General Hardware Questions

Hey Ive got a few questions for some of you gurus out there...

What are the Normal PCI Express slots on a motherboard used for? Sound cards and other stuff right?
What is the FDD connector on a motherboard used for?

I understand that the PCI Express x16 slot is used for Video Card but what makes it better then the AGP slots? or... what makes a PCI Express GPU better then an AGP GPU?

What exactly makes socket LGA 775 CPUs better then other sockets?


Why are SATA HDDs better then IDE's/PATAs?

-Thanks Guys

PCI-Express(4GB/s at 16x) has a higher bandwidth than AGP (about 2.1GB/s) and PCI (133MB/s). This allows for more information to be communicated between the add-on card and the cpu. Also, PCI-Express slots usually communicate with the northbridge for better response times (they can be routed to use either the northbridge or the southbridge depending on the chipsets).

Socket 775 CPUs aren't inherently better CPUs due to their socket, but instead they (implying Core 2 Duos and Quads) are "better" (aka faster) than AMD CPUs due their chip architechture. There are different traits associated with each CPU, but the HTT that AMD uses is actually widely considered to be "better" than the FSB used in Intel Sockets.

An FDD connector is a floppy disk drive connector.

Edit: I missed the sata question. Sata 3.0GB/s allows for higher transfer rates than IDE (300MB/s versus 133MB/s). Also, Sata allows for simpler conncetivity and better in-case airflow due to different (much smaller) L shaped connectors as compared to IDE Ribbon cables. However, at this point there are few drives that take advantage of Sata's higher bandwidth, therefore the main benefit to Sata is it's simple connectivity.

Thanks again

Wow I should have known the FDD

Anyways... thanks again for the info

Always a pleasure!

I edited the post above to include the Sata question that I missed.

I think I'd like to field two parts of the questions:

ØC;5544124 said:

What are the Normal PCI Express slots on a motherboard used for? Sound cards and other stuff right?

Click to expand...

Most non-videocard devices are PCI, as opposed to PCI-Express (pci-e) slots - so I get the feeling that by "Normal PCI Express slots" you mean just PCI slots - I could be wrong though. In any case, PCI/PCI-e slots can accomodate a wide variety of devices, including TV-tuners, sound cards, "add-on" cards expanding your availiable SATA/PATA/what-have-you ports within your case or external ports of all varieties, and additional video cards beyond your first (handy should you need many monitors for some reason).

ØC;5544124 said:

Why are SATA HDDs better then IDE's/PATAs?

Click to expand...

SATA drives are not inherently better than PATA drives. They're just different cable interface standards. Ultimately, the differences that affect most of us are that SATA cables are smaller, can run longer distances without issues, and they avoid the 'bent pins' issue that plagued PATA ribbon cables, so they're easier for routing things around in your case. Don't however make the mistake of assuming that any SATA-equipped drive is automatically better than a PATA drive.

There is a difference in bandwidth capacity, but again it often doesn't mean much: PATA cable is good for 133MB/sec, SATA1.5 is good for 150MB/sec, while your average 7200rpm hard drive puts out maybe 60MB/sec. The difference in maximum bandwidth between these standards may begin to matter however should you end up setting up multiple-drive RAID configurations.

EDIT: whoa you guys talk fast - your response and edit happened before I could finish =)

The other PCI-E slots are used for other devices. They aren't very common though, though Creative already carries a PCI-E sound card, I think for the 4x PCI-E slot.

Lol, Chix. Thanks very much for the information