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MB advice-need PCI extended,suggestions?

N

NewDaddy

Junior Member
I would like to build a new system and already have some components including a rather expensive SCSI drive that uses the PCI-extended interface. I want my new system to be very fast at processing video so I can produce home movies easily. Also, I use the system for business and need it to handle multi-tasking, i.e. multiple browser windows open at the same time and multiple applications running at the same time. My BIG question is: should I keep the SCSI drive and find a MB to fit it or should I junk the drive and get a good MB with a SATA interface? Also, would it be worth my while to get a dual core processor vs. a single core? Is a quad core even a consideration for my application or is that just overkill?
Thank you.
 
Depends on the SCSI drive in question. A SCSI drive that was expensive two years ago may not be worth the premium for PCI-X. The fact it is singular SCSI drive rather than plural makes it even more questionable. Do you have a PCI-X controller card? I'm not sure what you mean by a SCSI drive that uses PCI-X interface. A SCSI drive will inherently be SCSI interface, unless its some sort of PCI-X backplane thing. What other components do you have?

I would recommend dual-core CPU at minimum, without question. But whether a quad-core would be a better choice depends on the applications you run. At present, a minority of applications are capable of taking full advantage of quad cores, but some definitely can. There are many instances where a dual-core CPU running at higher frequency is a better choice than quad-core running at lower frequency, or spending significantly more for quad-core doesn't pay much in higher application performance.

If you could name the applications that are most important to you, we should be able to find information to help answer the question of dual v. quad core. Also, some info about your budget constraints, if any, would be helpful.
 
Thank you tcsenter. I appreciate your input very much. To answer your question about the SCSI drive, it is a single 73 GB Maxtor drive running at 10,000 RPM and uses a Tekram controller card that has a PCI-X (extended) interface. I bought it about 3 years ago because I wanted a very fast drive but did not know at the time there was a difference between PCI and PCI-X. So I am able to use the controller in the PCI slot but it only runs at about 80 MB/S while its potential is 320 MB/S.
The applications that I run are Windows Vista Ulitmate (32 bit), MS office 2007- Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Adobe Photoshop, Pinnacle Studio 10 video editor, and various other applications pertaining to my business in real estate. These would include Quickbooks and apps I use for heavy scanning, printing, and emailing.
My new system must be capable of some pretty heavy audio and video functions for the video editing and also run reliably while multi-tasking in the business environment.
I am not looking at any kind of a budget at this time because I don't want to limit my choices right off the bat- its more important to me to see what the best options are and then make a selection. Also, I will consider whether purchasing a pre-built system (like Dell) will be more economical while meeting all of my needs. Your input is highly valued since its been quite some time since my last complete build and so much has changed since then (Windows ME era).
Thank you,
Ron
 
Single drives are much lower sustained throughput than 320 MB/sec. If you're lucky a drive will be capable of 80MB / sec. Putting this in a normal PCI slot isn't going to really hurt you at all.

It's pretty common to confuse controller capabilities with drive capabilities. 320 MB / sec is just the interface throughput capability, but the drives themselves are only going to put out data that fast if it happens to be in the cache. Most of what you do will be limited by drive capability, so having a PCI interface is not really limiting. Having the 320 MB/sec capability is there for having multiple drives able to use bandwidth at the same time.

If you have a single drive you will see zero noticeable difference between using a PCI slot and a PCI-X slot.

PCI-X is a dead technology, replaced by PCIe. You aren't going to find modern motherboards with PCI-X slots. The same is true of SCSI drives & controllers, replaced by SAS.

If the drive is WinME era, consider replacing it just because it's End of Life. It's been 6-8 years, and even server drives are really only made with an expected 5 year cycle. It's pretty likely that a modern SATA drive is actually faster, as drives from that era probably top out around 40-50MB/sec and drives now can handle closer to 80.
 
Thank you Concillian. You have helped me with more than I expected. I had the wrong understanding of bandwidth and drive speed previously. My decision is much easier now- SATA it will be. Now to decide on a MB/CPU combo. I think that tcsenter is right- that in my case a dual core would be the most sensible option. I'm not sure which CPU's are dual core and which mobo's can handle dual core; I think I will do some research into that. I have heard good things about the Asus mobo's and the AMD Athlon FX processor. There seem to be several varieties out there. Are some of the FX processors single core and some dual core? Is the FX2 a dual core? Then I need to consider FSB speed also. I read that 1000 MHz is a good speed for my needs, and I am guessing that I need a board whose onboard memory slots have a matching or at least comparable ability to pass data through.
Thanks to you both for your excellent advice.
Ron


 
Athlon FX are fairly old too. There are many newer CPUs out now that are more powerful.

About the minimum right now is dual core @ 2.5 GHz (Intel e7200 or AMD e4850). You have to go pretty bottom end to find single core CPUs these days. Intels are generally faster for the same clock in most applications, but the AMDs are cheaper. Dual cores run between $60 and 200 or so. In general there is a pretty reasonable curve between price and performance (you get what you pay for).

Quads are a similar story at starting around $150 for AMD and $180 for Intel and again Intels are a little faster for the same speed in most applications. For video / photo editing you will likely see slower quads as faster than higher clocked dual cores. For doing most other things higher speed duals are usually faster because most other software applications are not built around using more than 2 cores.

There are DDR2 and DDR3 memory technologies. DDR3 will come in higher speeds, but the improvement is generally not at all noticeable and DDR2 is much cheaper. Best to go with a DDR2 motherboard and get at least 4 GB. (4GB of DDR2-800 is about $40 if you find a good price) There is generally very little need to go higher than DDR2-800 on memory, which is good, because it's widely available and cheap.

FSB is not a huge concern, processor speed is more important in most applications. There are some exceptions, but they are pretty rare to find.

Good luck.
 
a cheap SAS controller and the cheaper drives run about $140-180 a piece. well worth it for the performance they offer. it actually costs MORE to make older SCSI systems than it does to make SAS systems lol
 
Originally posted by: Concillian
PCI-X is a dead technology, replaced by PCIe. You aren't going to find modern motherboards with PCI-X slots.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't go that far. PCI-X is alive and well in the server arena (where PCI-X primarily has been all along), but there are uniprocessor workstation boards offered with PCI-X as well:

ASUS P5Q WS

ASUS M3N WS

Those are the newest ASUS workstation boards with PCI-X, it has P35 and X38 boards as well. ASUS will most likely offer an X58 workstation board with PCI-X.

That said, I agree with your recommendation that he not worry about PCI-X for a single SCSI drive.
 
Thanks guys. I am trying to educate myself on some of the latest processors and mobo's out there right now. I have decided to toss the old SCSI for the most standard format- SATA 2.0. I usually build a system that will last me for about 10 years, so I am looking at the new Intel core i7 CPU's and the few mobo's that support them. It may be overkill at the moment but in a few months it will probably be what everyone is using. Seems like more cores is where CPU's are heading, so 4 cores is good. All kinds of terminology that is new to me is being tossed around, like hyper threading and triple channel memory support. Anything to make data move faster sounds good to me. One thing that I learned is that there is a difference in the maximum memory support in 32 bit OS verses 64 bit OS. Apparently Vista 32 bit only supports a max. of 3.25 GB of memory. The 64 bit version opens up to allow more- something to consider for future applications and upgrading. Pricing is decent for this new technology unless you go core i7 Extreme. More horse power has its price.
Ron
 
Core i7 is not just a new CPU model but substantially new architecture as well. Being the launch product of a new architecture, I hesitate to recommend it for someone who prefers unusually long upgrade paths or life cycles.

Too many unknown factors that past experience suggests are likely to bite someone in the ass for being an early adopter. If you're going to upgrade every two or three years, anyway, the risks of early adoption largely become self-moderating. How many times do we see comments along the line of "My one year-old $300 premium motherboard won't support this or that new thing? That really sucks. Oh well, its a good thing I buy a new $300 motherboard every year, anyway. Recommendations?"

But if you pay the huge premium expecting it should buy some added assurance of longer upgrade paths, early adoption "gotchas" are more likely to be perceived as a serious deprivation of value than as a 'good excuse' to upgrade. Far too often, early adoption becomes a lot like, well, early adoption! If the premium did buy some added assurance of longer upgrade paths or even active support phase, I would recommend it. But it doesn't. The hefty premium only gets you one thing - a ticket to ride for an inherently short period of time.

I feel AMD is currently offering the better value and chances for longer upgrade paths. Up-coming Socket AM3 processors will be compatible with Socket AM2+ motherboards, at least those motherboards that will receive BIOS support for AM3 (not all of them will). Most motherboard vendors are starting to indicate the AM2+ boards that will support AM3 processors (with future BIOS). Or, you could go with something like Intel P45 motherboard + Wolfdale processor that will serve your needs for another year or two, until we find out how Core i7 is going to shake-out.

It's up to you whether you want to spend a big premium with more risks, or go the more affordable and less risky route that you could upgrade again in two years for the same total cost that Core i7's premium is going to set you back.
 
i would keep the card and pick up a refurbished fujitsu 15k max 74GB hdd for ~$60 @ hypermicro (they are labled as "worldisk when you get it) as the boot drive. they are quicker than 7.2k and no matter how many 10k raptor builds i mess w/ i can feel a difference between that drive and my 15k scsi setup and also when gaming, i am nearly always the first on any map, but most importantly, the machine is just all around snappier.

but, just use it as the boot drive w/ your apps on it, then pick up whatever you need size wise for your setup in sata flavor, trying to get the drives w/ the highest density platters for a higher str since you are dealing w/ video and audio files, which are quite large.

the pci slot will bottlneck @ ~100MB/s or so and the max drives seem to have a average str of ~80-85MB/s, so you are ok.
 
Asus M3N WS & X2 5600+ Combo Deal: $282

I don't know what model controller you have and it's capabilities but if you want it to function at its best this would certainly be a good start.

The thing about your 'Scuzzy' is your seek times will be most likely twice as fast than conventional SATAII - on par with a WD Raptor - so this would tend toward more 'snapiness'. You could purchase a new SCSI drive for roughly half the cost of a new Raptor and when combined with your existing drive would be a sweet set-up.

Snappy is one of those technical terms that gets tossed around at AT ... 😀

Purchasing another SCSI drive would allow you to stripe RAID (either with your controller or the mobo nVidia RAID) further expanding your throughput. (I say this having no experience with the nVidia RAID except from the ol' NF3 days.) I also have no experience with that Asus mobo but it looks like a good 'un.

SCSI & PCIx are 'legacy' tech but they aren't going anywhere. When you are ready to migrate your 'stuff' on the Asus you have plenty of SATA (including an eSATA port), firewire, Realtek ALC888 audio and onboard IGP that is hybrid capable. I would also assume (always dangerous - LOL) that Asus will support the new 45nm Phenom quads in the future on that mobo.

I've used Pinnacle Studio 9 on a few 'tasks'. It does not seem to benefit from quads for me on my transcoding - Premiere whoops its arse across four cores - but I don't know what changes may have been made with v10.
 
Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Asus M3N WS & X2 5600+ Combo Deal: $282

I don't know what model controller you have and it's capabilities but if you want it to function at its best this would certainly be a good start.

The thing about your 'Scuzzy' is your seek times will be most likely twice as fast than conventional SATAII - on par with a WD Raptor - so this would tend toward more 'snapiness'. You could purchase a new SCSI drive for roughly half the cost of a new Raptor and when combined with your existing drive would be a sweet set-up.

Snappy is one of those technical terms that gets tossed around at AT ... 😀

Purchasing another SCSI drive would allow you to stripe RAID (either with your controller or the mobo nVidia RAID) further expanding your throughput. (I say this having no experience with the nVidia RAID except from the ol' NF3 days.) I also have no experience with that Asus mobo but it looks like a good 'un.

SCSI & PCIx are 'legacy' tech but they aren't going anywhere. When you are ready to migrate your 'stuff' on the Asus you have plenty of SATA (including an eSATA port), firewire, Realtek ALC888 audio and onboard IGP that is hybrid capable. I would also assume (always dangerous - LOL) that Asus will support the new 45nm Phenom quads in the future on that mobo.

I've used Pinnacle Studio 9 on a few 'tasks'. It does not seem to benefit from quads for me on my transcoding - Premiere whoops its arse across four cores - but I don't know what changes may have been made with v10.
Click to expand...

i have to disagree w/ running the card in a pci-x slot for just 1 drive - it is a $$$ waste and not necessary. spending an extra $100 on a m/b for a pci-x slot that isn't needed???
 
Originally posted by: bob4432
Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Asus M3N WS & X2 5600+ Combo Deal: $282

I don't know what model controller you have and it's capabilities but if you want it to function at its best this would certainly be a good start.

The thing about your 'Scuzzy' is your seek times will be most likely twice as fast than conventional SATAII - on par with a WD Raptor - so this would tend toward more 'snapiness'. You could purchase a new SCSI drive for roughly half the cost of a new Raptor and when combined with your existing drive would be a sweet set-up.

Snappy is one of those technical terms that gets tossed around at AT ... 😀

Purchasing another SCSI drive would allow you to stripe RAID (either with your controller or the mobo nVidia RAID) further expanding your throughput. (I say this having no experience with the nVidia RAID except from the ol' NF3 days.) I also have no experience with that Asus mobo but it looks like a good 'un.

SCSI & PCIx are 'legacy' tech but they aren't going anywhere. When you are ready to migrate your 'stuff' on the Asus you have plenty of SATA (including an eSATA port), firewire, Realtek ALC888 audio and onboard IGP that is hybrid capable. I would also assume (always dangerous - LOL) that Asus will support the new 45nm Phenom quads in the future on that mobo.

I've used Pinnacle Studio 9 on a few 'tasks'. It does not seem to benefit from quads for me on my transcoding - Premiere whoops its arse across four cores - but I don't know what changes may have been made with v10.
Click to expand...

i have to disagree w/ running the card in a pci-x slot for just 1 drive - it is a $$$ waste and not necessary. spending an extra $100 on a m/b for a pci-x slot that isn't needed???
Click to expand...

Where did I say to run one SCSI drive?

Would it not be a bigger waste of money to trash a perfectly good controller card and hard drive?

Reading and comprehension is your friend. Please try it sometime.

 
Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Originally posted by: bob4432
Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Asus M3N WS & X2 5600+ Combo Deal: $282

I don't know what model controller you have and it's capabilities but if you want it to function at its best this would certainly be a good start.

The thing about your 'Scuzzy' is your seek times will be most likely twice as fast than conventional SATAII - on par with a WD Raptor - so this would tend toward more 'snapiness'. You could purchase a new SCSI drive for roughly half the cost of a new Raptor and when combined with your existing drive would be a sweet set-up.

Snappy is one of those technical terms that gets tossed around at AT ... 😀

Purchasing another SCSI drive would allow you to stripe RAID (either with your controller or the mobo nVidia RAID) further expanding your throughput. (I say this having no experience with the nVidia RAID except from the ol' NF3 days.) I also have no experience with that Asus mobo but it looks like a good 'un.

SCSI & PCIx are 'legacy' tech but they aren't going anywhere. When you are ready to migrate your 'stuff' on the Asus you have plenty of SATA (including an eSATA port), firewire, Realtek ALC888 audio and onboard IGP that is hybrid capable. I would also assume (always dangerous - LOL) that Asus will support the new 45nm Phenom quads in the future on that mobo.

I've used Pinnacle Studio 9 on a few 'tasks'. It does not seem to benefit from quads for me on my transcoding - Premiere whoops its arse across four cores - but I don't know what changes may have been made with v10.
Click to expand...

i have to disagree w/ running the card in a pci-x slot for just 1 drive - it is a $$$ waste and not necessary. spending an extra $100 on a m/b for a pci-x slot that isn't needed???
Click to expand...

Where did I say to run one SCSI drive?

Would it not be a bigger waste of money to trash a perfectly good controller card and hard drive?

Reading and comprehension is your friend. Please try it sometime.
Click to expand...

i have read it, comprehend it and live it having used scsi for over a decade. use the same card in a regular 32bit slot and get a refurbed max 74GB hdd for the boot drive - those are the drives that are cheap to get, not all scsi drives are cheap like those (146 & 300GB are a bit on the pricey side...).

recommending going raid0 - you don't even know if he has a raid card, plus why even go raid0 when the drives aren't going to be the weak link w/ what he is doing?
 
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