Hard Drive to MB or Controller Card?

traveler

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I am in the process of putting together an upgraded system and have a Western Digital Ultra-ATA/100 40GB EIDE hard drive, a Promise Ultra 100 TX2 controller card, and a new K7S5A SiS® 735 Socket A Motherboard. Promise says the hard drive will run faster on its controller card. Is that true? In short:

Will the hard drive work faster connected directly onto the motherboard or connected to the Promise Controller Card?

Thanks!
 

Lars_Coleman

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Feb 9, 2001
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Depends on if your motherboard supports the 66Mhz PCI bus. The TX2 indicates it supports 66MHz PCI bus and if the drive is connected to the card on that PCI bus then it will get better performance off of the controller card.

Other then that it shouldn't matter ...

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red>
 

AMD_Man

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It will work faster with the controller even if you have regular PCI slots. The Promise controller is the best and fastest IDE controller currently available.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor
 

AMD_Man

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True, but he'll probably see higher burst rates closer to the theoretical 100MB/s than the onboard controller.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor
 

mbetea

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i've run my 40gb ibm60gxp, from both the tx2 controller and now on my new board(k7s5a). highest burst i got on the tx2 was 64mb. highest i've gotten from the onboard controller was 56mb. sustained rates, the tx2 is a tad faster at 41-42mb/s, while the onboard ranges about 39-40mb/s. and also, the only boards that are out now running 64bit pci slots are tyan's boards and some serverworks boards, so for the average user, there isn't really any way to take FULL advantage of the card at this point.