motherboard decision help

[Christopher Bottaro]

On Mar 14, 2004, at 1:41 AM, Randy Kelsoe wrote:
> I am using the GigaByte GA-7N400 Pro2 MB, which uses the Nvidia 
> nforce2 chipset. I'm not using any of the Nvidia drivers. This mobo 
> uses the RealTek 8169 onboard gigabit lan, and not the nforce2 lan. I 
> tried using the Nvidia drivers for the onboard sound, and they had 
> problems. Anaconda selected the intel8x0 driver for the onboard video, 
> and that works much better than the Nvidia driver. This mobo has 
> worked well with RH9 (but needed a later kernel), and has worked well 
> with FC1 right out of the box. It's almost twice the price of the 
> GA-7VT600-L, but it has SATA, RAID, and Dual Channel memory. I'm not 
> using the RAID, but SATA works (though not at full speed yet), and 
> dual channel memory is about 50% faster than single channel mode. 
> There is also a cheaper model that does not have the RAID and SATA, 
> and has a 100base T NIC.

excuse my naivety, but is dual channel memory and hardware raid OS 
transparent?

i'm looking to build a new computer also.  i can't decide if its going 
to be a windows box (for games) or a linux system.  if i can afford it, 
i want SATA, RAID 0, and dual channel memory.  if the hardware RAID is 
transparent to the OS, i'd rather do that.

a couple of questions.

1)  how do i know if dual channel memory is working?  is it OS 
transparent, or do i need to install drivers?

2)  "but SATA works (though not at full speed yet)", how do you know 
what speed its working at?

3)  how do you know if you got the RAID setup properly?

btw, i heard nforce2 has issues with linux:
http://atlas.et.tudelft.nl/verwei90/nforce2/
opinions?

thanks for the help,
-- christopher