SATA controllercard or new motherboard?

[totten]

Hello fellow members,

I'm about to buy two new SATA-drives for my PC. Of course, I need a controllercard because my motherboard is pretty old (epox 8k7a+). Which one of these two cards is the best?

PROMISE FASTTRACK S150 TX4 S-ATA RAID PCI
HIGHPOINT ROCKETRAID 1540 4-CHANNEL S-ATA RAID PCI

They cost ~ $140 one slightly more than the other but I don't care about the small difference.
Or would it be better to buy a new motherboard that supports SATA and PATA (not necesserely PATA if I can put a PATA-SATA converter on my old drives)?

What would give me the best performance?

Thanks.

 

[StormRider]

What about the Silicon Image SATA controllers?

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: totten
Hello fellow members,

I'm about to buy two new SATA-drives for my PC. Of course, I need a controllercard because my motherboard is pretty old (epox 8k7a+). Which one of these two cards is the best?

PROMISE FASTTRACK S150 TX4 S-ATA RAID PCI
HIGHPOINT ROCKETRAID 1540 4-CHANNEL S-ATA RAID PCI

They cost ~ $140 one slightly more than the other but I don't care about the small difference.
Or would it be better to buy a new motherboard that supports SATA and PATA (not necesserely PATA if I can put a PATA-SATA converter on my old drives)?

What would give me the best performance?

Thanks.

Do you need the RAID?

You can get them for a lot less than $140.

Promise on for $52 ( 2 connectors )

You can get 4 connectors for $65.

 

[EeyoreX]

Unless you are getting a WD Raptor, performance increase over PATA will be negligable, at best. So, either way you go you are going to get the same performance.

\Dan

 

[totten]

SATA is for hotswapping in the future. Ony meant performance between sata-controller pci card or built in on motherboard because I've heard that some onboard doesn't go through the pci-buss.

And I might as well go with 4 connectors because in the future, I'll get two more and put them in a nice configuration.

@Stormrider, couldn't find the silicon image controller in a shop here, those two I listed are most common in stores here.

 

[George Powell]

I don't think it's worth specially buying into sata if your setup already works.

Unless you are making other major upgrades like m/b and stuff then I wouldn't bother.

still each to their own.

 

[stevennoland]

As far as performance goes, splurge for a Western Digital WD360 'Raptor' (two if you want raid) and a new mobo that supports SATA raid (albeit through the ICHR5 southbridge), and not routed through the PCI bus. NewEgg is currently selling WD Raptors for $133.00 each. and a new proc and mobo could be had for around $300.00 (Intel, not sure of AMD, sry). Total for this upgrade = $570.00 That is a lot of $$$, but the increase in perfomance would be very noticeable. I say it would be money well spent. XP has been purported to load in as little as 25 seconds (power on to desktop), and intall times of XP in less then 6 minutes. That is fast! Bragging rights fast!

 

[totten]

Are there any slotA mobo's that are using ICH5R?

So far, a new mobo maybe isn't that bad. As long as the sata controller isn't limited by the PCI-buss.

 

[Hamilton]

Originally posted by: totten
Are there any slotA mobo's that are using ICH5R?

So far, a new mobo maybe isn't that bad. As long as the sata controller isn't limited by the PCI-buss.

AMD motherboard with Intel chipset? Yea right

 

[totten]

Oh ok, so that's an Intel chipset, lol at me

Don't think I'll change to P4, need to calculate on it
Are there any options for slotA? I heard that a7n8x deluxe has a good sata-controller, any comment?