Do I need to swap to a SATA drive?

[dparm]

I finally got my gaming computer all set up the way I like. I'm thinking, however, that the UltraATA-133 Seagate drive is too slow. It is a 7200rpm drive with an 8MB cache, but disk access seems slow. The drive is rather noisy and I can tell that it is reading to/from the disk quite often.

Should I swap for SATA? Is the performance benefit going to be that big? Or am I overlooking something else, such as faster RAM. The disk accesses are very noticeable in gaming; levels in most games take far too long to load IMHO.

System specs, just as a refresher:

Athlon 64 3500+ (2.2GHz)
1GB DDR266 RAM, 2-2-2 timings (supports up to DDR400MHz)
200GB Seagate UATA
GeForce 6800 GS OC

Thanks in advance.

[powellm]

Dan,
You could pick up an IDE raid controller and go that route too.

[dparm]

Too pricey. I've only got a 300W power supply which already is probably near 100% use (video card uses two IDE connectors for power).

I take it SATA drives aren't too much more expensive than IDE?

Or is this not even a hard drive issue?

[dparm]

EDIT: Anyone want to buy a 200GB UATA/133 Seagate hard drive? Barely been used.

I'm going to upgrade to a Seagate SATA I found on NewEgg.

[abudhu]

SATA is the way to go Dan. If you can make sure to pick up a SATA II HD, granted your MOBO supports it. I use SATA I but it is so nice for gaming. However, a IDE-ATA133 At 10K RPM is roughly equal to a SATA I at 7200RPM.

[dparm]

Chris Stoecker claims that SATA draws more power than UATA133...how much of a difference are we talking? 10%? 50%?

[abudhu]

Who is Chris Stoecker? One of the MAIN reasons everyone switches to SATA is because it uses LESS Power. I've never heard anyone saying it used more. Perhaps I have been terribly mislead?

*Hm..scratches chin* The only way I could see that claim being made is if you had one of the earlier SATA's that had a standard Sata Power Cable that ended up having a female molex Power Cable on the end. I haven't seen one of those types of SATA power cables in a long time however.

All the same, as long as you have a 450-500Watt Power supply it shouldn't matter.

[dparm]

A Tech Lead here in the Underground. Chris claims that the initial SATA specs recommended a 400W power supply, but that seems rather excessive. Supposedly SATA is 250mV, whereas EIDE is 5V. But I don't know the amperage.

Oh well, I'll drop one in and see what happens.

[abudhu]

I tried googling the difference between an mVolt and a Volt but gave up rather quickly.

In any case:


Another comparison is that SATA devices require much less power than PATA. Chip core voltages continue to decline and, because of this, PATA's 5-volt requirement is increasingly difficult to meet. In contrast, SATA only requires 250 mV to effectively operate. SATA is also hot-swappable meaning that devices can be added or removed while the computer is on.


Further google searches also prove that SATA requires less power.

[powellm]

A mV is 1/1000th of a Volt.

[dparm]

Dan Tennant (electrical engineering major) says that the voltage difference is a worthless comparison since you don't know how many amps it pulls.

I did some research, and it turns out that SATA does indeed consume less power. Why this is, I have no clue.

And yes, millivolt = 1/1000th of a volt (much like a millimeter is 1/1000th of a meter).

[dtennant]

Yeah, it's all about the power consumption.

[powellm]

Watt are you talking about?

[drichard]

Oh god, not again...

[powellm]

Why Don, are you... shocked?

[Unregistered]

I just don't want to see another stupid series of electircal jokes sparked up again... :X

[powellm]

Who says that's a bad thing, I get a... charge out of it.

[jharriso]

Careful Matt. Some people reaaally don't like puns. They might even threaten you with battery.

[jmcgon]

*zaps Matt with a taser*

:razz:

[powellm]

Why do you all have to be so... negative?

[moser]

Matt, I'm sure you were just ec-static when you saw that you could start puns, huh?:D (I tried)

[powellm]

I dunno Jon, looks like you're getting a... neutral response.

[abudhu]

Best Thread Ever.

[powellm]

I agree Amit, it certainly beats out those ones in the general forum about "current" events.

[dparm]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v80/TheGSRGuy/funny/bestthreadever.gif

Not.

Next paycheck I'm ordering a Western Digital Caviar FE SATA2 drive. $100.

[moser]

What capacity?

[powellm]

Jon, I'm afraid that that joke has no "potential."

[mikec]

I pay u all ohmage for being able to dicuss these kinds of topics without resistance.

[moser]

Excellent one. But in all seriousness Dan, what capacity did you end up acquiring?

[powellm]

Yes Dan, what is the "current" status of your new drive?

[dparm]

I'm waiting for my new RAM to arrive to see if that helps. I've done more research and it seems that SATA is only about 5% faster for most users.

I did wipe the drive and reinstall Windows, that seemed to help a lot. Stupid bundled HP software was probably slowing me down.

If the RAM doesn't speed up load times, I'll order a 250GB Western Digital FE (enterprise-level) SATA2 drive.

[nlopez]

yes, because swapping the electronics isn't going to make the mechanical parts any faster. If you want to get a faster drive, get a faster drive like one of the 10k RPM Raptors, or I think Seagate makes some too. A Caviar is a Caviar, even if they use better quality parts so they last a little longer (Enterprise/RAID/whatever Edition)
Using PC2100 (DDR266) in that system isn't helping and I'm kinda surprised it actually boots with that slow of ram, but that shouldn't be affecting your load times appreciably.
Other than a good defrag and killing whatever anti-perfo^Wvirus that's running your best hope is a 10k drive.

[dparm]

IIRC Athlon 64s can only address a max of DDR400, so that's what I ordered. It'll be here today. The OS has already been tweaked heavily.