need advice on new SATA controller or new mobo

[ThePiston]

I have an older mobo for my Athlon XP Mobile and it doesn't have SATA. I bought a 2-port controller for my Raptor, but now I bought 2 more SATA drives for Raid storage and I need either a new controller or a new mobo. Here's the question - should I worry about getting a SATA II controller or does SATA 150 work pretty much as well? If it does then I can get a cheap controller, but the SATA II controller cards with Raid and 4 ports are expensive and I'd be better off getting a new mobo, but then again I don't know if mobos are out for my CPU that have a lot of SATA II controllers and Raid (?)

 

[themisfit610]

SATA II only makes a difference when you do RAID. Most drives won't go over 50-60 MB/s sustained transfer. With RAID this can go over 200 MB/s with a 3 drive array, so the extra bandwidth helps a lot.

I dont remember any Socket A boards with more than 2 or 4 SATA ports. Most of the new boards have 4-8.

The new 4x4 boards have 12 And that means 2 RAID5 arrays of 6 drives... And RAID0 on those 2 RAID5s !!!

~MiSfit

 

[ThePiston]

it'll be a RAID 0 config so only 2 drives in the raid... still think Ishould get SATA II?

 

[Madwand1]

You're going to be bottlenecked on the PCI bus, so it doesn't matter if you get SATA 1.5 Gb/s or 3.0 Gb/s. Besides, it doesn't really matter much in any case -- no drive can sustain SATA 1.5 Gb/s speeds at this time. RAID doesn't really matter at the drive interface level -- each drive will sustain less than its connection / interface speed, and the aggregate interface to the rest of the system will be through the shared PCI bus. In your system, this will be somewhat crowded and limit the overall performance.

You're a few generations out of date at this point, so an incremental upgrade would be difficult or not advised. It might be possible to get an inexpensive 754 board and CPU and keep your video and RAM in the meanwhile, and still have an upgrade path to some PCIe. E.g. based on an MSI Neo3-F:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130493

But even that's out of date, and iffy for compatibility issues. However, it could give you performance improvements in a few areas (CPU, RAM (dual channel?), SATA vs. PCI, GbE LAN, and PCIe options down the road).

 

[ThePiston]

I knew this day would come... I guess it's time for a full build. I had my first child 10 months ago today and I'm finally getting to the point where I may have some time to actually devote to it.

Looks like the E6400 is the way to go at this point. Anyone have any recommendations for a middle of the road mobo that will help me modestly OC that chip and also has good Raid capabilities for >3 SATA drives?