Is SATA working? (Can I use sw.raid-5 with SATA + ATA drives?)

[Matti Kleemola]

I need a new motherboard and I have to decide should I buy
Epox PE-4PCA3+ (and use 3 ATA drives connected to HPT374) or
Asus P4C800E-Deluxe (and use 1(2) SATA drive and 2(1) ATA drives).

Board from Asus is about 5% faster in every zone (tomshardware.com)
but can I make it work?
In Asus there is unfortunately only 3 ATA connectors (one is needed
for CD-RW) and I'm not going to put 2 drives on the same cable.

I understood that there are some problems with promise 20378 used in
Asus (in 64 bit mode). Is that something I need to worry about?

Here are chips used in those boards:
 Chipset (both boards):
  Intel 875P + ICH5R

 Asus:
  Promise 20378 raid
  Intel 82547 lan
  Soundmax

 Epox:
  HPT374 raid
  BCM5705 / 5788 lan
  cmi9739A (sounds)

If network or soundsystem is not working rightaway it's not a problem
cause I still have working PCI-cards. If disks are working that's enough
for a while. I'm sure that sound and networks chips will also work on some
day.

Asus have also other very interesting board (P4P800-Deluxe) but it uses
VIA 6410 as a raid controlled and I understood that it's not working (and
VIA is not going to support opensource.. :( ). With that board I could use
ATA drives (4 connectors, two of them coming from VIA6410). It would be
almost as fast as P4C800.

ps. I'm just an ordinary home user and I don't understand any details.

Thanks,
Matti ..with great (but broken) Abit KT7-RAID
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