motherboard decision help

[Randy Kelsoe]

fred smith wrote:

>Hmm. I see that on newegg it's $107. There's also one named GA 7N400-L
>that looks pretty similar for about 30 bucks less, perhaps that's the
>cheaper model to which you refer... know anything about it?
>  
>
The GA 7N400-L is basically the same mobo, without the SATA, the RAID, 
Dual Bios, and the IEEE1394 (firewire). It also uses a RealTek 8100C 
instead of the 8169 (GigaBit). The 400 Pro2 has 4 PATA interfaces, where 
the 400-L only has 2.

>Re the GA-7N400 Pro2 that you discuss above, one thing I've always
>wondered about these boards with onboard RAID,... is it possible to 
>attach additional drives to the RAID cable sockets and use them as
>ordinary (i.e., NON-RAID) drives? So that we could have more than four
>IDE drives on the system? The SATA is of no immediate use to me, I have
>no SATA drives and no prospect of buying any in the foreseeable future.
>(In fact I've a surplus of ATA drives already, with several in the range
>of 8-40 gigs lying on the "spare parts" shelf at the moment.)
>
Yes, you can disable the RAID function in BIOS. If you need more than 2 
PATA's, you might want to go with the 7N400 Pro2, which has 2 SATA's and 
4 PATA's.
 
    
http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/ComparisonSheet_ChipsetType_nForce2+Ultra400.htm