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ABit AN8 Ultra SATA question
Hi
I am planning to buy an ABit AN8 Ultra. I want to build a cheap reliable machine which is quick at Photoshop CS2 work. ABit AN8 Ultra 2x 512MB DDR400 CL2.5 Corsair Memory Radeon X800GT 256MB graphics card (for a bit of Battlefield 2!) And this is where I get stuck. I have read everyones comments on SATAII not being a standard but the group that is developing SATA improvement. I was thinking of getting a 10000 Raptor for the C: drive OS and a Samsung Spinpoint P120 SATAII drive for storing and working with images. I have tried to read up on it but cant seem to get my head around it. The ABit site says the AN8 supports SATA 300Mbps RAID. Does this mean it will support the Samsung Spinpoint at full 'SATAII' speed with native command queuing etc? Does SATA 300Mbps RAID mean I have to set up a raid in order to get the full support? Can I run the Raptor as SATA1 and the Spinpoint as SATAII at the same time? Totally confused! |
#2
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"none" ""Tez\"@(none)" wrote in message
... Hi I am planning to buy an ABit AN8 Ultra. I want to build a cheap reliable machine which is quick at Photoshop CS2 work. ABit AN8 Ultra 2x 512MB DDR400 CL2.5 Corsair Memory Radeon X800GT 256MB graphics card (for a bit of Battlefield 2!) And this is where I get stuck. I have read everyones comments on SATAII not being a standard but the group that is developing SATA improvement. I was thinking of getting a 10000 Raptor for the C: drive OS and a Samsung Spinpoint P120 SATAII drive for storing and working with images. I have tried to read up on it but cant seem to get my head around it. The ABit site says the AN8 supports SATA 300Mbps RAID. Does this mean it will support the Samsung Spinpoint at full 'SATAII' speed with native command queuing etc? Does SATA 300Mbps RAID mean I have to set up a raid in order to get the full support? Can I run the Raptor as SATA1 and the Spinpoint as SATAII at the same time? Totally confused! The hard disks will be limited by their physical performance at the moment, not the bus you choose. SATA and SATAII are future proofing only. The Raptor is a fast disk (no figures to hand), but it wouldn't even challenge an EIDE bus! If you had two of them mirrorred, then you would possibly push a single EIDE channel, but 133Mbs (EIDE) is way faster than any hard disk in production. SATA can handle 150Mbs and SATA II is faster again (300Mbs?), but the hard disks cannot manage anything close yet. I can't comment on mixing SATAI and SATAII drives, but I would presume that SATAII will be backwards compatible. |
#3
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"none" ""Tez\"@(none)" wrote in message
... Hi I am planning to buy an ABit AN8 Ultra. I want to build a cheap reliable machine which is quick at Photoshop CS2 work. ABit AN8 Ultra 2x 512MB DDR400 CL2.5 Corsair Memory Radeon X800GT 256MB graphics card (for a bit of Battlefield 2!) And this is where I get stuck. I have read everyones comments on SATAII not being a standard but the group that is developing SATA improvement. I was thinking of getting a 10000 Raptor for the C: drive OS and a Samsung Spinpoint P120 SATAII drive for storing and working with images. I have tried to read up on it but cant seem to get my head around it. The ABit site says the AN8 supports SATA 300Mbps RAID. Does this mean it will support the Samsung Spinpoint at full 'SATAII' speed with native command queuing etc? Does SATA 300Mbps RAID mean I have to set up a raid in order to get the full support? Can I run the Raptor as SATA1 and the Spinpoint as SATAII at the same time? Totally confused! Yes you will be able to run them as planned (SATAII channel is backward compatible) and you will get full functionality (command queuing, no RAID needed), but don't expect to get 150MB/s, much less 300MB/s. Those are *peak* speeds (best possible scenario) not average speeds. Hard drives aren't nearly that fast yet, even though the interface is. -- "I don't cheat to survive. I cheat to LIVE!!" - Alceryes |
#4
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On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 13:20:37 +0100, none ""Tez\"@(none)" wrote:
Hi I am planning to buy an ABit AN8 Ultra. I want to build a cheap reliable machine which is quick at Photoshop CS2 work. ABit AN8 Ultra 2x 512MB DDR400 CL2.5 Corsair Memory Radeon X800GT 256MB graphics card (for a bit of Battlefield 2!) And this is where I get stuck. I have read everyones comments on SATAII not being a standard but the group that is developing SATA improvement. I was thinking of getting a 10000 Raptor for the C: drive OS and a Samsung Spinpoint P120 SATAII drive for storing and working with images. I have tried to read up on it but cant seem to get my head around it. The ABit site says the AN8 supports SATA 300Mbps RAID. Does this mean it will support the Samsung Spinpoint at full 'SATAII' speed with native command queuing etc? Does SATA 300Mbps RAID mean I have to set up a raid in order to get the full support? Can I run the Raptor as SATA1 and the Spinpoint as SATAII at the same time? Totally confused! Sure probably to all that stuff as long as you obviously have the sata connections for it. All the new standards are generally backwards compatible except for something like say PCI EX vs AGP cause they use different slots of course. Even the SATAs can use PATA with a adaptor which Im using in fact. People used to point out that RAID didnt really make that much difference except for certain situations like servers etc. Anandtech has an article where he tested RAID and recommended against it for the vast majority of users saying it didnt add any extra performance and it increased the risk of data loss with RAID 0. And SATA also was said not to make much difference as the mechanical performance of the HD didnt max out even the old ATA 100 interface. However there was that article where Anandtech claimed there was a noticeable improvement in some multitasking tests with a SATA HD with NCQ. This isnt universal though as Ive seen some tests where NCQ didnt seem to help much at all on some reviews. However Im having more and more problems with my system bogging down but I dont think the typical user probably has as many problems as I have. For one thing I download , transfer lots of data so that with increasing cable modem speeds it seems to slow down my system sometimes. And stuff like video conversion totally slows down and hogs your system sometimes for hours. After abandoning raid Im thinking of raptors and raid again and even SATA II with NCQ. If you are working with Photoshop etc I would defintely think about the dual core chips which are faster to some degree at that sort of thing and also should be less affected by certain activities that might slow your system down. For video conversions if you are into that Ive found using TWO systems is the ideal way to go. Im still going to get the dual core but I had to jump on a second AMD 64 system deal which was too good to pass up it was so low so I had a complete barebone system with no monitor 3200 AMD 754 socket. I hooked it up to my router which I was using for my two existing PCs one in another room with a wireless connection. Anyway I hooked up both AMD 64s I have side by side via cable to my router and use remote windows control over the network to copy and log into the other PC and let that one run for hours converting any video or other stuff that would really bog my main system down. Its great. Probably the best solution for that type of thing. Even a 2000 Athlon XP some older system would be fine for it and have its own separate Hard Disk and data bus obviously frees your main system up to do what ever you want to do. If you do something like video conversion etc go out and buy a cheapo barebones or case and cheapo MB and some memory and and get a cheap deal on a hard disk and network the system to your main system with some cheap router deal. You dont even have to get a wireless router though they work fine as they have wireless and wired capabilities like my cheapo belkin. Id still like to get a dual core later for Photoshop and other video rendering work and probably raid my system soon again to see if it makes any difference. If you want detailed feedback its better to ask in the ABIT motherboard group as youll bump into people who actually have that board and have personal experience with any quirks , bios update issues and other minutae thats always must have info when you get a new board. |
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