SCSI & 32-bit PCI - What's the best I could possibly do?

[Marc Brown]

So, I was just noticing that my brand new MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
motherboard has five PCI slots and zero PCI-X slots. This is
turning out to be problematic now that the time has come to
research SCSI drives and controller cards. Just about the only
_new_ products available are based on Ultra320, which is fine
with me since I'd rather have 15,000 rpm and all the other fun
things that come with the territory. At the same time, though,
I have _yet_ to find an Ultra320 controller card that does not
demand a PCI-X slot.

So. It may be that there is no such thing. Fine. What's the
best I can do with a standard PCI slot? If I can't do 15,000
rpm, there will be really almost no point in choosing SCSI over a
Raptor. Unless I'm missing something. Anyone?

Thanks.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

So, I was just noticing that my brand new MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
motherboard has five PCI slots and zero PCI-X slots. This is
turning out to be problematic now that the time has come to
research SCSI drives and controller cards. Just about the only
_new_ products available are based on Ultra320, which is fine
with me since I'd rather have 15,000 rpm and all the other fun
things that come with the territory. At the same time, though,
I have _yet_ to find an Ultra320 controller card that does not
demand a PCI-X slot.

An Adaptec 29320 will work fine in a regular 32 bit 33MHz PCI slot and that
will run 1 or 2 15k RPM HDs at full speed.

So. It may be that there is no such thing. Fine. What's the
best I can do with a standard PCI slot? If I can't do 15,000
rpm, there will be really almost no point in choosing SCSI over a
Raptor. Unless I'm missing something. Anyone?

There will be no performance advanatge to any SCSI solution on a single user
workstation. Get a 74GB Raptor or spend 4x on a Fujitsu MAS3735 + Adaptec
29320 and get the same performance.