Nope. What I was wanting to do was get a cheaper Athlon board which several people have actually recommended over Intel for DAW performace in ratio to the price. In any event, my goal here is to get the best quality I can for as little I can, and if Athlon performs as well as people have said, I think it'd be fine. I have 2 50 gig SCSIs which, in order to run at optimum yield, need to be hooked into 64 bit PCI slots. All of the suggested controller cards I see are for 64 bit...therein lies my problem. Hopefully that makes sense.
Explain to me what a SATA is and what Raptors are? Am I going to have to ditch the SCSI I've perchased?
first off, you have two 50 gig scsi drives? ive never seen that size before. ususally they are something close to a multiple of 18 (i.e. 18, 36, 36.7, 73...). anyways, to my original point. you could sell the two scsi drives and that would completely cover your costs for 3 raptor drives that are serial ATA and will performe as good as 10k scsi drives. you could also probably get a nice raid card with the money saved from not having to get a scsi card. i doubt that you will find a decent scsi card that is 32-bit. another thing is that (correct me if im wrong about scsi here) you mentioned in a eariler post that you are concerned about not getting the full 160 mb/s in the transfer bus from the drives. with ata drives, they use about half the bus avaliable, and if scsi is like that then you will be doing great if you average 80 mb/s from those scsi drives.
personally i would sell the scsi, get some raptors and a decent raid 5 card, toss together a athlon barton system and enjoy. it would be cheap(ish) and you hould have your incredible transfer rates
personally i would sell the scsi, get some raptors and a decent raid 5 card, toss together a athlon barton system and enjoy. it would be cheap(ish) and you hould have your incredible transfer rates
SATA is mainly a different interface type. its new and recently they started to make drives for it. the SATA cable is really small (like 8? wires instead of 80). raptors are new drives that use SATA. they perform like scsi and have a 5 year warrenty. the only reason why everyone refers to them as raptors is cause the spin rate for the disks in the drive operate at 10000 rpms which is what scsi can operate at (scsi goes up to 15000 rpms). most SATA drives are 7200 rpms, but the raptors are the fastest ATA drives avaliable.
damn i sound like a salesman...shoot me now
damn i sound like a salesman...shoot me now
Yeah, if I use 32 bit cards for the scsi I get half the performance. So, what are raptor drives exactly and I thought a Raid card was only for a dual processor. I think I'm way off, so please bear with me.
mechBgon
Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
- Oct 31, 1999
- 30,699
- 1
- 0
The 80-pin SCSI drives would require some 80-pin <--> 68-pin adapters... sounds like you should've dropped in here and asked for some tips before going on a buying spree
Alternately, you could get a case with native SCA racks like the Lian-Li PC-70SCA, or toss in a Supermicro SCA block if you have four 5.25" bays to spare.The 8RDA+ will work fine with the LSI Logic Ultra160 card. The card will operate at full 32-bit 33MHz speed in the 8RDA+. The PCI-bus performance of the 8RDA+ and other nForce/nForce2 boards is excellent, so it's well-suited to that purpose if you do want to go SCSI. I use an nForce2/SCSI system at work, and it's a good performer.
I'd recommend using an AGP card and not PCI, if that Radeon was a PCI-based card. Leave that PCI bus free for the SCSI controller, or the SATA controller if you go that route.
For a chassis, you might consider the Antec Sonata. It's got a quiet-running, high-quality TruePower380 power supply with a three-year warranty, a 120mm exhaust fan, and has positions for four hard drives. Photo spread of Sonata at Newegg
edit: I see you're worried about your IDE drives. Nothing to fear... they'll plug into the motherboard just like they would in an all-IDE system.
eh just have him use the SATA WD Raptor, SATA would be better imo on this setup, but yeah since that hd is already purchased besides ebaying it, u can just get a scsi controlller too obviously. As for the P4 price depends on the speed as whether that's worth what he payed for it.
A 2.53Ghz P4 533 is only $190 at newegg.com where are you coming up with $299?
OTOH, I've learned not to convince newbies how to buy a computer. It's their money let them blow it. The more you help him the more you'll be responsible for tech support.
Mac
OTOH, I've learned not to convince newbies how to buy a computer. It's their money let them blow it. The more you help him the more you'll be responsible for tech support.
Mac
What about losing performance on the scsi, since the LSI is 64 bit and the 8RDA+ is 32 bit? Doesnt that make scsi pointless?
Thanks for your imputs, this is really helping.
If I'd have known you guys existed, I would have stopped here, trust me
Thanks for your imputs, this is really helping.
If I'd have known you guys existed, I would have stopped here, trust me
It was a quote from Computer Giants.com who my father had done business with before and thought he might try. They offered to construct us an 'ideal ADW' Hrm... oh well.
SATA is about as good as SCSI, but doesn't SATA still eat up CPU cycles whereas SCSI doesn't? Or that really isn't an issue anymore with the blazing fast processor speeds we have these days?
zephyrprime
Diamond Member
- Feb 18, 2001
- 7,512
- 2
- 81
Audio Workstation? If that's all it needs why do you need SCSI.
For 64 bit PCI go with Tyan Tiger MP I bought it of newegg for $160. Bonus the mobo allows single and dual CPU AMD setup.
Last time I checked newegg didn't have it but that may of changed since then or maybe tiger direct has it.... check around.
Also if you really want an audio setup SCSI seems to me like overkill. Go Serial ATA if you really want speed. Also what you need more than fast hard drives is a good audio card like a high end Terratec and M-Audio.
Seriously if you have a gig (or even two) of ram, I doubt even uncompressed audio will push the RAM.
For 64 bit PCI go with Tyan Tiger MP I bought it of newegg for $160. Bonus the mobo allows single and dual CPU AMD setup.
Last time I checked newegg didn't have it but that may of changed since then or maybe tiger direct has it.... check around.
Also if you really want an audio setup SCSI seems to me like overkill. Go Serial ATA if you really want speed. Also what you need more than fast hard drives is a good audio card like a high end Terratec and M-Audio.
Seriously if you have a gig (or even two) of ram, I doubt even uncompressed audio will push the RAM.
As for your question on Serial ATA and raptor check out http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20030501/index.html
its cheaper, easier to use and almost all of the current generation mobo's support it.
As for your question " I thought a Raid card was only for a dual processor. " no. Raid stands for Redundant array of independant disks. A 100Mhz pentium is more than enough power to run alot of raid arrays, let alone 3Ghz dual proc mobo's. If you want to squeeze all out performance of what you have get a mobo or PCI Raid board that supports disk stripping. Do some searches on anandtech and tomshardware for Raid 0, 1, and 5 or more specifically disk stripping. Make sure, if you do use stripping to use multiple disks that are the same make and model.
its cheaper, easier to use and almost all of the current generation mobo's support it.
As for your question " I thought a Raid card was only for a dual processor. " no. Raid stands for Redundant array of independant disks. A 100Mhz pentium is more than enough power to run alot of raid arrays, let alone 3Ghz dual proc mobo's. If you want to squeeze all out performance of what you have get a mobo or PCI Raid board that supports disk stripping. Do some searches on anandtech and tomshardware for Raid 0, 1, and 5 or more specifically disk stripping. Make sure, if you do use stripping to use multiple disks that are the same make and model.
What should be my minimal wattage on my Power Supply. Running Athlon 8RGA+ (with Geforce 4 MX Video card), XP 2500+ Barton, DVD/CDR/CDRW combo, Floppy, and eventually 3-4 SCSI drives. Will an Antec Sonata with a 380 watt power supply work? It's perfect, even black like I want! What's recommended, though?
Generally if you want an "digital audio" workstation, the first and foremost thing is quietness. If you're going SATA, go with the Barracuda V, if you're going with SCSI, go with the Fujitsu MAP series/29160/Tekram U3W. They are both much more quiet than any other drive in their clas.
The question of ... does 32bit PCI affect SCSI? Not in a single drive configuration. You'll be hard pressed to saturate the bandwidth of 125 MB/sec that PCI offers. Newer SCSI drives are still faster and better on all fronts than any IDE or SATA drive on the market, including the SATA Raptor.
The question of PSU wattage... The 380W Antec is a TruPower, which should handle just about anything you can throw at it. Quality over quantity any day.
The question of CPU ... it solely depends on application. Some AV software will run notoriously fast on a Pentium4-C HT series, sometimes beating a Barton clock for clock (real clock speed, not PR clock). But most will just generally be slightly faster. If it is one of those super optimized programs, shell out the money for the P4-C, as it would be better per $.
The question of ... does 32bit PCI affect SCSI? Not in a single drive configuration. You'll be hard pressed to saturate the bandwidth of 125 MB/sec that PCI offers. Newer SCSI drives are still faster and better on all fronts than any IDE or SATA drive on the market, including the SATA Raptor.
The question of PSU wattage... The 380W Antec is a TruPower, which should handle just about anything you can throw at it. Quality over quantity any day.
The question of CPU ... it solely depends on application. Some AV software will run notoriously fast on a Pentium4-C HT series, sometimes beating a Barton clock for clock (real clock speed, not PR clock). But most will just generally be slightly faster. If it is one of those super optimized programs, shell out the money for the P4-C, as it would be better per $.
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