Not worth the aggravation

I purchased this motherboard to upgrade an existing systems reliability and data backup. The board is well layed out and physical installation took less than half an hour. I kept my existing Core Duo processor, memory, Power supply, case, and DVD RW. I added a couple of SATA drives to give me a total of 4 drives for a RAID configuration. I also didn't want to move to Vista and wanted to continue using Windows XP Pro.

The first concern I encountered was finding a floppy disk in the box with the DP35DP. This motherboard does not have a FDC (Floppy Disk Controller) on the board. The second concern was that there was no manual or user's guide included in this sealed package. Only a "Quick guide that was essentially a pictorial diagram that was not very intuitive. No instructions on memory stick placement, etc.
No speaker connection for POST, no video.

I powered up the system and during the POST, a Control-I message came up briefly giving me the opportunity to create my RAID volume(s). During this setup, you realize that the scrollability of the options are one way. Any attempt at backing up ends up with you doing a power off reset to get back to the step you were at. After discovering this, and creating the volumes, I was ready to install Windows XP. Fortunately I had another system alongside that I could reach Google, Intel, etc. to find anything out about the setup.

During the XP install, I did the recommended "F6" install that after a couple minutes asks for the Intel driver to be loaded in drive A:. Without the floppy disk hardware necessary to do this, it is just more than a little aggravating. So, I ran out and bought a USB Floppy to read this one diskette. Another $50 to be added to the upgrade price. I plugged in the USB floppy, made a BIOS change (off some obscure website) accordingly. Restarted the XP install, and after the F6, the floppy read and I was given the choice of four Intel chipset numbers to choose from. They might as well have been written in the 12 languages off of the flipside of the "quick guide". I sequentially went through all four, because all of them hung when the USB drive should have been accessed a second time during the windows install.

Went to the Intel website and researched the board, setup, install, and RAID. Made a few tech support email contacts, and found out that I needed to upgrade the board BIOS, download a couple of Intel RAID Storage Manager fixes, ad nauseum. After jerking around with this board for about 10 hours, it was clear that the board was built to be used by a Vista appliance operator (no need for the Floppy) and more than likely not for XP users. I brought the board back to the dealer and for a couple of bucks more bought the MSI P95 NEO FR.

The MSI board installed in about an hour with the RAID config working great. It had a very complete user guide, and a Floppy Disc Controller. Amazing.