Does ATA-133 matter?

[Hiawatha Bray]

Someone else in this newsgroup has urged me to remove the ATA-133 PCI card
that came with my new hard drive, and just use the ATA-100 IDE interface on
the motherboard. His argument is that the extra speed of the 133 interface
is virtually never needed.

Anybody know if this is true? Where can I go to learn more? Thanks.

 

[Bob WIllard]

Someone else in this newsgroup has urged me to remove the ATA-133 PCI card
that came with my new hard drive, and just use the ATA-100 IDE interface on
the motherboard. His argument is that the extra speed of the 133 interface
is virtually never needed.

Anybody know if this is true? Where can I go to learn more? Thanks.

If you only have one device per IDE cable then it does not matter
for any HD currently shipping because the STR (Sustained Transfer
Rate) for any current HD is far less that 100 MB/s. {OK, it might
affect throughput by 0.0001% or so. Big deal.}

If you have two devices on the same IDE cable then it might matter
if you have software that is capable of issuing concurrent transfer
operations to both devices, but bloody few Win apps are smart enough
to do so; and, even those apps, will see little real gain: remember that
bus speed only affects instantaneous transfer rate, it does not affect
seek time or rotational latency. Therefore, even if you have two
leading-edge HDs on the same IDE cable, you are likely to see very
little difference in throughput with real (non-benchmark) apps due to
the difference between U/100 and U/133 bus.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Someone else in this newsgroup has urged me to remove the ATA-133 PCI card
that came with my new hard drive, and just use the ATA-100 IDE interface on
the motherboard. His argument is that the extra speed of the 133 interface
is virtually never needed.

Anybody know if this is true? Where can I go to learn more? Thanks.

It is likely true. And there are other limits. The PCI-bus only has
something like 133 MB/sec bandwidth anyway. And current HDDs reach
only about 50MB/sec speed.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Someone else in this newsgroup has urged me to remove the ATA-133 PCI card
that came with my new hard drive, and just use the ATA-100 IDE interface on
the motherboard. His argument is that the extra speed of the 133 interface
is virtually never needed.

Anybody know if this is true?

Yes and no.
Yes for a single drive or for a dual drive setup (on the same channel) in
which only one drive is used at a time.
No for a dual drive setup in which both drives are used at virtually the
same time. In that case each drive virtually drops to half the interface
rate as they have to share.