MSI K8T Neo Serial ATA - Promise or VIA Southbridge faster???

stranger707

Member
Apr 6, 2000
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I am setting up a new system with an MSI K8T Neo FIS2R motherboard and an Athlon 64 3200+ processor. I have a single Seagate serial ATA hard drive for the system. The K8T has four separate serial ATA outputs - two on the Promise 20378 chip and two that are part of the VIA VT8237 Southbridge. I am not interested in RAID, so I am curious whether anyone has seen performance differences between the serial ATA support on the VT8237 and the Promise 20378?

Which one is faster???
 

EeyoreX

Platinum Member
Oct 27, 2002
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I don't know of any benchmarks or anything that says (of course, I also admit I didn't look for any either) but my guess is that the speed difference would be negligable, save, possibly, for during boot (the southbridge connected ports may provide faster boot times). As SATA itself is not going to provide faster drive speeds, I doubt it matters in terms of read/write times. The current problem with drive speeds is the mechanics of the drives. The WD Raptor is faster because it is a 10,000 rpm drive. Not because it is SATA.

\Dan