Difference between 7N400 PRO /7N400 PRO Nforce2

Hi,

I trying to figure out what the difference is between 7N400 PRO and the
7N400 PRO2 as far as concerned the performance of the Media and
Communications Processor(MCP) for 7N400 PRO2 and Media and Communications
Processor - Turbo (MCP-T) for the 7N400 PRO.

Does anyone now?



If I read the manual carefully, I like to move my excising setup from a
Promise Fasttrack 100 on MSI KT4V with XP2400+ (standard locked) to either
the 7N400 PRO or 7N400 PRO2 with the following setup:

IDE RAID 0 span 1 (IDE3+4 master) 2* Maxtor 40GB (5400 rpm, 2mb cache) as
boot and extra space harddisk
IDE RAID 0 span 2 (IDE3+4 slave) 2* Maxtor 80GB (7200 rpm, 2mb cache, liquid
bearing) extra space harddisk with several partitions

SATA RAID 0 2* Maxtor 120GB (SATA, 8MB cache, 7200rpm)

IDE 1 - Liteon DVD writer
IDE 2 - Liteon DVD ROM

I assume I have used al my IDE/SATA then, but it is possible or not?

Does this mainboard unlock the my chip actually, or do I still have to
manually unlock my chip?

thanks

Brian

 

You are correct in your configuration. You can put up to 4 IDE disks
on the GigaRAID (IDE 3/4) channels and one disk each on the SATA
channels.

Having benchmarked the GigaRAID (IDE3/4) on this board as well as
seeing what other people have posted, I was very disappointed. IDE
RAID 0 ran slower than a single, non-RAID IDE drive. You do RAID 0
for performance or to get the effect of one large disk from several
small disks. If you are going to partition the RAID 0 array anyway,
then why not just run each disk as a separate partition on IDE 1/2 and
forget RAID 0?
I would also use the fastest disk(s) (7200RPM and 8MB cache)as the
boot disk since that's where most of your activity will be.

As for the SATA RAID, I had nothing but trouble with it. I was using
WD 800JB 80GB IDE disks with Rockethead 100 SATA converters in a RAID
0 array. The SATA subsystem would periodically just stop accessing one
of the RAID disks. I've had to revert to just running a single disk on
IDE 1.