I was looking into getting the abit ic7-max3 but instead I am going to get the asus board along with the 2.8 chip. Now I am just tired of reading through this stuff and figured you guys would already know, in order to take advantage of the "ata150" what do I need to do? I am just a gamer so which is the best way to go? I dont want to have to get 2 hard drives, thats the way the old board I had did the raid...
So far this is my planned purchase..
p4 2.8
asus p4c800
ati radeon 9600 xt (asus version)
512 pc 3200 corsair xms...
Hard drive??
asus p4c800 deluxe info needed
Grunt,
ATA 150 is the SATA connectors on the board. You do not have to use two drives with the board unless you want to run raid. If you are in to gaming, I would suggest getting an SATA Western Digital 36gb raptor drive for your primary drive, and, if you need the space, another large drive for storage. The Raptors are nice, and you would benefit even more if you would get 2 raptors and run it in Raid 0. Very nice setup there!
PJ
ATA 150 is the SATA connectors on the board. You do not have to use two drives with the board unless you want to run raid. If you are in to gaming, I would suggest getting an SATA Western Digital 36gb raptor drive for your primary drive, and, if you need the space, another large drive for storage. The Raptors are nice, and you would benefit even more if you would get 2 raptors and run it in Raid 0. Very nice setup there!
PJ
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I use single Seagate SATA 120GB drives around here on all the test systems. They are ATA150, 7200RPM's, and have 8mb cache. I run mine individually (without raid). I don't notice much, if any performance gain from this setup over traditional IDE hard drives. TO utilize the most out of a SATA setup RAID 0 with two drives is the way to go. The Raptor's Jason brought up are the best bet to see a gain.
If you honestly don't want to shell out the dough for 2 10,000RPM raptor's you are best sticking with an IDE drive and saving some of your cash.
If you honestly don't want to shell out the dough for 2 10,000RPM raptor's you are best sticking with an IDE drive and saving some of your cash.
Max PC had a pretty interesting spot in their June "Speed" issue. they compaqred 2, 3, and 4 drive RAID arrays. (using P-ATA). They found that a 3 drive array is the optimal. It had a max burst rate of 127 mb/sec., which is just under the 133 limit set by the PCI bus. A four drive array actually pruced a decline in efficieny. I know you are asking about SATA, but for cost comparision, P-ATA is almost as good, and if you use a controller card, you are still limited to the 133 mb/sec limit. My thinking would be to go get 3 80 GB HD and arrange them in an array.
Here were their specs. (AVG read time)
1 drive.....47 mb/sec.
2 drives...95 mb/sec.
3 drives...113 mb/sec
4 drives...107 mb/sec
Here were their specs. (AVG read time)
1 drive.....47 mb/sec.
2 drives...95 mb/sec.
3 drives...113 mb/sec
4 drives...107 mb/sec