PCI-X motherboards (looking to do hardware raid 5) or wait for PCIe?
 

I am interested in using either 3wares 9500 series or the broadcom raid card to do hardware raid. As a newb, I thought I had a mb picked out, until I realized that these cards require PCI-X. Can any one suggest some reasonable budget mbs with PCI-X that I might look into or is it better to just wait for PCIe raid cards to come out?

David

Does it HAVE to be one of those cards?
 

The only 32bit PCI cards that can do proper hardware RAID5 that I know of are the Highpoint RocketRaid cards. These also have full open source linux support.

Really, unless you can find a second hand PCI-X board (assuming you mean 64bit PCI) then, well, a "reasonably" priced mobo is in the lower to mid £££s range. Unless you really need the boards you specified then personnaly I'd just use a PCI raid-5 card.

Check out these cards:
RocketRaid 454 (PCI/ATA)
RocketRaid 1640 (PCI/SATA)

Hope this helps!

It is possible that PCI-X (PCI Extended) can be inserted in a standard 32-bit with reduce throughput. I suggest calling or e-mailing each manufacture if you can do this. A PCI-X motherboard costs about $200 and up.

PsychosisNode, Highpoint controllers and as well as other manufactures like Promise creates only software RAID controllers.