Question about hard drive controller cards

[eSkI]

I have recently bought a IBM Deskstar 75x 30gig ata 100, 7200rpm drive, but my old motherboard only supports ata33. I was thinkin of getting a PCI controller card w/ata100 support, but im unsure about it. Is the performance increase worth it? Does going through an expansion slot hurt efficiency? How easy is it to configure? If it is worth it to get a card do you have any brand or model recomentdations? Thanx for any responses.

 

[AngelOfDeath]

As far as I know you should actually be able to gain from an ATA66/100 controller since the IBM should be able to give you more than 33mb/sec. Either way I gained from moving to ATA66 so I'm happy I bougt one myself

AoD

 

[Erasmus-X]

IMHO, the performance increase is not dramatic enough to waste a PCI slot (and the money) on a controller card. You'll get ATA/66 (and most likely ATA/100) capabilities integrated on your next motherboard.

 

[Vincent]

I doubt getting a new controller card will make much of a difference. How fast your computer seems also depends on the drive's access times which shouldn't depend on the controller.

 

[eSkI]

Thanx for your responses. I found controller cards for only 40 bucks or less, but I think I'll take the advice and wait for next gen motherboards with ata100 and ddr! thanx again.

 

[Noriaki]

- Is the performance increase worth it?
The 75GXP maxes about 33MB/s (the max of ATA33) by itself. So if it's alone on the channel you won't get any performance increase by upping to ATA100. If you have a 2nd 75GXP on their they will max out ATA66 together...so I would go for the upgrade past 33. If the 2nd device is like a CDRom or soemthing you won't notice much difference. I would probably say no don't worry about it, there are other factors impacting performance.


- Does going through an expansion slot hurt efficiency?
No, the IDE controller on your motherboard is a PCI device, it doesn't have a physical PCI slot but it's still a PCI device. PCI slots can handle SCSI cards and Video cards both of which have higher bandwidth requirements than an IDE controller. They use gold interconnects and stuff any performance loss is going to pretty minimal.


- How easy is it to configure?
Dead simple.

- If it is worth it to get a card do you have any brand or model recomentdations?
All in I'd say no...but if you really want to I'd use the Promise.