Does a Promise ATA100 PCI Controller card slow down hard drives compared to the mobo IDE?

[Salvador]

Just wondering if an ATA100 controller card is slower than a motherboard IDE channel? I can't tell if it's slower, but it is slower to boot because my BIOS has to look for the controller card.

Is there a way to shorten this time? I have the card set to SCSI for the boot menu because I have been told that you should. Is there another setting I can set the BIOS to that would be better?

BTW.. I have 2 WD1200JB 8mb cache drives on my ATA100 controller card and then I have my dvd and cd burner on the motherboards IDE channels. I thought that giving everything its own IDE channel would give me the best performance.

Do you think a ATA100 controller card would adversly affect a JB drive in any way?

TIA,

Sal

 

[Lvis]

You're doing everthing right. The only difference between the on board ide and a controller card, is a slightly slower boot time.

 

[Salvador]

Thanks for the reply. If the ATA100 controller card and onboard IDE channels are the same, what if I put my dvd and cd burner on the ATA card instead and move my hard drives back to the onboard IDE channels. Would this work or is the controller card just for hard drives?

I sort of liked the ultra fast boot times when the drives were still on the onboard IDE.

Sal

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: Salvador
Thanks for the reply. If the ATA100 controller card and onboard IDE channels are the same, what if I put my dvd and cd burner on the ATA card instead and move my hard drives back to the onboard IDE channels. Would this work or is the controller card just for hard drives?

I sort of liked the ultra fast boot times when the drives were still on the onboard IDE.

Sal

It's still going to have to deal with the controller card, you won't save anything that way.

Viper GTS

 

[Salvador]

Oh.. I understand.. It's still got to detect the controller card even if the hard drives are not on it. Would this be the same thing if I had a RAID card because I'm eventually going to RAID these 2 JB drives?

I guess it's no big deal. I guess I can wait an extra 4 seconds for the system to detect the card.

Thanks.

Sal

 

[Jeff H]

Salvador, typically the add-in ATA cards (and onboard RAID controllers) will only function properly w/ hard drives. So, put your hard drives on the ATA card and your CD-ROM/DVD/CD-RW drives on the mobo chipset controller.

 

[kLezViruS]

Originally posted by: Jeff H
Salvador, typically the add-in ATA cards (and onboard RAID controllers) will only function properly w/ hard drives. So, put your hard drives on the ATA card and your CD-ROM/DVD/CD-RW drives on the mobo chipset controller.

Yes I learned this the hardway when backing up my cds, that my computer would come to a crawl and i couldnt do anything until the process was done.

 

[Jace]

I had a lot of trouble using a pioneer dvd drive and an NEC zip drive on a promise controller card so I would suggest that those cards are optimized for hdds.

 

[Duvie]

I agree...leave all cd-roms and zip drives on mobo ide channels....put all harddives on ata card regardless of whether they are ata33 or 66....

Also I noticed that on ata cards I have always had same performance in hdtach benchmark but cpu utilization ws a bit more....anybody else???

 

[bacillus]

Also I noticed that on ata cards I have always had same performance in hdtach benchmark but cpu utilization ws a bit more....anybody else???

can't really say that I've seen that myself!

 

[rockhard]

Ive got a Promise Ultra 100 TX2 controller card on my Supermicro 370 DLE on a 64 bit PCI slot.
I was wondering if there was any benefit in running this card at 66mhz PCI as my mobo will allow me to do this and the card supposedly supports it.
Is this 66mhz ability just a marketing gimmick?

Does a Promise ATA100 PCI Controller card slow down hard drives compared to the mobo IDE?

Just wondering if running these cards at 66mhz PCI will give any better performance than mobo IDE maybe?

 

[Jace]

I'm not 100% certain, but I think that 64bit PCI slots can run in 32bit mode, this may depend on the mobo vendor's impementation, so your card plugged into that slot would be running in 32bit @ 33Mhz ~ 132MB/sec bandwidth.

If that card is 64bit, 66Mhz compatible, which isn't likely, then you would achieve ~ 528MB/sec bandwidth, so if you plugged in a couple of hard drives that could exceed the 132MB/sec of 32bit 33Mhz PCI (maybe in a few years, but they'll all be Serial ATA so you'd have to us converter plugs) then you would see some benefit.

PCI info

 

[computer]

In my tests, I have found controller cards to have a significant performance increase over integrated IDE channels using HARD DRIVES. This is with ATA66 & ATA100 integrated Vs ATA66/ATA100 cards. Benchmarks were a good bit higher, in some cases actually TWICE as high (SiSoft Sandra PRO, & HD Tach). I didn't notice any slower boot times. I can't say about RAID though, I haven't compared integrated RAID against controller card RAID yet.

 

[ripthesystem]

Salvador- you're setup was Aces as of your 1st post in this thread.. basically I don't think there is any way around the small extra boot hang you have- anytime you add a controller card of any sort it takes a few xtra secs to detect in the BIOS..

Scratch that- you can eliminate your extra moment ... just leave it on all the time

ripthesystem