Overall speed of a HD on PCI ATA 133 card

Polishwonder74

Senior member
Dec 23, 2002
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Here's a quick question for you fellas:

I've never messed with these before, so I'm curious. If I were to put one of these on an old mobo that maxes out at ATA 33, would it be as fast as a 133 for all intents and purposes?

Also, is it possible to boot from a hard drive plugged into a PCI controller like that?

Here's an example of what I'm yammering about
 

bobsmith1492

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2004
3,875
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Yeah, it's possible.... you have to load the drivers when installing windows XP. I tried using that kinda thing, but it really wasn't worth it. Of course, my board supported ATA100, so it wasn't necessary anyway. Try it, can't hurt!
 

Polishwonder74

Senior member
Dec 23, 2002
474
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What I'm trying to do is breathe a little more life into a really decrepit, old system (circa 1998). I know it wouldn't do much for overall processing power, but I think if I replaced that hard drive with a slick new Maxtor 7200 RPM and circumvent the slow-ass ATA 33 mobo with an ATA 133 PCI card, (plus load it up to the gills with RAM) maybe I could get it to open apps faster and be generally more useful for the final year or so of its life before it's retired to 'just a toy'.

Thanks for your advice!
 

NokiaDude

Diamond Member
Oct 13, 2002
3,966
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An ATA133 or ATA100 PCI Controller Card coupled with an ATA133/ATA100 HD will breathe alot more life in any system with an ATA33 bus. Along with the new HD and controller card I would try and max out the fastest RAM you can install in all the DIMM slots. RAM is what alot of old computers need. If you can get at least 512mb you'll notice a huge difference.
 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
64,795
84
91
not necessary. your old hd never maxed out 33 i'm sure. the new one might, just barely. but it'll get enough performance that it won't matter. that controller is overpriced. silicon image ata 133 with two ports costs like 25 shipped on ebay or less.. pcimicro has em too
 

Polishwonder74

Senior member
Dec 23, 2002
474
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Woah, so do you think it would be ok to just get a newer hard drive to speed things up? I figure the latency would be reduced by a LOT, but I figured maybe I'd take a nasty hit in performance since it wouldn't have those nice fat ATA 133 pipes to push data through, which would make it worthwile to try to find a way around that. Like, I kinda thought putting a hot new 7200 RPM HD on an ATA 33 system would be like putting Ferrari tires on a Chevette and wondering why it's not going any faster.

Thanks again for all your great posts! :beer:

Anyone else have any good/bad experience with this?

EDIT: BTW, I LOVE the siggeh, NokiaDude!