ATA 33 vs. ATA 66

[LvR]

ayoub_ibrahim

Yes - these results are the average values of 5 tests each on my own machine, and seem to also reflect the situation on 10 others using the same hardware that I have in the field, all running UDMA5.

Forgot to mention running W2K on NTFS - think that may actually account for a few percent difference as well.

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Lawrence

[This message has been edited by LvR (edited 29 November 2000).]

[ayoub_ibrahim]

LvR, think your right re sandra & w2k. based my info on win98!
nehalmistry, those results are in line with what I would expect. I would just get a new 7200 rpm ata100 hdd in the first instance & re-benchmark your system.

[Roj]

Originally posted by nehalmistry:
ok... here's the deal... my onboard ide controller is only ata33... and i have a quantum cx6.4a HD... which is 5400 RPM and ATA66.... i have some questions

1. would getting a pci ATA 66 controller increase my speed, such as opening and closing programs... copying files... etc.. etc..

2. would getting a 7200 rpm HD increase speed if i used the same same controller?

3. if both helps, which one would have a bigger effect... getting ata66 controller or a 7200rpm HD....

im asking cos i may buy a new Hardware in the near future....

[Roj]

Originally posted by nehalmistry:

1. would getting a pci ATA 66 controller increase my speed, such as opening and closing programs... copying files... etc.. etc..

2. would getting a 7200 rpm HD increase speed if i used the same same controller?

3. if both helps, which one would have a bigger effect... getting ata66 controller or a 7200rpm HD....

[/B]

My first post came through garbled, so here goes again.

Here's my take bsaed on experience:

If you are in an either / or situation, get the drive because it will give you a bigger bang for your buck. An add-in controller **will** give you better performance but only about 10% and it will be due to the optimized drivers for the controller more than anything else. Motherboard drivers are **always** bargain basement - a vendor who writes drivers for a card will always have a more optimized solution. you'll get a really miniscule performance improvement from the improved signal via the 80-pin cable but that one is purely academic.

The best bet is a new drive **and** a new controller (an OEM Promise Ultra66 is dirt cheap). I've seen posts that talk about "upgrading and then the card is valueless" because you'll have ATA66 then.

Nonsense.

You'll have 4 IDE ports, each of which will multitask independently. My system has two Quantum LM 20.5 drives on a Promise Ultra66, each on their own channel, my cd-rom on the mobo primary and my burner on the mobo secondary. Everything is master and alone on its own channel. No bottlenecks, no either/or access, smooth multitasking under Win2K (or any OS) because the traditional IDE bottleneck is gone and quite obviously you can take that capability with you if you upgrade your motherboard, even to one with Ultra66 built in.

You'll get an aggregate performance increase from the drive (7200RPM and better seek times / platter densities / more cache), the card (dedicated optimized drivers) and the cable (small, but still there).

[Jorden]

The only problem is with an accelerator card, and something no-one mentions, is that if you for some reason need it in Windows Safe mode or DOS, you won't be able to access it

Speaking from experience here, for I have an Iwill 66 in my PC. You can run your primary drive on it, but when Windows refuses to start at some moment, you're in deep shit

And you controller card runs through a PCI slot, meaning in some way that you're bound to the PCI slot's speed.

Options? New mobo?
I say heck to that. An accelarator card will suffice. Just be sure you have your Windows on primary one on the mobo IDE port, and the faster drives you want to run on the acc card

Oh, and don't crash the drives you run off of it

Jord.

[nehalmistry]

jorden: but aren't most backware compatible anyway... shouldnt they work in safe mode?

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P5A-B AMD K6-266@300
Matrox Milleniumm G200 AGP (oh, lets party)
Creative SB Awe32 (a classic, superb card)
Realtek 8029A NIC Card
64meg Ram
Ali V agp chipset
ICQ UIN: 24730025

[aaroncgi]

I know I'm a bit late on this thread, but I just got Sandra on my system. I certainly can second (or third, or fourth, or whatever recommendation we're up to!) the IBM 75GXP as an awesome drive in any capacity. I think the sweet spot now is the 45G drive, which is down to about the same price as I paid for the 30G a little over three months ago. This drive is nearly silent in my case, and screams when it's running. With 384M of RAM, it doesn't run much, but hey..

My Sandra scores using the onboard ATA/66 controller on my Tyan S2380 KX133 board:

C: 24710
D: 22920

This is not an average, just one test, don't have time to do 10 tests one after the other. In both cases, estimated access time is reported as 7ms, buffered read >= 45G/s and sequential read or write 31-33G/s.

Not sure if it's important, but this is after I just installed the new VIA 4-in-1 4.25a, which also coincidentally had the effect of raising my 3D Mark 2000 scores by a few percent.

Cheers!

Aaron