Like I said, the KT266a chipset has not outperformed the AMD760 chipset with digi001 and in some cases underperformed it. So we are not seeing the correlation between the study done at
www.tomshardware.com and here.
You will not need a Promise card with either the GA7DXR or the A7V266E.
You can disable onboard sound in bios so don't worry about that.
Yes you need a dedicated audio drive for optimal performance. You could go with a 20GB system drive or smaller and an 80GB or bigger audio drive if you want. Stick with the IBM 60GXP series and avoid the IBM 75GXP series and the new Seagate drives.
YOu can mention my name if you want, I don't make any commission and they don't know who I am anyway. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Allen