What's the benefit of having a ATA adapter card?

[Cooky]

Would I actually get a 133MB/sec transfer rate if I put a ATA133 adapter card on my mobo(Aopen's AX63pro), which only supports up to ATA66??
Does anyone know any website where I can look up spec on different standards?? Like, how fast is the transfer rate for PCI / ISA / AGP, etc.
Any input would be appreciated.

 

[Goi]

No current IDE HDD can muster 133MB/s, not even burst rates. They top at around 40-50MB/s for continuous access. The ATA133 designation is mostly marketing, right now ATA100 should suffice, and for some drives even ATA66...

 

[Bartman39]

A benifit from using an adapter card also is... put your CDrom drive & burner on seperate IDE channels of the onboard controller and then put your HD(s) on the controller card...

"Goi" answered the other part to the question...

 

[Derango]

<< The ATA133 designation is mostly marketing, right now ATA100 should suffice, and for some drives even ATA66... >>



The only real thing ATA133 did was up the possible size of a single hard drive, making 160GB+ drives possible.

 

[Viper GTS]

<< No current IDE HDD can muster 133MB/s, not even burst rates. They top at around 40-50MB/s for continuous access. The ATA133 designation is mostly marketing, right now ATA100 should suffice, and for some drives even ATA66... >>



Are you sure that ATA133 drives can't do burst transfers of 133 mb/s? Considering it's just a dump from onboard cache, 133 really isn't al that fast. I completely agree with you on the sequential transfer, but I believe you're wrong onthe burst transfer.

Also, ATA133 provides support for drives larger than 137 gb whereas ATA100 does not.

Viper GTS

 

[Goi]

Viper, that's why I said "mostly marketing", not "entire marketing"...
Also, while the cache may be faster than 133MB/s, keep in mind that the PCI bus itself only provides a maximum of 133MB/s of bandwidth, and you're never gonna get the full amount with other devices using it. Benchmarks of the D740X only measure its burst rate below 100MB/s.

 

[Viper GTS]

<< Viper, that's why I said "mostly marketing", not "entire marketing"... >>



Well, you specifically said no IDE HD could do 133 mb/s burst transfers.



Viper GTS

 

[Goi]

Yeah, and I stand by that, read my previous, edited post.

 

[bacillus]

<< Also, ATA133 provides support for drives larger than 137 gb whereas ATA100 does not. >>


a promise ultra 100 pci card using the latest bios & drivers will support hdds larger than 137Gb!

 

[JellyBaby]

One downside of the add-on cards is they slow down the boot process. A second BIOS scans several channels, detects the drives and reports it onscreen and it takes time. No biggie but that bothered me at first.