ATA 133 OR ATA 100 ?

[Bugsy]

Hi i'm building a system. Im gonna have Raid, so i guess i need the most bandwith, but the question is this: Im getting ATA 100 Disks REALLY cheap caus I live in Iceland and if i'd want 133 id have to wait for a month or pay alot more to have them shipped from the usa. That is I pay 100% more for ATA 133 on both motherboard and Disks. Can anybody tell me how much performance difference there would be in a raid system, and would it be worth it? Im guessing probably not

 

[Doomguy]

ATA 133 will not give you anymore performance. No hard drive is close to maxing out ATA/66 yet.

 

[AnujTech]

Bugsy,

Don't forget, 133 means burst transfer rate, not sustained. So you will be safe with 100 considering how many times you
even get close to 100, let alone 66, as Doomguy mentioned.

AnujTech

 

[RaymondY]

Think as of right now only Maxtor HDD support ATA133. The format has not been adopted by the other drive makes.

With Serial ATA around the corner (probably 3Q or 4Q this year), why spend the extra $$$ now when at best you get 3-5% increase in performance. In my opinion ATA133 is not worth it.

 

[Bugsy]

thanks guys problem solved

 

[AluminumStudios]

Here's another thing to consider, the PCI bus only offers 133 megs/sec of bandwidth (33 MHz x 32 bits). If you have a PCI ATA133 controller how often do you think it will be able to procure all of the bandwidth it wants.

Although, I have to admit, new chipsets that use higher bandwidth between the North and South bridges are fixing this problem when you use the IDE that is integrated into the south bridge.

 

[thorin]

With WDs 1200BB-JB (SE) drives only pushing a MAX Sustained Transfer Rate of 49MB/Sec (average STR ~39MB/Sec .... not even challenging ATA66 spec) ATA133 vs ATA100 controller isn't going to make any difference (with the exception of allowing you to access drives over the 128/137GB barrier).

Thorin

 

[Rand]

<< ATA133 vs ATA100 controller isn't going to make any difference (with the exception of allowing you to access drives over the 128/137GB barrier).

>>



It's not necessary to have ATA133 to see drives over 137GB though, it merely has that capability natively while previous standards need to be updated for it.
48 bit LBA logical ATA commands -- the means by which you can access hard drives larger than 137 Gigabytes can be adapted for use with even ATA66 and earlier.

 

[thorin]

"It's not necessary to have ATA133 to see drives over 137GB though, it merely has that capability natively while previous standards need to be updated for it."

Agreed, however I never said you HAD to have a ATA133 controller do use >137GB drives, I simple said ATA133 controllers allow you to use them.

Thorin