SATAI or SATAII

  • Thread starter Thread starter Reaper
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Reaper

Is it actually worth paying more for a mother board with SATAII and
using a SATAII harddrive or just going for a SATAI board and
harddrive? Will i notice any difference.
 
From what I've read, a lot of it depends on the speed of the connection
bus. 3ware now makes a PCI-X 133 MHz SATA II RAID controller, the
3ware 9550SX, which can really take advantage of SATA II drives. I am
about to build a system with one. We'll see whether it does any good?
 
Is it actually worth paying more for a mother board with SATAII and
using a SATAII harddrive or just going for a SATAI board and
harddrive? Will i notice any difference.
Click to expand...


Genearlly no, you will not notice a difference for typical
desktop use unless the specific HDD you chose, happened to
have higher internal performance than it's SATA1
alternative. If you had very heavy IO then a drive
supporting NCQ will help some, but if you have that scenario
you probably already know it.
 
Yeh we will see as i have opted for the SATAII so i dont have to
update later. I will get a SATAII drive also. I chose the MS7125 - MSI
K8N Neo4 Platinum motherboard which has SATAII. Also thanks kony for
the advise. Most of went straight over the top of my head but im sure
you know what your talking about :D
 
kony said:
Genearlly no, you will not notice a difference for typical
desktop use unless the specific HDD you chose, happened to
have higher internal performance than it's SATA1
alternative. If you had very heavy IO then a drive
supporting NCQ will help some, but if you have that scenario
you probably already know it.
Click to expand...

You do know that SATA II doesn't necessarily mean 300Gb speeds?

SATA II is merely the name of the organisation responsible for the
standards of that sort of interface - apparently now called SATA IO.

You can also get SATA raid controllers for PCI-e - I have an Areca
ARC-1220 arriving in the morning...


Odie
 
You do know that SATA II doesn't necessarily mean 300Gb speeds?
Click to expand...

yes, note I wrote "not notice a difference"
SATA II is merely the name of the organisation responsible for the
standards of that sort of interface - apparently now called SATA IO.
Click to expand...

I was aware of that too, but nobody else had mentioned it
yet so thank you, it is a usefull addition to the thread.
You can also get SATA raid controllers for PCI-e - I have an Areca
ARC-1220 arriving in the morning...
Click to expand...


BIt expensive though, we dont' see too many people in this
group willing to pay premium for their performance, usually
a couple of Raptors is as exotic as it gets for a PC.
 
kony said:
yes, note I wrote "not notice a difference"
Click to expand...

I also have to say I don't think most people would notice a difference
between ATA66 and SATA 300 either.

All marketing hype and drivel.


Odie
 
In message <[email protected]> Odie Ferrous
I also have to say I don't think most people would notice a difference
between ATA66 and SATA 300 either.

All marketing hype and drivel.
Click to expand...

WD Raptor 36.7GB (10,000rpm) can burst up to 98MB/s, and Seagate's 400GB
(7200rpm) drives can burst up to 120MB/s.

In my system both drives report a sustained speed of ~70MB/s

Since most reads and writes will burst, I'd say I'm seeing some
advantage of SATA over ATA66.

Performance aside, the size and shape of the cables would have won me
over anywa.
 
....
WD Raptor 36.7GB (10,000rpm) can burst up to 98MB/s, and Seagate's 400GB
(7200rpm) drives can burst up to 120MB/s.
Click to expand...

Where do you get that data? Beside results from your own system.
 
DevilsPGD said:
In message <[email protected]> John Doe


I saw some benchmarks somewhere that were showing the sustained rates,
although I don't really recall seeing the burst rates.

Found a benchmark on Google... the WD Raptor 73GB is bursting up to
124.8MB/s in this review (look for "HD Tach Burst Test")
http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/western_digital_raptor/index.shtml

That sounds a lot faster then ATA66 to me...
Click to expand...

You might get that in marketing blurb, but I'd be very surprised if you
managed to copy files from one drive to another at more than about 35MB
per second. (i.e. "real life" scenario.)

Drive benchmark tests are generally so far off the mark as to be a joke.


Odie
 
I saw some benchmarks somewhere that were showing the sustained rates,
although I don't really recall seeing the burst rates.

Found a benchmark on Google... the WD Raptor 73GB is bursting up to
124.8MB/s in this review (look for "HD Tach Burst Test")
http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/western_digital_raptor/index.shtml

That sounds a lot faster then ATA66 to me...
Click to expand...


Any drive, (even if they retrofitted ATA133 onto a circa '96
1GB drive) with ATA133 interface will burst at (approaching)
133MB/s. It makes only a very slight difference in use
because the data still has to get from the platter to the
cache.

With high end drives, linear reads of large files, yes ATA66
is beginning to be a bottleneck, and is certainly with an
ATA66 RAID using two drives per channel (though these are
dying out now, since the major manufacturers of such
products like Promise, haven't upgraded them to have 48bit
LBA support AFAIK).

Even so, that is a bit different scenario than most uses
where the throughput in use wouldn't be far above 66MB/s.
It is a justification to move to at least ATA100 but then
the Raptors are in SATA.
 
You might get that in marketing blurb, but I'd be very surprised if you
managed to copy files from one drive to another at more than about 35MB
per second. (i.e. "real life" scenario.)

Drive benchmark tests are generally so far off the mark as to be a joke.
Click to expand...

It is true that most real-world file manipulation will be
significantly lower than the benchmark results, but at the
same time it is fairly easy to get over 35MB/s with large
files, probably closer to 50MB/s should be expected with a
modern large drive and using the faster 1/3 of the space...
while yesteryear's drives make that a major reduction in
fast drive space, with today's > 300GB drives you still have
100GB left on the first 1/3.
 
In message <[email protected]> kony
Any drive, (even if they retrofitted ATA133 onto a circa '96
1GB drive) with ATA133 interface will burst at (approaching)
133MB/s. It makes only a very slight difference in use
because the data still has to get from the platter to the
cache.

With high end drives, linear reads of large files, yes ATA66
is beginning to be a bottleneck, and is certainly with an
ATA66 RAID using two drives per channel (though these are
dying out now, since the major manufacturers of such
products like Promise, haven't upgraded them to have 48bit
LBA support AFAIK).

Even so, that is a bit different scenario than most uses
where the throughput in use wouldn't be far above 66MB/s.
It is a justification to move to at least ATA100 but then
the Raptors are in SATA.
Click to expand...

Agreed. However, there is little disadvantage to going to SATA, and
while the extra burstability might not get constantly used, it does
happen

The size of the connectors and cables alone is worth it for me (and the
fact that I have 8 onboard SATA ports helps too) :)
 
In message <[email protected]> Odie Ferrous
You might get that in marketing blurb, but I'd be very surprised if you
managed to copy files from one drive to another at more than about 35MB
per second. (i.e. "real life" scenario.)
Click to expand...

I'd guess closer to 55MB/s, based on the fact that I moved 16.1GB in
just under 5 minutes (290-something seconds)

Real world "test", I was moving some disk images from one drive to
another...

*shrugs*
 
Agreed. However, there is little disadvantage to going to SATA, and
while the extra burstability might not get constantly used, it does
happen
Click to expand...


There is still one major disadvantage of SATA- if it requies
using a chip on the PCI bus to accomplish it. In such cases
comparing apples to apples (same drive family with only the
data interface being different) the SATA on PCI bus will
always be slower than PATA through southbridge, in use.
Benchmarks may put them closer to same performance due to
isolating the drive but then there are few uses of the
system where the "only" thing the system is doing is
randomly generating data that gets written, or reading then
immediately discarding the data.
 
DevilsPGD said:
In message <[email protected]> Odie Ferrous


I'd guess closer to 55MB/s, based on the fact that I moved 16.1GB in
just under 5 minutes (290-something seconds)
Click to expand...

Ok, I'm surprised!

Anyway, I picked up an x2 4800 today with 2 new Seagate 500GB drives and
an Areca ARC-1220 controller.

That should shift some data.

Areca reckon it's the quickest controller on the planet at the moment in
RAID 0 ....


Odie
 
In message <[email protected]> kony
There is still one major disadvantage of SATA- if it requies
using a chip on the PCI bus to accomplish it. In such cases
comparing apples to apples (same drive family with only the
data interface being different) the SATA on PCI bus will
always be slower than PATA through southbridge, in use.
Benchmarks may put them closer to same performance due to
isolating the drive but then there are few uses of the
system where the "only" thing the system is doing is
randomly generating data that gets written, or reading then
immediately discarding the data.
Click to expand...

Sure, but lets compare apples to apples, SATA on the PCI bus with PATA
on the IDE bus.

Or, lets compare my SATA controller on the PCI-E bus with the PATA
controller on the PCI-E bus and see what performs better.
 
In message <[email protected]> kony


Sure, but lets compare apples to apples, SATA on the PCI bus with PATA
on the IDE bus.
Click to expand...

You're right, except that any board has PATA without it
being on PCI bus (any semi-modern/new board) while MANY
people don't yet have SATA integral to southbridge and would
not buy a motherboard with that for this minor difference
alone... so we can fairly ignore PATA on PCI at this moment
in time unless someone "need" more drives that their system
supports, like add-on RAID controllers.

Or, lets compare my SATA controller on the PCI-E bus with the PATA
controller on the PCI-E bus and see what performs better.
Click to expand...

Ok, go ahead and do that.
 
In message <[email protected]> kony
You're right, except that any board has PATA without it
being on PCI bus (any semi-modern/new board) while MANY
people don't yet have SATA integral to southbridge and would
not buy a motherboard with that for this minor difference
alone... so we can fairly ignore PATA on PCI at this moment
in time unless someone "need" more drives that their system
supports, like add-on RAID controllers.
Click to expand...

Sure, but if you're purchasing a new system this doesn't need to be a
consideration, many new systems have both onboard SATA and PATA straight
off the chipset, or even off the PCI-E bus. Or in the case of my
GA-K8NXP-SLI, I have both options for SATA :)
 
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