SATA pci card performance increase over ata100?

[Darrell]

Hi, a friend of mine has an Intel D845wn motherboard which has
onboard ata100 drive interface and wants to install a SATA pci card
and drive. He is doing digital audio and hopes to obtain more
simultaneous tracks. Will there be a significant performance increase
over ata100 or will the pci interface be a bottleneck? Has anyone a
similar experience to share? I know he would be better off upgrading
his entire computer but he doesn't have the cash at this time and
wants the cheap fix for now.
TIA
Darrell

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi, a friend of mine has an Intel D845wn motherboard which has
onboard ata100 drive interface and wants to install a SATA pci card
and drive. He is doing digital audio and hopes to obtain more
simultaneous tracks. Will there be a significant performance increase
over ata100 or will the pci interface be a bottleneck? Has anyone a
similar experience to share? I know he would be better off upgrading
his entire computer but he doesn't have the cash at this time and
wants the cheap fix for now.
TIA
Darrell

The interface is meaningless with todays disks. ATA is as fast as SATA
for the same disk model, unless there is some other bottleneck. I have
a pair of matched Samsung 160GB HDDs, one with ATA and one with SATA
and both are pretty much the same speed: 56MB/sec for ATA and 59MB/sec
for SATA ('hdparm -t'). However SATA goes over the SCSI layer in
Linux and I suspect that is a bit faster than the ATA layer, so both
disks may have exactly the same raw speed. Even if not, that is about
5% difference, i.e. meaningless.

PCI should not be a bottleneck with one (!) drive, unless a lot
of other data is pushed over it.

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi, a friend of mine has an Intel D845wn motherboard
which has onboard ata100 drive interface and wants to
install a SATA pci card and drive. He is doing digital audio
and hopes to obtain more simultaneous tracks. Will there
be a significant performance increase over ata100

Nope, thats currently limited by the hard drive
physical detail, RPM and sectors per track.

or will the pci interface be a bottleneck?

Can be in that situation.

Has anyone a similar experience to share? I know he would
be better off upgrading his entire computer but he doesn't
have the cash at this time and wants the cheap fix for now.

A new hard drive may be enough, but
you dont say what the current one is.

 

[Peter]

Hi, a friend of mine has an Intel D845wn motherboard which has

onboard ata100 drive interface and wants to install a SATA pci card
and drive. He is doing digital audio and hopes to obtain more
simultaneous tracks. Will there be a significant performance increase
over ata100 or will the pci interface be a bottleneck? Has anyone a
similar experience to share? I know he would be better off upgrading
his entire computer but he doesn't have the cash at this time and
wants the cheap fix for now.

Do you know how data is written when his digital audio app runs?
Does it create one or more files simultaneously?
What OS does he use?

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

The interface is meaningless with todays disks.

That has never been different.

 

[Darrell]

The interface is meaningless with todays disks. ATA is as fast as SATA
for the same disk model, unless there is some other bottleneck. I have
a pair of matched Samsung 160GB HDDs, one with ATA and one with SATA
and both are pretty much the same speed: 56MB/sec for ATA and 59MB/sec
for SATA ('hdparm -t'). However SATA goes over the SCSI layer in
Linux and I suspect that is a bit faster than the ATA layer, so both
disks may have exactly the same raw speed. Even if not, that is about
5% difference, i.e. meaningless.

PCI should not be a bottleneck with one (!) drive, unless a lot
of other data is pushed over it.

Arno

Interesting info Arno, a salesman at the local electronics store told
him that he would see vast speed improvements with the card and drive.
I figured he might see a little more speed but not major as stated,
fortunately my friend called me first and asked if I could check into
it for him.
Thanks!
Darrell

 

[Darrell]

Nope, thats currently limited by the hard drive
physical detail, RPM and sectors per track.


Can be in that situation.


A new hard drive may be enough, but
you dont say what the current one is.

Hi, his current drive I believe is a maxtor 120 gig 7200 rpm ata100 (I
can't check it personally until the weekend) so I don't think it's
worth it to buy the card and new drive. At some point next year we'll
do a complete computer upgrade anyway.
Thanks!
Darrell

 

[Darrell]

Do you know how data is written when his digital audio app runs?
Does it create one or more files simultaneously?
What OS does he use?

Hi, he's using Windows 2k (2.5ghz P4, 1 gig ram) and running Nuendo
recording mostly mono tracks at 192k one at a time. Since he's now
recording at a much higher sample rate he can do far fewer tracks and
the computer is struggling.
Definitely time for an upgrade but gotta wait until next year
sometime. I would rather see him go back to 96k but he says he can
hear a difference at 192k and wants to stay there.
Thanks!
Darrell

 

[Arno Wagner]

The interface is meaningless with todays disks. ATA is as fast as SATA
for the same disk model, unless there is some other bottleneck. I have
a pair of matched Samsung 160GB HDDs, one with ATA and one with SATA
and both are pretty much the same speed: 56MB/sec for ATA and 59MB/sec
for SATA ('hdparm -t'). However SATA goes over the SCSI layer in
Linux and I suspect that is a bit faster than the ATA layer, so both
disks may have exactly the same raw speed. Even if not, that is about
5% difference, i.e. meaningless.

PCI should not be a bottleneck with one (!) drive, unless a lot
of other data is pushed over it.

Arno

[/QUOTE]

Interesting info Arno, a salesman at the local electronics store told
him that he would see vast speed improvements with the card and drive.

Might a 'salesman' maybe looking to make a 'sale' ?

I figured he might see a little more speed but not major as stated,
fortunately my friend called me first and asked if I could check into
it for him.

It is truly difficult to tell fact from fiction today if you are
not an expert in computer technology. Wise move on his part!

Thanks!

You and your friend are welcome.

Arno

 

[craigm]

Hi, he's using Windows 2k (2.5ghz P4, 1 gig ram) and running Nuendo
recording mostly mono tracks at 192k one at a time. Since he's now
recording at a much higher sample rate he can do far fewer tracks and
the computer is struggling.
Definitely time for an upgrade but gotta wait until next year
sometime. I would rather see him go back to 96k but he says he can
hear a difference at 192k and wants to stay there.
Thanks!
Darrell

Depending upon how many bits he is using per sample, his data rate is
about 1/2 MB per second per track.

Arno is seeing about 50 MB per second or about 100 times the performance
your friend needs (per track).

So just looking at the data requirements, there should be plenty of
bandwidth.

However, the OS, the application, and other running tasks all tend to
consume bandwidth. CPU bandwidth, memory bandwidth and I/O bandwidth are
all important.

What Arno is seeing is probably the sustained data rate of his disk
drives. This is the rate that can be achieved with long continuous reads
or writes.

When data is actually moving between the drive's data buffer and the
computer's memory it moves in bursts of one or more sectors. These
bursts occur at the interface rate. Interface rates for SATA drives are
150 or 300 MB/sec and ATA 100 is 100 MB/sec. So the transfer speeds for
SATA are much higher and parallel ATA.

Where this is a benefit is in managing the CPU, memory and I/O
bandwidth. Since only one activity gets the bus or CPU (let's assume
single processor/core), the faster the data is moved, the more time is
available for other activities.

If your friend's computer is 'struggling' then, to understand the issue,
you need to find where the bottleneck is.

The OS, Nuendo, or other applications may also be doing stuff that is
consuming bandwidth. If your friend is running other applications in the
background while recoridng, this could be a source of problems.

Your friend might want to check to see if he is really running at ATA
100 speed. There are a variety of things that can cause the host to
access the drive in a slower mode.

Until the cause of the limted system performance is found, the correct
solution will be difficult to determine.

craigm

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi, he's using Windows 2k (2.5ghz P4, 1 gig ram) and running Nuendo
recording mostly mono tracks at 192k one at a time. Since he's now
recording at a much higher sample rate he can do far fewer tracks and
the computer is struggling.
Definitely time for an upgrade but gotta wait until next year
sometime. I would rather see him go back to 96k but he says he can
hear a difference at 192k and wants to stay there.

Before you upgrade you should determine which exactly your bottleneck
is. Candidates are disk, CPU and main memory. It could be either,
a combination of any two or all three. If you know where the main
bottleneck is, you can get the most benefit for the money spend.
Just observe how much RAM the box uses and what CPU load you see
while the encoding is running. If both are well below 100% then it is
indeed a disk-bottleneck. In that case it might be wortwhile
to get a really fast (and smaller) disk for the recording
part, e.g. a 36GB / 15000 RPM SCSI disk, but keep the rest of
the system just as it is. By the same reasoning, if the limit is
CPU or memory, you can keep the old disk. If it is memory only,
a simple memory upgrade may solve the issue completely, etc..

Don't upgrade blindly!

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi, his current drive I believe is a maxtor 120 gig 7200 rpm ata100 (I
can't check it personally until the weekend) so I don't think it's
worth it to buy the card and new drive.

Yeah, I wouldnt in that situation.

At some point next year we'll do a complete computer upgrade anyway.

Yep, best approach.

 

[dscotts]

Nope, thats currently limited by the hard drive
physical detail, RPM and sectors per track.

its been a while, Win95 days since I have worried about PIO modes and
disk placement so if someone could lend me some advice along this train
of thought.

I'm beginning to dabble in PC recording as well and to get better
results I'm going to add a smaller 20 GB 7200 rpm ATA 133 HD I have
laying around dedicated to wave recording. the question, what would be
the best placement of the HD.

right now, on IDE 1 is a new 250 7200 rpm GB ATA 133 and on IDE 2 is the
DVD and CD rom drives. a good placement out of the factory as it keeps
the 2 slower PIO mode image drives on the same channel. again, for
WinXP, I'm not sure if this matters anymore like it did in Win95 where
the slowest PIO mode drive on the channel determined the maximum for
both drives. btw, the IDE channels only support ATA 100 but no big deal
there i guess. the computer also has 2 SATA channels but I don't want to
buy an SATA drive so this leaves me few options at this time.

what should I do to get the best performance. the obvious is to put the
20 GB as a slave to the system drive as master but I could experiment
with a IDE-2-SATA adapter for like 20 bucks and put one of the drives,
probably the dedicated recording drive (to keep away from any
complications that might arise from this jury rig of sorts on the system
disk) on the first SATA channel. would that second option be worth the
investment and probable experimenting time.
http://www.xpcgear.com/ide2sata.html

 

[Darrell]

I agree that I need to take a closer look at things, tough to solve
issues like this over the phone. I'm going to his place this weekend
to install another 512mb ram stick he picked up bringing him to 1 1/2
gigs, see if that helps at all. Things weren't too bad at 24bit 96k
but I think 192k is probably just eating more resources all around.
Checking the Nuendo forums people are running the latest cpu's (if not
dual) and 2 or 3 gigs of ram for 192k.
Thanks for the advise folks!
Darrell

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Interesting info Arno, a salesman at the local electronics store told
him that he would see vast speed improvements with the card and drive.

I figured he might see a little more speed but not major as stated,

A Seagate Barracuda8 can do 72MB/s, an ATA 100 is limited
to 45MB/s if it is from a mfgr that also has ATA133 drives.
That's a 50% improvement.

fortunately my friend called me first and asked if I could check into
it for him.

And how are you doing so far?

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

its been a while, Win95 days since I have worried about
PIO modes and disk placement so if someone could
lend me some advice along this train of thought.

I'm beginning to dabble in PC recording as well and to get
better results I'm going to add a smaller 20 GB 7200 rpm
ATA 133 HD I have laying around dedicated to wave recording.

Thats not likely to be a very fast drive by modern standards.

Mainly because such a small drive isnt likely
to have a very high sector per track number.

the question, what would be the best placement of the HD.

right now, on IDE 1 is a new 250 7200 rpm GB ATA 133

It would like be a better place to write the data,
its likely quite a bit faster than the 20G drive.

and on IDE 2 is the DVD and CD rom drives. a good
placement out of the factory as it keeps the 2 slower
PIO mode image drives on the same channel.

Surely you arent actually using them in PIO mode ?

again, for WinXP, I'm not sure if this matters anymore
like it did in Win95 where the slowest PIO mode drive on
the channel determined the maximum for both drives.

Nope, that problem is long gone now.

What still applys is that if you are using either drive when
doing the wave recording, activity on that channel can be
paused while an optical drive does a relatively slow seek.

btw, the IDE channels only support
ATA 100 but no big deal there i guess.

Yes, even the 250G drive wont be able to saturate ATA100

the computer also has 2 SATA channels but I don't want to buy
an SATA drive so this leaves me few options at this time.

what should I do to get the best performance.

I'd write the data to the 250G drive and ensure that there is
enough physical ram so that the swap file isnt being used.
It that isnt economically feasible, I'd put the swap file on
the 20G drive and have it on the secondary channel.

the obvious is to put the 20 GB as a slave to the system drive as master
but I could experiment with a IDE-2-SATA adapter for like 20 bucks and
put one of the drives, probably the dedicated recording drive (to keep
away from any complications that might arise from this jury rig of sorts
on the system disk) on the first SATA channel.

I wouldnt unless you need to use an optical drive while wave recording
and even if that is necessary, just ensure its not on the same channel
as the hard drive you are doing the wave recording to.

would that second option be worth the
investment and probable experimenting time.
http://www.xpcgear.com/ide2sata.html

I wouldnt myself. I'd spend it on more physical ram if
the swap file is used during the actual wave recording.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

A Seagate Barracuda8 can do 72MB/s, an ATA 100 is limited
to 45MB/s if it is from a mfgr that also has ATA133 drives.
That's a 50% improvement.

In real life, Folkert, I doubt many people with single drives get a
"true" [1]
throughput of much more than about 40MB per second on a new drive.
(Sustained.)

[1] I'm not talking about benchmarking software - I'm talking about
real-life
scenarios - actually, physically copying the data and measuring it.


Odie

 

[Peter]

I agree that I need to take a closer look at things, tough to solve

issues like this over the phone. I'm going to his place this weekend
to install another 512mb ram stick he picked up bringing him to 1 1/2
gigs, see if that helps at all. Things weren't too bad at 24bit 96k
but I think 192k is probably just eating more resources all around.
Checking the Nuendo forums people are running the latest cpu's (if not
dual) and 2 or 3 gigs of ram for 192k.

Before you run to any conclusions do a good performance analysis to find
botllenecks in his system.
Check CPU, memory, paging and disks performance when he runs Nuendo.
Performance monitor in Win2000 is a good start. Based on the results you can
judge what to do.

If Nuendo writes separate tracks as separate files, you may have disk random
access write performance issue. In that case disk subsystems with high IO/s
are preferred. That could be 15K rpm SCSI or a RAID0 of multiple ATA drives.
If amount of data in one session is not very high (say less than 1GB),
adding more memory and setting a RAMdisk might be a good idea.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

A Seagate Barracuda8 can do 72MB/s, an ATA 100 is limited
to 45MB/s if it is from a mfgr that also has ATA133 drives.
That's a 50% improvement.

In real life, Folkert, I doubt many people with single drives get a
"true" [1]
throughput of much more than about 40MB per second on a new drive.
(Sustained.)

[1] I'm not talking about benchmarking software - I'm talking about
real-life
scenarios - actually, physically copying the data and measuring it.

Thanks for that completely superfluous statement, smelly.
The gain is still substantial.

 

[dscotts]

to pick your brain a little deep (if you don't mind?) as these things
interest me once they are an issue for my needs, why is that?

they are both ATA 133 at 7200 rpm's, although the 250GB HD does have
16MB cache compared to 8MB cache for the 20GB, but the 20 does have a
slightly faster documented avg. seek time of 8ms versus 9ms for the
newer 250. also, I have the spec sheets for the older drive and it also
documents 63 sectors/track, the same as the 250GB drive. the only
difference is the amount of heads, but that's understandable, and the
cache. even though its a older, smaller drive, it still seems to have
current IDE drive specs, comparably speaking???

------------------------
sorry, if it sounds like I'm answering my own questions now, I apologize
for you time as I'm not a Usenet newbie by any stretch of the
imagination so I guess I should have done some simple homework first,
then asked you to fill in some of the uncertainties. your feedback and
time is much appreciated! found this, which turned out to be a good
place to get a better feel for all this.

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/ide/modesAcc32Bit.html
----------------------------

Surely you arent actually using them in PIO mode ?

no, at least I don't think so? thus the questions. whatever WinXp and HP
has set up. I do notice the BIOS still uses PIO mode references so that
is what has me still wondering in that direction. the BIOS setting list
the HD as auto with a setting of PIO mode4 and Ultra DMA-5. out of
curiosity, is has a 32 bit transfer rate disabled, would that be
something to tweak.

the optical drives are both ATAPI with PIO mode 2 and UDMA-2 and now
digging a little deeper - from the article I reference above - into DMA
modes with ATAPI, probably a good reason to keep them together on a
separate IDE channel.
----------------------------
"Hard Disk and ATAPI Device Channel Sharing: There are several reasons
why optical drives (or other ATAPI devices) should not be shared on the
same channel as a fast hard disk. ATAPI allows the use of the same
physical channels as IDE/ATA, but it is not the same protocol; ATAPI
uses a much more complicated command structure. Opticals are also
generally much slower devices than hard disks, so they can slow a hard
disk down when sharing a channel. Finally, some ATAPI devices cannot
deal with DMA bus mastering drivers, and will cause a problem if you try
to enable bus mastering for a hard disk on a channel they are using."
---------------------------------


btw, how do I know if the system is taking full advantage of drives
speed as I see really nothing in system settings to confirm the BIOS
settings as far as DMA options acknowledgment, like in the device
manager for any of the drives, HD or CD except for what is probably a
separate issue, 'enable write caching' for the HD, which it is?

I'd write the data to the 250G drive and ensure that there is enough
physical ram so that the swap file isnt being used. It that isnt
economically feasible, I'd put the swap file on the 20G drive and
have it on the secondary channel.

in summery, what you were suggesting is its not worth the trouble of
using the 20 GB drive and just use the newer 250 GB, 16 MB cache btw, to
do everything. I already have created a partition that I use just for
recording so that should help a little. but given the extra data, would
you tackle it differently now?

but, upon further review and more data for you to process, would it be
worth the 20 bucks for an adapter to take full advantage of this smaller
- and equally fast throughput, so it seems - drives and independence of
a separate channel, away from the ATAPI devises or slave master setup,
as I have been reading and find that an IDE channel can only access one
drive at a time on a single channel?

------------------------------
Master/Slave Channel Sharing: By its very nature, each IDE/ATA channel
can only deal with one request, to one device, at a time. You cannot
even begin a second request, even to a different drive, until the first
request is completed. This means that if you put two devices on the same
channel, they must share it. In practical terms, this means that any
time one device is in use, the other must remain silent. In contrast,
two disks on two different IDE/ATA channels can process requests
simultaneously on most motherboards. The bottom line is that the best
way to configure multiple devices is to make each of them a single drive
on its own channel, if this is possible. (This restriction is one major
disadvantage of IDE compared to SCSI). An add-in controller like the
Promise "Ultra" series is a cheap way of adding extra IDE/ATA channels
to a modern PC.
-----------------------

I wouldnt myself. I'd spend it on more physical ram if the swap file
is used during the actual wave recording.

I did just added a GIG of ram to the system for 1.5, the overall
capacity being 2 GB. as for the swap file, what would you suggest for a
swap file size. by default custom setting, which something did - initial
768, maximum 1536. I have loads of space, like 60 GB free on the system
primary partition.

again, thanks in advance!