Should I Upgrade My ATA Controller?

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bobdobolina

Member
Jun 8, 2000
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Hi there,

I have an older Socket 370 PIII board (Asus CUV4X) which has ATA66 present on the board. I've noticed that I can pick up an ATA133 IDE Controller for $30 bux or so and was wondering if the upgrade is worth it. I have a newer Maxtor drive that supports ATA133, but didn't know if the PCI bus would effectively pass the data fast enough to make the upgrade worth it and/or if the controller card could be used if I only have the single drive (i.e. I want to boot from it). Any ideas or experiences would be a great help...

Should I spend the extra $100 or so to get to a RAID 0 configuration? I know it'll be a lot faster, but it's also more $$.

Thanks!
Bob
 
beatle

beatle

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2001
5,661
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Maxtor's fastest ATA133 drive doesn't top 60MB/sec. The only consideration would be getting it to work with your older controller. I seem to recall people having problems detecting all of their drive space when not using an ATA133 controller (either onboard or expansion card.)

Don't waste extra money on RAID 0 unless benchmarks are your pasttime. :) If you find a cheap controller that happens to do RAID, then that's a different story. :)
 
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iluvdeal

Golden Member
Nov 22, 1999
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I have an Abit BH6 (ATA33 onboard) connected to a 120GB hdd. In the same system I have Promise ATA100 card connected to 160 and 200GB hdds. I can't really say I notice a difference between the speed of the drives. I added the IDE card since I ran out of IDE connections.
 
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bobdobolina

Member
Jun 8, 2000
107
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Hmmm, I'm thinking maybe the $$ could be put in a jar and saved for a new system. Of course, 30 bux deosn't get me much closer, but it's a start.

Basically I wanted to get a bit more out of my system... Do you think spending the $$ on more RAM would be a better buy? I have 512 now...

Thanks!
Bob
 
Confused

Confused

Elite Member
Nov 13, 2000
14,166
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Put the $30 and money you would currently spend on upgrading and get yourself a nForce2 motherboard, a XP1700+ or 2500+ and 512mb PC2700 or faster memory :)

Should run you about $200ish, and will increase the speed of your PC by a very noticible amount


Confused
 
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bobdobolina

Member
Jun 8, 2000
107
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Hmm, yeah my PIII 650 is still humming along at 910Mhz, but that's getting pretty out of date.

Is it possible to use my pc133 memory in a new MB until I can afford some nice dual channel Crucial or OCZ?

I ask because I'd rather spend the extra coin on a really good MoBo and then upgrade the Ram as I can afford it. I'd been looking at the ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe, because it has RAID etc. I figured I'd get an XP 2500+ too, BUT I heard that the processors for Intel and AMD are moving to something over 900 pins in the 1st quarter of the year and to wait for the new offerings.

Any advice on how to proceed? Are the Asus boards good? My CUV4X has been great for 4 years...
B.
 
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charlie21

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
491
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All current motherboards use 184-pin DDR SDRAM modules. There are some older motherboards that will allow you to use your 168-pin PC133. But, if you're going to upgrade, go ahead and get something nice. None of the motherboards that anyone would recommend to you have old DIMM slots on them. The ASUS board that you mentioned doesn't. So you probably won't be able to use your old memory.
 
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bobdobolina

Member
Jun 8, 2000
107
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Oh ok, thanks. That's what I figured, but just wanted to double check.

I guess I should ask for some advice on a system now... I'd love to hear suggestions. I do audio recording and gaming, but at this point I can't afford RAID for the audio apps. I think I can swing MoBo, CPU, RAM and Case. I have NO preference of AMD or Intel... but I am concerned about the pin count issue I mentioned above...

I will be transferring my GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB, Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Ex and the Maxtor HD to the new box.

Will I have to wipe the HD when I make the change? Or will windows be able to handle the swap?

If not can Norton Ghost be of assistance in making the data transfer between systems better?

B.
 
beatle

beatle

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2001
5,661
5
81
Bob, re: installing new motherboard on existing system, this FAQ is pretty thorough.
 
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