Does my mainboard support NCQ?

[nawat]

Hi, I'm considering buying a new harddisk. I have load of data and I really need the speed with limited budget so I think I'll go with a NCQ harddisk which I think will be better than ones without it more or less.

My question is that how do I know that my mainboard supports NCQ. Or it doesn't need anything else other than SATA support.

I'm currently using P4P800 SE which only supports only SATA150. Should I wait until the NCQ harddisk with SATA300 which is backward compatible with SATA150 for future upgrade or should I just buy SATA150 harddisk with NCQ.

Thanks.

 

[fishmahn]

NCQ doesn't give much for end-user PC's - it really shines in workstation and server environments where the disk queue gets large enough that NCQ can make a difference. That said:

NCQ is included as part of the spec. in SATAII and SATA 2.5. SATA150 doesn't support NCQ.

If you want NCQ for the future get a hard drive that supports it - it will still work fine on the older SATA port. Or dont' worry about it either way.

Mike.