Thinking of Intel

[mickrussom]

....

My Rules: (That work for me).

- Always use ECC memory. If it doesn't support ECC, it doesn't "work." (You wont know and silent errors will kill your system one day).

- I always use Intel original made boards. Period. All other vendors are worse at supporting the product, and Intel is fairly bad these days. By far the least worst. For example , the D975XBX2 runs hackintosh/iATKOS/Kalyway/Leopard. In fact, just about everything runs on Intel boards (freebsd, linux, solaris, etc). They are generally reference implemented and decently supported. (Worse of late for BIOS revs and bugs).

- Seagate Disks. Raptor if needed. All others (Maxtor, etc) fail.

- Marvell controllers are horrible and always fail, its a matter of time. The drivers are worse than the horrible ASIC. Disable these right away.

- Nvidia GT or GTX cards. Period.

[DMB2000uk]

....

My Rules: (That work for me).

- Always use ECC memory. If it doesn't support ECC, it doesn't "work." (You wont know and silent errors will kill your system one day).

- I always use Intel original made boards. Period. All other vendors are worse at supporting the product, and Intel is fairly bad these days. By far the least worst. For example , the D975XBX2 runs hackintosh/iATKOS/Kalyway/Leopard. In fact, just about everything runs on Intel boards (freebsd, linux, solaris, etc). They are generally reference implemented and decently supported. (Worse of late for BIOS revs and bugs).

- Seagate Disks. Raptor if needed. All others (Maxtor, etc) fail.

- Marvell controllers are horrible and always fail, its a matter of time. The drivers are worse than the horrible ASIC. Disable these right away.

- Nvidia GT or GTX cards. Period.

I know they are things that work for you, but I feel compelled to throw my .02 in.

For the majority, i don't see why ECC is necessary. A long check of memtest when you first get the RAM/do any overclocking will be more than enough for most.

I find it funny that seagate bought maxtor, yet you say buy seagate, but not maxtor drives

No board is perfect, but I think you can find a happy medium between an intel chipset and a different vendor. There are more issues with the XBX2 that we've had in the intel mobo forum than all the other (non intel made) boards problems combined. It might have been gospel truth at one point, but the last revision it really doesn't hold true.

Share some love for the ATI cards, if top end performance isn't what someone is after, ATI could well have what they want.

Dan

[Merlin]

I find that in general absolutes are ALWAYS dangerous.( pun intended) I always buy X usually means that you will have a bad problem sooner or later cuz X isnt going to stay the same. No offense intended but always doing anything is not a good "life plan" change is good as long as you are informed about what you are changing to and give yourself a way back should it turn bad. Some poeple that always bought Antec PSUs got their system fried when Antec changed who made the PSU for them.