
news:zE9Ab.673$ k.net...
> Anybody use this board? I'm thinking of picking it up for my secondary
> system. I picked this out out because I see it has 4 IDE ports and I need
> this system to be able to run 8 IDE devices for now, plus it has SATA for
> future use.

I was tempted by this board but due to a crap 7VAXP I decided to go for an
Abit NF7-S v2.0 and add a PCI card for IDE devices should I require it. It
comes with an SATA to IDE adapter so you can run IDE devices on the SATA
channel.

I also wanted decent sound and the 7N400 uses AC'97 codec which is crap. The
Abit NF7-S uses soundstorm which is nearly as good as Soundblaster audigy.