Any advantage to replacing my ISA SCSI card with a PCI one...

[gregdee]

I'm currently in the process of upgrading a system and was wondering if I should dump the cheap ISA SCSI card that came with a CD burner I have? The card's used only for a Plextor CD ROM and a CDR. If so, I asume I don't need one with a SCSI bios because I'm not going to be booting from it. Will this speed up my system but getting rid of the last remaining ISA device? (BTW - my new MB will have one ISA slot).

Thanks!

 

[gregdee]

Anyone?

Thanks!

 

[Spook]

ISA is a 16bit interface, and PCI is 32Bit... I believe that the newer drives can use the 32Bit bus... What is the Speed of your SCSI card? 20MBps? The faster PCI cards are now up to 160Mbps, and 32bit.

You only need to change the SCSI interface if you drive can go faster than the SCSI bus...

 

[gregdee]

I don't think the Plextor or the CD-R are faster than that, I think they're both SCSC II and not UW. That being being the case is there any benefit?

 

[Spook]

Probably not... Unless your putting a SCSI Hard drive on there, you'll be fine...

 

[MGMorden]

This info was relevant to IDE devices when I heard it, but it may apply to SCSI as well. I heard that the ISA bus could only support a CD read speed of up to 8x. Don't know if this is true but if it is then you may get a faster read speed from your cd burner if you went to PCI. I heard this years ago though and never checked into it so I could very well be wrong.