New PC - SATA questions

[coville]

Originally posted in Techincal then I thought maybe I should post here. I've been reading up on the new chipss and memory but ZI have found enough info on SATA yet.

After all these years I'm looking to build a new system. I'm currently running OS/2 and Win98 on a PPro1800 w/ 125 megs ram CDRW and 2 SCSI and 1 IDE HD totaling over 4 gigs of HD space. Since my wife gave me a 19 Viewsonic flatpanel for X'mas I decided it's time for a new system. I 'm looking at the follwoing from NewEgg:
ASUS IEEE802.11b Adapter for ASUS Motherboards
AHANIX Platinum XP (GRAY) 9-BAY
Antec 430W Power Supply, Model "TRUE430"
Asus nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU, Model "A7N8X-E
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ "Barton", 400MHz FSB, 512K Cache Processor - Retail
ASUS GeForce FX5200 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 64-bit, TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "V9520 Magic/T" -RETAIL
for$650
Wanted the :Kingwin(Black)Aluminum 10-Bay Mid-Tower Case,with a Large Side Window,KT-424-BK-WM.
but it was out of stock.
Have 512 DDR3200 Kingston Dual channel to put in the above system.

I want to move my HDs into the new system to get started but in the end I'll need to add a new , bigger HD. I'll be installing a DVD burner in the next couple months . One goal is to get home videos burned to DVD Should I order the SATA HD now or wait letting the prices come down? Is SATA the way to go at this point or should I stay with ATA HD's? If I install an ATA HD now will it have any effect on the performance of the SATA drive added later? I've always installed the OS on the fPrimary drive on the first connection and placed the swap drive and temp folders/cache on the first drive on the second connection.

I'll start w/ moving my HD's w/ OS intact but I plan to add to the bigger HD Linux, replace Win '98 w/ XP and possible go from OS/2 to eComstation. All this to get the most I can upfront then add to it later.
Thanks for any advise!

 

[Farmer]

As of right now, SATA drives really don't perform much better than ATA drives, and I don't think the prices are that much higher either (meaning they won't come down much until a faster SATA standard comes out). The real reason behind buying a SATA drive would be futureproofing. And since the prices aren't that different, I'd say go SATA.

Im a bit confused about some of the other stuff you said...

 

[mechBgon]

Dude... you get the award for getting the most mileage out of your computer! A Pentium Pro... :Q dang!

From a performance standpoint, the AthlonXP isn't bad but the Athlon 64 is much better. How about change it to this:

• Asus K8V Deluxe (also WiFi-ready)
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+
• and I would run far, far away from the 5200 if you are gonna play games on it :Q and if you're not going to play games on it, then you might want to start with something like a Radeon 7000 at $35, still wonderful for all manner of normal work with an LCD display.

The rest of your stuff should work fine as listed. Be aware that your plan of transplanting your existing operating systems into this much new hardware without it freaking out are next to zero.

Regarding the SATA question, you could go either way. SATA connectors are more fragile and you can only run one drive per cable, but they do leave more IDE ports for optical drives and such.

 

[MrCodeDude]

S-ATA peforms at 150MB/sec. Later this year, there should be a S-ATA II that will feature 300MB/sec transfers, but still no HD's take real advantage of the 13% increase in performance from PATA to SATA.

I say no need, but that's just me.

 

[LouPoir]

Curently - SATA is the same as PATA - no difference.

Lou

 

[coville]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Dude... you get the award for getting the most mileage out of your computer! A Pentium Pro... :Q dang!

Thanks for the award, I've worked very hard for the honor! The benefits of running OS/2. Thats why I'm looking into upgrading it and getting into Linux while using WinXP for any mainstream items that I can't find support for elsewhere.

From a performance standpoint, the AthlonXP isn't bad but the Athlon 64 is much better. How about change it to this:

• Asus K8V Deluxe (also WiFi-ready)
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+
• and I would run far, far away from the 5200 if you are gonna play games on it :Q and if you're not going to play games on it, then you might want to start with something like a Radeon 7000 at $35, still wonderful for all manner of normal work with an LCD display.

[/i]

OK, I'm going with the 64 3000+. Since I haven't kept up with memory will it use the Kingston Dual Channel DDR400 I have or do I need to return it for non-Dual Channel? I read one comment that the K8V or 64 3000+ wouldn;t support Dual Channel memory.

The rest of your stuff should work fine as listed. Be aware that your plan of transplanting your existing operating systems into this much new hardware without it freaking out are next to zero.

I expect there will be a lot of resetting if I can get it to work at all. Just need to make a decision on the video card. I'm not a gamer but I want good support for working with digital video. The Radeon 7000 only seems to come in 4X AGP shouldn't I be looking for 8X for video editing?

Thanks for all the info.

 

[mechBgon]

First of all, I'll defer to someone else on the video-editing area, because I don't know anything about it. But AGP 8x cards perform virtually identical when run in AGP 4x mode, so the merit of AGP 8x is essentially zero. From here, the industry is going to simply move on to PCI-Express 16x slots.

Your RAM will work great. The modules in the dual-channel two-pack aren't actually any different than individual DDR400 modules are, other than being packed/tested together and guaranteed identical. The Athlon 64 can run one or two modules of DDR400 (add a third module and it has to slow down to DDR200 by design, however). It does have a single-channel memory controller as you heard, but it's a fast & quick one

If there was something that might be good to change in the memory department, it would be to go to 1GB of memory for your video-editing work... but that would mean some extra-special convolutions to get Win98 to not freak out, since Win98 is only made to handle up to 512MB maximum. And it sounds like you've got the 512MB of RAM already. Win2000 Pro or WinXP Pro would take the 1GB and run sweet with it. Win98 will be looking like this --->

Due to the streaming-data nature of video editing, this could be cause to swing over to a Pentium4-C on an i865PE-based motherboard, especially since the price of the CPUs will be dropping quite a bit this week. The P4C's are known especially for their abilities in this area. One other benefit is that with an i865PE board, you could add a second pair of memory modules later. They could be a pair of 256's or a pair of 512's, leaving you a way to add more RAM without abandoning the pair of 256MB modules you've got now. I know someone who has a lot of expertise in this area, so I'll PM him and see if he has some words of wisdom to add

*sends the Bat-Signal to Duvie*

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: coville

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Dude... you get the award for getting the most mileage out of your computer! A Pentium Pro... :Q dang!

Thanks for the award, I've worked very hard for the honor! The benefits of running OS/2. Thats why I'm looking into upgrading it and getting into Linux while using WinXP for any mainstream items that I can't find support for elsewhere.

From a performance standpoint, the AthlonXP isn't bad but the Athlon 64 is much better. How about change it to this:

• Asus K8V Deluxe (also WiFi-ready)
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+
• and I would run far, far away from the 5200 if you are gonna play games on it :Q and if you're not going to play games on it, then you might want to start with something like a Radeon 7000 at $35, still wonderful for all manner of normal work with an LCD display.

[/i]

OK, I'm going with the 64 3000+. Since I haven't kept up with memory will it use the Kingston Dual Channel DDR400 I have or do I need to return it for non-Dual Channel? I read one comment that the K8V or 64 3000+ wouldn;t support Dual Channel memory.

The rest of your stuff should work fine as listed. Be aware that your plan of transplanting your existing operating systems into this much new hardware without it freaking out are next to zero.

I expect there will be a lot of resetting if I can get it to work at all. Just need to make a decision on the video card. I'm not a gamer but I want good support for working with digital video. The Radeon 7000 only seems to come in 4X AGP shouldn't I be looking for 8X for video editing?

Thanks for all the info.

Well I can say that the raptor SATA is quite nice...Ofcourse it gets its speed from the 10000rpm speed. I agree the 150mb/sec means about nothing since rarely the drives even come close to those speeds since ATA33 drives....May look into getting a some raptor drives....Load times are faster in applications, files, etc due to the speed speeding up the read and seek times.

Also a P4 3.0c northwood after price reduction would be a nice options as well....However if you tell me the programs you are using I can tell you if they are optimized for the P4 and hyperthreading currently....As mentioned in AT review P4's still lead in the area of multimedia so you may want to look at that. A p4 3.0c should be better then a 3000+ (all non oc'd) in a majority of these applications.....


As for vid cards.....I think some of the newer ati cards with using the winxp media center OS can take avanatge of the ability of some of the ATI cards and the latest MMC to encode to mpeg4 standard with hardware help....

Other then that a card with dual head dual vga/dvi output would be recommended by most video editers...


Also I would not even think about editing without 1gb of ram at this point and especially if you will be running winxp OS.....

 

[coville]

Originally posted by: Duvie
Well I can say that the raptor SATA is quite nice...

As for vid cards.....I think some of the newer ati cards with using the winxp media center OS can take avanatge of the ability of some of the ATI cards and the latest MMC to encode to mpeg4 standard with hardware help....

Other then that a card with dual head dual vga/dvi output would be recommended by most video editers...

Also I would not even think about editing without 1gb of ram at this point and especially if you will be running winxp OS.....

The raptor is out due to cost. Just picked up from Office Max a WD 120gig HD, 7200rpm and 8meg buffer for $50 after rebate and an 8X DVD burner for $70 after rebate. I'm going to go with the AMD 64 and t o complete my bargain system (~$835 total) I'm going w/ ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 9600 PRO . I currently use the system mainly for internet activites well running OS/2. I switch to Win98 to burn CD's and connect my Digital camera and Handspring Visor. If the 512 isn't enough for video work I can always add a 512 stick and go from 400 to 200 channel.
Thanks to all for the help.