ATA-100 on PCI bus

[KLowD9x]

I have more drives than my computer can handle, and I was gonna get an IDE controller card from CompUSA for 30 bucks. Its ATA-100 and PCI. My questions are, how fast is PCI bus (in MB/s)? will it be able to handle the transfer of 100mbps? will it be any faster than the ATA-66 that is built in to my mobo? Thanx ahead

 

[RainMaQer]

The pci bus can transfer at something like 1 Gbps.... So it can definetly handle it and YES it will be faster than your ata66 as long as the drive that is used is ata100.


*EDIT*
Found the pci transfer speed... 132 MB/s...

 

[Wedo]

Bumpin' up the ATA

KlowD,

I have recent purchased an Ultra ATA 133 PCI Controller card that is backwards compatible with 33/66/100. I found a sweet bump in performance between running two HD's on one cable vs. the new set up of having one drive per controller card.

My card is manufactured by SIIG (www.siig.com) and I've also heard good things about adaptec cards for RAID and IDE controller's.

I believe that PCI transfer is burstable to well beyond what your IDE controller card will handle. My ATA133 card is supposed to handle up to 133MB/sec and that's only if you have 133 drives or ROM's. So you should be fine.

Good luck.

Wedo

 

[KLowD9x]

Ko0! Thanx for the help RainMaQer & Wedo!

 

[nikhsub1]

Re: Bumpin' up the ATA

KlowD,
I believe that PCI transfer is burstable to well beyond what your IDE controller card will handle. My ATA133 card is supposed to handle up to 133MB/sec and that's only if you have 133 drives or ROM's. So you should be fine.

Wrong. If your mobo supports ATA100, an ATA100 PCI card will NOT BE FASTER than the built in IDE ports on the mobo, they use the PCI bus as well. However, If your mobo is old and supports ATA66, then a PCI ATA100 Card would be faster.

 

[Gnufsh]

Isn't the built-in ide controller running on the PCI bus? Or at least at the same speed?

 

[KLowD9x]

Isn't the built-in ide controller running on the PCI bus? Or at least at the same speed?

Ahh! I must have my head up my crack! Why didnt I remember that?

 

[JaY_III]

Promise Ultra TX2 100 is a good buy.... and can easly be hacked to Ultra TX2 133

 

[Maddman]

also remember that the fastest IDE HD doesn't have a sustained transfer rate greater then 50mb/sec so the difference between ata66/100/133 is not that great.

 

[Bmxpunk86pl]

just to let u know, ur motherboard hd controllers sit on the PCI bus so dont worry, they will run pretty freakin fast. I have a promise 100 controller and its fast.


good luck,
adam

 

[Wedo]

Re: Re: Bumpin' up the ATA

Uh, Wrong. If you have an ATA100 compliant PCI card that will run at the same bus speed as your mobo, the burstable speed will be similar to the on board systems.

Furthermore, the question was whether or not the card could handle the speed of the HD's. The controller I picked up handles an ATA133 drive, which he doesn't have, so I was merely saying that he'll be fine.

However, your other points are totally correct, I think we're saying the same thing a different way.

Cheers,
Wedo

Wrong. If your mobo supports ATA100, an ATA100 PCI card will NOT BE FASTER than the built in IDE ports on the mobo, they use the PCI bus as well. However, If your mobo is old and supports ATA66, then a PCI ATA100 Card would be faster.

 

[CyberFed]

realize that just becasue the pci card will allow you achieve higher transfer rates, your harddrive wont, hard drives are the slowest component on your system, so its not worth spending the extra money unless you have like a SCSI drive, spend the money on more ram that will give you more performance (IMHO)
or get another harddrive that is the same and get a RAID card..that would be nice

 

[JaY_III]

also remember that the fastest IDE HD doesn't have a sustained transfer rate greater then 50mb/sec so the difference between ata66/100/133 is not that great.

how true that is...
My 80G Maxtor 740X-DL ATA133 drive, well it peaks at...
see for yourself.....
is thier really a point to anything faster than ata 66????
I get a faster Burst rate with ATA 133 over ATA 100, but other than that... .not much (its quite though )

 

[firebird79]

hi guys, quick question! if i got one old machine and it only can support had disk less that 5 gig. can i plug in a IDE PCI card to get it support bigger hard drive? or does SCSI card can do it? it was pretty old machine though...

 

[RainMaQer]

hi guys, quick question! if i got one old machine and it only can support had disk less that 5 gig. can i plug in a IDE PCI card to get it support bigger hard drive? or does SCSI card can do it? it was pretty old machine though...

The support for larger hard disks is dependant on the bios... I don't think a controller card will help.

 

[Maddman]

hi guys, quick question! if i got one old machine and it only can support had disk less that 5 gig. can i plug in a IDE PCI card to get it support bigger hard drive? or does SCSI card can do it? it was pretty old machine though...

as long as the controler card has its own bios you can do it. You can even boot from it as I do on my system at home.

 

[firebird79]

any recommendation of controller card which can do that? SCSI or IDE will do so. thanks!

 

[Bmxpunk86pl]

firebird, im pretty sure it will work because the card has its own Bios.

 

[Malakai]

any VIA based boards onboard IDE controllers DO NOT run off the pci bus, so YOUR WRONG!
its not polite to just say YOUR WRONG like that, especially if your not sure.
onboard IDE connectors on any via board run directly off of the VLINK bus, not PCI. u probably wont see a difference, but that outs less load on an already cranped PCI bus, if there is already a lot of stuff on there. if u have lots of PCI cards, than u very well might see a diff of onboard vs pci card.
-Malakai