you will see a performance increase from 50-100% going to scsi 15k rpm from ide ata133 depending on what programs you run.
for example, in sisoft sandra HDD benchmark test, my scsi seems to get done more than twice as quick as my brothers ata 100 HDD. i belive it takes me a little under a minute while my brothers ata takes up to 3 minutes.
i have noticed that games load and exit quicker. for example, sim city 4, saving and exiting the game can take 30 secs to a minute on my ide ata 100 (even for a small city), the scsi takes about 10 seconds for that same size city.
i have 3 older HDD, a 20 gig IBM, 20 gig WD, and 8 gig ibm. i am begining to worry about hd failure due to age for those Hard drives. they are not more than five years old. the wd bsod on me a few times, the 8 gig ibm is making the funny noises associated with age. and the other ibm 20 gig is doing ok i guess.
with scsi, you usually get a 5 year warranty. so you won't be worrying about hd failure for quite sme time.
i don't find my scsi to be louder than any of my ide drives. but then again, maybe because the scsi is new and the others are old.
windows boots faster.
defragging goes faster, seems like more than twice as fast as ide. for example, my other computer has over 130,00 files on it's 20 gig IBM or WD and i leave the computer on for hours to let it defrag. i have only 67,000 files on my 18 gig scsi so far, but defragmentation only takes several minutes.
here are some performance numbers from sisoft sandra HDD bench test. all rigs are stock.
my 2 computers with ata100 in them both average= 16,000
my brother's with ata 100 or ata 133, i think he has an 8meg cache version. = 22,000
my scsi = 37,500
scsi can "do" multiple reads and writes so you can have a program scan your hd, like adaware or anti-virus, and open other programs without HDD bottleneck problems.
as for bootable scsi card, it must have a bios on it.
when it comes to single drive perfromance, scsi always destroys ide. but if you raid 0 two ide drives, it will defeat the single scsi drive. but if you raid 0 two scsi drives, it will destroy the raid 0 ide setup.
in certain applications, the performance increase may be difficult to see. for example, when i play bf1942, at map changes, my rig doesnt seem to enter the new map quicker than my brothers rig (both our CPU power is equal) but then again, the game has to read the cdrom to get some type of data before map change can initialize, so i have to wait for the cdrom to start spinning again and that is what kills it. my cdrom is 4 years old. so if i have a cd rom as fast as his, i should beat my brother during map changes.
going scsi is going to cost you. but it is going to educate you as well. in the end you would have spent good money, but you will feel like you spent your money wisely.
if you have the will, and the cash, go with a 15k rpm scsi. also, get a true 64 bit/66mhz scsi controller. some controllers say they are 64 bit, but only run at33mhz, which is 32 bit speed. i know that none of the adeptec scsi cards run in 64@66mhz except the scsi raids which are crazy expensive $400 dollars and up on pricewatch.com.
And try not to sleep through the SCSI whitepapers!
