ATA 133 - What ta do???

[MarkFahey]

I have been researching hardware for my new rig and I have noticed that most Mobo's only have support for ATA 100/66/33. I also see that all new drives are ATA 133. Now I know that you can put a controller card in for running ATA 133 drives but why aren't Mobo makers putting this support on the boards??? Or are they? I was looking at the ASUS P4PE and it's specs say "Flexible Serial ATA - Promise controller supports one ATA133 port and two Serial ATA ports" Does this mean that I could put one ATA 133 on the P4PE onboard promise controller and say two more ATA 100 drives on the standard Ultra IDE controller along with a CDRW and DVD?

 

[Derango]

ATA133 is, in general useless. Nothing uses the full potential of ATA100, so ATA133 can't improve on it . An ATA133 drive will work the same with an ATA100 controller as it would with an ATA133 controller.

The only important thing ATA133 added is support for drives over 127GB, but even that wasn't a problem if you had somthing like a promise ATA100 controller

 

[MarkFahey]

Derango, you were right on with that reply. I found a very detailed review that really helped me understand this issue.

ATA 133 Review

It seems that ATA 133 is only made by Maxtor and is for the most part useless when it comes to speed increases. Its very confusing when you read stuff from MAxtor that say's "ATA 133 can give you a 30-40% increasse in performance" HOGWASH! :disgust:


Another question, Does the increased buffer from 2 to 8MB on drives really give you that much more performance?

Does this statement sound true?
If you are looking for a file that is much larger than 2mb and it is actually in cache an 8mb cache will show a slight peerformance increase over a 2 mb cache drive.If you are looking for a file that is 2mb or smaller and is in cache ata 133 will show a sight performance increase over ata 100.Generally the file you are looking for won't be in cache,so what matters is the speed of the drive itself,access and seek times.7200rpm drives are better than 5400 rpm drives.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: Derango
ATA133 is, in general useless. Nothing uses the full potential of ATA100.......

Uh more like "nothing uses the full potential of ATA66....." The best drive on the market MAXES at ~57MB/Sec (Avg. 44MB/Sec).

Thorin

 

[MetroFly]

well, on the 8mb vs 2mb thing, i would get 8mb. i mean, the majority of my files are over 2mb (alot is over 100mb). heck average size of mp3s are 3-5 mb. anyways, i do notice the speed increase since switching.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: MetroFly
well, on the 8mb vs 2mb thing, i would get 8mb. i mean, the majority of my files are over 2mb (alot is over 100mb). heck average size of mp3s are 3-5 mb. anyways, i do notice the speed increase since switching.

Ya I agree most reviews and user opinoins say that 8MB vs 2MB cache is similar to 5400rpm vs 7200rpm. PLUS IIRC all the models with 8MB cache still carry 3yr warranties where all the 2MB models only have 1yr.

Thorin