On 20 Mar 2006 05:40:44 -0800, wrote:

Which current motherboards are based on Intel 915 and Intel 945
chipsets?

??? There are about 100 motherboards based on each chipset at the
moment. These are, by a fairly large margin, the two most common
chipsets in use today. if you go to just about any board
manufacturer's website you'll find an extensive list of each.

I am not that familiar with Intel series boards - what do these ones
have over the the more recent 8xx series chipsets?

The biggest difference between, for example, an i865 series chip and
the i915 series chips is in their audio and video capabilities. First
off the i9xx line has moved from AGP to PCI-Express for video and
optionally add-in cards. Secondly the integrated video (in the
versions of the chipset that have it) has been improved, as has the
integrated audio. Beyond that there is support for newer Intel
processors (including dual-core chips in the case of the i945), DDR2
memory and generally improved performance.

The board must have at least 5 PCI slots as I will be needing 4 of them
straight away for building a DVR system using bt878 based adapters.

That's probably going to limit your options somewhat. Most new boards
now have at least 1 PCI-Express 1x slot for add-in cards. This will
likely take away one PCI slot.

FWIW in a quick search through Asus's list of i915 and i945 series
boards (of which they have about 20) I didn't see any that had more
than 3 PCI slots.

The 915 and 945 are the boards recommended by the vendor of the
adapters, however I am looking for something moderately priced and I
am hoping that boards of this type are not too expensive.

They're pretty much the standard these days, so price shouldn't be too
big of an issue.

I'd also like to know what type of CPU chips go with them. There seem
to be so many Intel CPU types and I find it all rather confusing.

The i945 chipset is pretty much the latest and greatest of Intel's
"mainstream" chipsets and it will support all their current desktop
chips. The i915 is about a year and a half old now so it lacks
support for some of the newest chips, in particular the dual-core
chips.

Are there any stock Dell machines with enough slots which will fit the
bill? Even if they are server oriented that will be fine.

At a guess I would say no. I'm not too familiar with Dell's specs,
but 5 PCI slots is becoming quite a rarity with PCI-Express gradually
replacing PCI. FWIW I know HP's specs a bit better, and the best
you're likely to do with an HP system is the dc7600 CMT with the
option PCI Extender, which gives you a total of 4 PCI ports. The
xw6200 workstation also seems to come with 4 PCI slots, though that is
using the server/workstation E7525 chipset.

Most likely you're going to have to go with a motherboard from one of
the more specialty boards makers. Supermicro is one that jumps to
mind, possibly Tyan. The Supermicro PDSMA board should fit your bill
closely enough:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/m...7230/PDSMA.cfm

Again though, this is using the workstation E7230 chipset rather than
a desktop chipset.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca