[jst42day]

I've just been reading some of the threads below as well as other places on the web and am a little confused.
I'm waiting for the little extra cash from Uncle Sam's economic incentive to get my new mobo and cpu. Going w/Core2 Dui cpu and appropriate board.
And I'm really surprised by the fact that SATA and RAID have been around for a couple of years and yet some of the mobo's BIOS don't have the ability to handle SATA hard drives without having to install new drivers or BIOS updates.
I've looked at some more boards at places like Newegg, but haven't seen any reference to mobo's that will handle SATA and RAID configuration without having make modifications.
Are there good quality boards, such as Asus, Gigabyte, Abit that can handle SATA etc right out of the box?
And could you tell me what it is that I'm missing when I look at the specs that would indicate that a board does what I'm asking about.
I'm tired. Hope I made some sense.
Thanks for any help.
jst42day

[stettybet0]

Pretty much any motherboard which has SATA connectors will support SATA hard drives via plug-and-play (no special driver installation or anything). Any motherboard which lists RAID support will support RAID, though typically the installation of RAID drivers (included with motherboard) is required before the installation of the operating system.