ultra ata vs ultra dma

is there a difference here or do they both mean the same thing?

for example, 60gb 7200 rpm ultra ata vs. 60gb 7200 rpm ultra dma.

edit; i forgot to add that both are GDDR3 spec.

Enemy Down! said:

is there a difference here or do they both mean the same thing?

for example, 60gb 7200 rpm ultra ata vs. 60gb 7200 rpm ultra dma.

edit; i forgot to add that both are GDDR3 spec.

Click to expand...

ATA now means PATA, which is Parallel ATA (uses a wide cable). SATA is Serial ATA (uses a skinny cable). Basically defines the cable type. UDMA is UltraDMA, which is a form of how the drive communicates (UDMA33/66/100/133). As used in advertising, they mean the same thing.

As for GDDR3.... Thats like... video card memory, I think. I have no clue how you associated that with hard drives....??

agreed

but where did gddr come in?

As far as I am aware you have two ways of accessing drives. PIO and DMA. DMA is direct memory access which requires less CPU power for the device to communicate with main memory. PIO is Programmed Input/Output and is slower than DMA.

ATA == UDMA for all intents and purposes.

So they are the same thing.

ATA33 = UDMA33
ATA66 = UDMA66

etc

oops! i did not intent to put that GDDR3 in there as it was ment to be in another thread of mine, i was comparing ati vs nvidia's latest cards.

thanks for the replies about the ata / dma clarification.

David said:

As far as I am aware you have two ways of accessing drives. PIO and DMA. DMA is direct memory access which requires less CPU power for the device to communicate with main memory. PIO is Programmed Input/Output and is slower than DMA.

ATA == UDMA for all intents and purposes.

So they are the same thing.

ATA33 = UDMA33
ATA66 = UDMA66

etc

Click to expand...

Actually,
ATA33 is UDMA2, ATA 66 is UDMA4, ATA100 is UDMA5, ATA133 is UDMA6.