GEEK Question

jodaddy1

jodaddy1

O.D.in' on XL's meds while
Looking at updating/rebuilding my home computer system. What is a SATA harddrive and how will it effect my system vs. a EIDE drive???
Basic new spec.
Soyo KT600 MB
Athalon 3000 cpu
1024mb memory
DVD-RW
cd-RW
128mb video card.

Input needed please.
 
SATA stands for Serial ATA.

It's faster and requires a drive controller that supports it - might be built into the motherboard. If they're selling you a complete kit, everything should be there. If not, ask and make sure you've got the right controller.
 
Specs on the motherboard say it supports a SATA drive ---but what makes it better than a eide???
 
150 MBytes/second transfer rate.

you can hot plug a drive - no need to power down

commands from the controller can overlap - which basically means that the controller doesn't have to wait for a response from a driver before sending a command to another drive.

cables are thinner and can be longer without affecting performance.

they use less power


Something to ask about the motherboard - how fast is the PCI bus?
If it's less than 150 MBytes/second, then you're SATA controller will be waiting around a lot..
 
Oh and if you want to mix your EIDE drives in there, you could get an adapter from Highpoint that will let you hook them up to the SATA controller..

You don't necessarily have to - assuming that the motherboard comes with an EIDE controller as well - but it will let you use the thinner cables and also not rely on the PCI bus to get data between drives.
 
I have that on a system at work. Its a fast board, a good chipset. You probably won't notice the difference in Sata vrs eide unless your fileserving or playing hih end games that run off the hard drive. as far as word loading and stuff like that, on the same system, you won't notice the difference. Sata has a better capacity to multitask. Not as good as scsi, but they are much cheaper. Sata was originally developed as a low end budget alternative for internet servers so they don't have the high price of scsi. But they rock none the less.
 
Here's a review of that MB (and 6 other similar boards)

http://www20.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20030908/

Net: It's a highly optioned motherboard for which you pay a premium, but it didn't win the shootout. These boards are all based on an older CPU Socket technology.

That in itself isn't bad. You just need to be aware of it so you can make an informed decision. There's always something bigger, better, and faster. you just need to purchase for what you think you'll need for the next few years...
 
If you'll notice at the actual benchmarks, the Soyo Kt600 has the overal fastest memory transfer rates and comes in second overall in FPS. FPS and transfer rates to me are the most important, as those are the only two benchmarks the human eye can notice. Faster memory transfer rates means better processor performace in multitasked memory intensive applications, like web serving and mail serving. The FPS test is something hardcore gammers look for so they can run there games the smoothest and at the highest bit rate giving them a graphical advantage over there geekie compition.
Tom's Hardware guide in notorious for overlooking the above two benchmarks. I have never been very happy with reviews they have given.

In fact at work I have a Mailserver running the Soyo, a Fileserver running the MSI, and my personal computer is the gigabyte(its the best to overclock with thanks to the dual bios).

For an all around best buy ang for the buck I would go for the Gigabyte board on my home PC, if I had some extra bucks I would go for the Soyo. the MSI is an average board for average bucks. In reality you wouldn't probably notice much of any difference in any of these boards. teh VIA chipset like I mentioned above, is rock solid and fast, and cheap. a good buy.
However the new P4's are faster in all accounts. We have several P4's with 800mhz fsb and man they rock pretty hard but you pay a premium.
 
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