PC questions.. BIOS, SATA, etc..

[Phait]

Having a hard time finding decent answers for these:

- what is Legacy Keyboard / ISA... legacy anything really, in BIOS?
- SATA - any real advantage over ATA? If I remember correctly, SATA is 150 or in the 100 range MB/sec, while ATA is 33 or 66 or 100 MB/sec (just barely recalling specs)? Basically does SATA have faster read/write times that are considerable enough?
- CAS, RAM latency.. read an article, seems there really isn't much to consider here, between 1 to 7% increase with varyin latency specs. Anyone know otherwise - is it worthwhile to consider?

[NutWrench]

phait said:
- SATA - any real advantage over ATA? If I remember correctly, SATA is 150 or in the 100 range MB/sec, while ATA is 33 or 66 or 100 MB/sec (just barely recalling specs)? Basically does SATA have faster read/write times that are considerable enough?



SATA hard drives also use a spiffy new type of connector which combine the power and data into a single, thin, flexible cable. You need a hard drive and a motherboard that have SATA connectors.

My latest hard drive has a SATA connector, next to the IDE one, but I'm also using an older hard drive and you can't mix SATA and IDE drives (at least not with my motherboard) so I'm running both drives on an IDE cable.

[Crispy Critters]

SATA hard drives also use a spiffy new type of connector which combine the power and data into a single, thin, flexible cable.



Wrong. Serial ATA drives still use a seperate power connector. It's different than the molex one's we're all used to, and most of the time people get adapters for molex to SATA instread of buying a new power supply with them already on there.

Regualar ATA (Parallel ATA) drives claim they could do transfer rates of up to 133MB/s. You won't be seeing anything this close. Most of the time you will see transfers in the upper 50's, if you're lucky. Some people like to say it's the burst speed that gets that high, but even that's untrue. You might get a burst speed of 90MB/s.

[NutWrench]

Whoops. You're right about that.

[8IronBob]

Most PCs today do seem to use the SATA format, it's easier to upgrade, I believe, the data gets transferred at faster rates, and with the 7200 RPM, that'll most certainly be ultra-fast, especially if your RAM and CPU speed can work together with it. I know about there being 10,000 RPM HDDs, but those tend to be a little pricey, and the only storage size I saw from the 10K was the 74 GB, haven't seen any bigger storage sizes for that yet.

[Bludd]

http://www.rojakpot.com/freebog.aspx

[Jeff]

phait said:
- SATA - any real advantage over ATA? If I remember correctly, SATA is 150 or in the 100 range MB/sec, while ATA is 33 or 66 or 100 MB/sec (just barely recalling specs)? Basically does SATA have faster read/write times that are considerable enough?




The difference between SATA and IDE is theoretically 33%, but that has yet to be proven in the real world. Okay maybe it has, but it's probably not 33%, because SATA doesn't use up the full 150 MB/s bandwidth. The thing with SATA, is that you have skinny cables which are good for case airflow. My case is nice and cool, running at 35 C during load times. About 28 C when idle. Now if you have 2x WD Raptors in RAID 0 (either the 36 or 74 GB), then you will definately notice a difference. For a price of $300 Canadian, you can get 2x 36 GB models and watch your system scream. I know a lot of people say that they are worthless, but that's because they don't own a Raptor RAID themselves. You won't notice too much with one but when I got 2, my read/write speeds went from about 50 to 109 MB/s, according to Sandra 2005. Unless you've got a third hard drive for backups, then I'd say it's not for you. You do get 69 GB of space with RAID 0, which is plenty for Windows and games. Then you can put your data and information on the backup drive.

[DudeMiester]

As for the memory timings, use the lowest that work with your RAM. Performance is performance, no matter how you get it. Although, you have to consider if you can only get 215Mhz 2-2-2-x, but can get 300Mhz 2.5-3-3-x, then the added clockspeed is worth the looser timings, so go with the latter. Generally speaking tighter timings is better though.

Those legacy BIOS settings are for the many old and ancient connectors that mobos sometimes have, like ISA, printer ports, etc... Generally, you don't need to bother with them.

[Phait]

Thanks for answers and that link.

So basically hard-drive transfer rates have a ceiling that depends on the interface type, but it's more leeway than we can approach yet? Why can't we approach the spec'd MB/sec yet?

[Bludd]

Harddrives are mechanical devices. Spin them fast enough and you'll get tons of speed provided the platters can handle it.

RAID-0 with 15k RPM drives will be seriously fast.

[Jeff]

Bludd said:
RAID-0 with 15k RPM drives will be seriously fast.



You should see my drives do Anti-Virus. Take 50,000 files (that includes compressed ones), this thing will scan those in about 6-8 minutes. Gotta have the money and a backup drive, if you want to go RAID 0. This is using Norton Anti-Virus 2003.

[DudeMiester]

That's pretty bad then, I have ~450,000 files and it only takes an hour with my scanner. I use www.free-av.com (http://www.free-av.com)