ATA 133 vs. 8MB cache

[Violence]

Hi all, I am planning on building a brand new system from scratch and was wondering if anyone knew whether I would see the most benefit from a hard drive with ATA133 capability or one with an 8MB cache. The motherboard I'm looking at will support ATA 133, but my product research seems to show that I have to decide on one or the other. I have not seen any ATA133 drives that also have the new, larger 8MB cache.

My main concern is gaming performance. I would appreciate any information anyone has regarding this. Thanks.

 

[Arrow]

The Maxtor ATA133 drives and the WD 8MB cache drives are both good performers. Some will recommend one over the other, but I think that they are both very good drives. I would personally get the Maxtor because of good past experience I have had with their drives.

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/canada/about.php?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/canada/about.php?affiliateid=319048</A></b>

 

[4Ryan6]

ATA 133 go for it.

 

[Darkbaine]

The choice between the 8mb cache and the ATA133 lies in your needs. I assume you're refering to the new Maxtor ATA133's and the Western Digital WDxxxxB drives. If you want to impress your gamer friends with numbers, go with the ATA133. The real performance lies in the 8mb cache. The support for this reasoning is twofold: 1) No IDE hard drive currently available can saturate even an ATA66 line, let alone an ATA133 2) The marginal benefit gained from the ATA133 over ATA100 is noise compared to the benefit of the 8mb cache. I've had the good fortune of spending the summer researching filesystems and related hardware and have had the chance to benchmark many drives (using IOZone) including an ATA133 and the WD1200JB. The WD1200JB is the best IDE drive of the bunch and it approaches SCSI level of performance (lacking in extended throughput). BTW, I game hard. My rig has the WD1200jb and i've had no problems with it at all. A friend has a new Maxtor ATA133. Both perform *very* well. I hope the info helps.

 

[buddry]

ATA133 is pointless....go with the 8mb cache.

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=white>bless</font color=white> <font color=blue>the</font color=blue> <font color=red>U</font color=red><font color=white>S</font color=white><font color=blue>A</font color=blue>

 

[slickstaa]

western digital 8 meg cache, hands down.

<font color=blue> If it ain't broke, don't fix it...tweak it.</font color=blue>

 

[AMD_Man]

Well, I've seen a couple of reviews where Maxtor ATA133 score ~1K to 2K more in Sandra in ATA133 mode, but only the 8MB Western Digital drives can score ~32K in Sandra. The Maxtor ATA133 drives typically score around 26K in Sandra.

<b><i>"A penny saved is a penny earned!"</i></b>

 

[tersagun]

ATA133 is completely useless, u can't transfer 133mb/sec!
so go for 8mb cache.

"Don't necessarily listen to tersagun,he's been advocating AMD systems,he thinks Intel sucks ass.."

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Definately the 8Mb cache.
ive seen the benchmarks to prove it, and whats more i HAVE both drives, the 800JB and the maxtor 80Gb D740X

by itself the D740X is still a nice drive, but simply cant match the 8mb cache JB for sheer performance.

<b>Before visiting THG i was a clueless noob. Now im still clueless, but look at my nice title!<b>

 

[Violence]

Hey all thanks for the advice. This was exactly the type of information and feedback I was looking for.

It appears the 8MB cache is the way to go.