If you want SATA, go for an i865 or i875 board that implements the SATA RAID features of Intel's ICH5-R South Bridge. Asus's boards should be avoided as they (stupidly) forego the ICH5-R SATA solution in favour of an in favour of an inferior PCI based solution. If you want decent onboard LAN, get an i875 board and make sure it has the Intel PRO/1000 networking chip on it as this connects straight into the North Bridge for higher performance. Asus's boards are again to be avoided here as is EPoX 4PCA3+ as again they use inferior PCI based solutions. The best i875 board that I'm aware of is Abit's IC7 but these are quite pricey. Intels offering looks pretty good but it'll be light on extra features. Gigabytes offering looked interesting too but I don't know much about it.

Thanks for the quick reply something like the second board down on
here would do then, would the SATA functions be supported do you know or would i just have to do software raid?
 
Thanks v much
 
deano

any views on on the Asus P4C800, as from what i`ve been reading the abit IC boards are very pickey when it comes to memory. Specks for the asus board are below
 
Asus P4C800 "Canterwood" (Socket 478) Motherboard (MB-023-AS)
The P4 CPU on 800MHz FSB, Intel 875P chipset and ASUS' motherboard expertise are exactly what you need if you are looking for extreme performance. The P4C800 has all of the above plus dual-channel ECC DDR 400 memory, Hyper-Threading Technology support and a whole bunch of advanced innovations for an expert like you. P4C800 also integrates artificial intelligent features such as net-diagnosing utility, audio-jack sensing technology, auto-adjusting CPU Fan and more. The P4C800 simply out-performs, out-smarts and out-shines all competition.
 
- Intel 875P chipset (Including Intel PAT)
- Dual-Channel DDR400
- ICH5R with Integrated SATA and RAID 0
- AI NET (Gigabit LAN)
- AI AUDIO (6-channel digital audio)
- AI CrashFree BIOS 2
- AGP8X/Pro
- 2 Serial ATA ports
- Q Fan Technology
- 8 USB 2.0 ports support
 
 
I noticed it uses the ICH5R chipset so i asume this is ok? Thanks for any info.
 
deano

I have a GA-8SQ800 Ultra P4 Titan DDR Motherboard with 2 S-ATA's of 200 GB (Maxtor) attached (besides the IDE0 and IDE 1 drives for the system) which I would like to but in RAID using not the software from linux but the on-board system. RH 9.0.
Some suggestions?
I activated the RAID1 via BIOS, put ext3 on /dev/hde1 and /dev//hdg1 (the two S-ATA's).
Now?
tks
ptah