NON-RAID, main HDD... SCSI 320 or SATA?

[Morbid]

i'm debating which drive I want for my main HDD, OS/apps/games/etc. This computer will be mostly used for gaming. So, with that said....

The contenders:

Seagate Cheetah 36GB 10k SCSI 68pin Ultra320
-Quick Specs-
Seek time - 4.7s
Transfer rate - 320mb/s
Cache - 8mb

Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10k SATA
-Quick Specs-
Seek time - 5.2s
Transfer rate - 150mb/s
Cache - 8mb

Now, this is for the main HDD. Would you used the SCSI for the main, then the SATA (in a larger capacity) for storage/backup... or.. use the lower capacity SATA for main? All I need is about 36gb anyway for OS/apps/games, storage would need to be in excess of 120GB, preferably 200GB. That's why I was thinking going with the SCSI for main and a 200GB Western Digital 8mb for storage/backup.

[SuperDave1685]

Well I'm unsure of price, but I would definately go with the SCSI drive by Seagate. looks like there's a 170MB/s transfer rate difference. I think that would be pretty significant. If you have the $$, go with the SCSI ( imo) - my two coppers :)

[Xaotic]

The appropriate response for your question is a question. Do you already have controller/adapter/MB chipsets for either of the devices? If you don't, and don't plan on adding additional SCSI devices, then the SATA may be the way to go from a cost perspective. Both drives will not be able to saturate the channel individually and the performance differences should be minimal. Personally, I prefer SCSI for boot drives for a number of other reasons, most notably the error checking and reliability, but just like everything else... How fast do you want it... How much do you want to spend?

The difference in transfer speed is much lower. The 150MB/s and 320MB/s figures refer to burst rates and the real world rates are much lower.

[Morbid]

Pricing aside.

The mobo will have onboard SATA, ordering a SCSI controller is no problem.

I'm looking for pure performance. I know the "transfer rates" are just burst rates and rarely, if ever, come close to that speed.

So, with the responses so far... i'm thinking about going with the original plan: SCSI main, 200GB 8mb storage/backup.

[surlyjoe]

that seems to be the current trend in entry level servers these days as well.

[Deagle]

The main benefit of having SCSI on a gaming system is the low seek time 10k and 15k drives have. In this case the 4.7ms on the SCSI drive is better.

If you really want to improve your gaming performance, however, you should consider spending money on large amounts of RAM, so the CPU never has to go to the HDD, except when starting up or loading maps etc...

SATA drives these days have transfer rates near that of SCSI, so the benefits of SCSI would be the ability to chain several drives and not bottleneck the system. Others benefits would be higher reliability and built in ECC. However 320mb/s means nothing unless you have a server/workstation motherboard with something better than PCI 133mb/s.

If you want to load up fast, then I suggest you get 2 SATA drives and RAID 0 them. Since SCSI tends to cost atleast 3 times as much per mb, not including the controller, getting 2 SATA drives would be cheaper.

Right now, the cheapest/best solution would be to get a motherboard with an i875 or i865 chipset that has built in southbridge SATA RAID enabled: the only solution which circumvents the PCI BUS and actually runs SATA at 150mb/s I think... could be wrong though... nforce?. This would also be good since a lot of these boards also have gigabit LAN built into the northbridge, freeing up PCI bandwidth.

Also, in case you plan on o/cing your PCI BUS, PCI SCSI controllers hate that.

[Morbid]

Originally posted by Deagle
The main benefit of having SCSI on a gaming system is the low seek time 10k and 15k drives have. In this case the 4.7ms on the SCSI drive is better.

If you really want to improve your gaming performance, however, you should consider spending money on large amounts of RAM, so the CPU never has to go to the HDD, except when starting up or loading maps etc...

SATA drives these days have transfer rates near that of SCSI, so the benefits of SCSI would be the ability to chain several drives and not bottleneck the system. Others benefits would be higher reliability and built in ECC. However 320mb/s means nothing unless you have a server/workstation motherboard with something better than PCI 133mb/s.

If you want to load up fast, then I suggest you get 2 SATA drives and RAID 0 them. Since SCSI tends to cost atleast 3 times as much per mb, not including the controller, getting 2 SATA drives would be cheaper.

Right now, the cheapest/best solution would be to get a motherboard with an i875 or i865 chipset that has built in southbridge SATA RAID enabled: the only solution which circumvents the PCI BUS and actually runs SATA at 150mb/s I think... could be wrong though... nforce?. This would also be good since a lot of these boards also have gigabit LAN built into the northbridge, freeing up PCI bandwidth.

Also, in case you plan on o/cing your PCI BUS, PCI SCSI controllers hate that.

Thank you for that suggestion... it made alot of things clearer to me. I'll have a gig of ram and a 3gig P4 with 800mhz FSB on an ABIT IC7-G. So, I think i'll be going with two SATA Raptor drives in RAID 0 for my main HDDs then with a 200gb WD 8mb for backup.

Now, I don't have to buy a SCSI controller card which was $219 or so by itself. I think i'll be happier with the SATA anyway.

Thanks everyone for the input, it's greatly appreciated :D

Edit: Does anyone know if I need the power adapter if i'm going with the Raptor drives.... I know they already have the Molex built in, so I don't need the adapter.. right?

[Caffinehog]

That's correct. The raptor drives and the maxtor drives have molex connectors. Other SATA drives need power adapters. Both raptor and maxtor sata drives can use the adapter, but DO NOT USE THE ADAPTER AND THE MOLEX AT THE SAME TIME.