Serial ATA vs. Ultra ATA

[GlassDaddy90]

I just bought a ASUS A7N8X Deluxe and it came with two funny looking serial ATA cables. Is this cable faster than ultra ata cables? I was looking to buy a new hard drive with the 8mb cache and was wondering about this serial ATA thing. Is it faster than UATA133? Thanks!

 

[RustyNale]

Yes. But you need to buy SATA drives and power cabel adapters to use it.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: RustyNale
Yes. But you need to buy SATA drives and power cabel adapters to use it.

SATA allows higher burst speeds than good ol' UATA133, but in practice, hard drives aren't fast enough for you to notice a real difference right now. In other words, if you got UATA and SATA versions of the same model of drive, they would probably perform just about the same (though there could be a difference depending on whether the SATA controller is in the northbridge, whether the UATA drive shares the channel with another drive, and a bunch of other factors). Of course, some drives are only available in SATA (e.g. WD Raptor), but if they were available in UATA, they would perform pretty much the same as the SATA version.

 

[EeyoreX]

Yes. But you need to buy SATA drives and power cabel adapters to use it.

SATA allows higher burst speeds than good ol' UATA133, but in practice, hard drives aren't fast enough for you to notice a real difference right now. In other words, if you got UATA and SATA versions of the same model of drive, they would probably perform just about the same (though there could be a difference depending on whether the SATA controller is in the northbridge, whether the UATA drive shares the channel with another drive, and a bunch of other factors). Of course, some drives are only available in SATA (e.g. WD Raptor), but if they were available in UATA, they would perform pretty much the same as the SATA version.

To summarize:

No. The SATA interface will not make a drive faster. Current hard drives are barely able to saturate the ATA66 bus. A drive like the Raptor offers the performance it does, not because of SATA but because of 10,000 rpm drive speed. The only reason (currently) to use SATA IMO, is for the cables. They are much smaller and easier to work with and provide more space for better airflow.

\Dan

 

[sswingle]

You can also get adapters to convert UATA to SATA. I have a system using one and it works great.

 

[RustyNale]

Ooops, my bad, misread your post. jleichty and EeyoreX are correct, SATA cables alone won't make your system run faster. With the current hardware availabe, there is a slight advantage to using SATA, but as pointed out, at this time probably not enough to notice in everyday use.

 

[intelbugger]

SATA offers maximum speed of 150 MBPS, UATA133 of 133 MBPS.

In real life, both offer a lot less.

SATA though is convenient and does away with the master slave conundrum.

SATA also allows cables upto 1 metre long.

The cables are far thinner, offering better air circulation in the machine.

But, research right now on with SATA means they shoudl offer higher rates, only if your drive is ready to provide such rates and your processor - controller - memory subsystem can handle such rates as well