SATA Question

[CaveInfiltrator]

Building a dual Xeon 2.4 GHz server...looking at several MB's and seriously thinking about SATA. the biggest question is obviously "will SATA really give noticeable performance?" basically from what i've been reading if its bridged its really not worth the money...

the MB's ive been looking at on Newegg are providing the Promise PDC20378 SATA controller. is this controller bridged? or no? and are there and suggestions on a good MB for dual Xeons? looking at iWill DPI533 and tyan Tiger i7505 (S2668)[this has the SATA]and giga-byte GA-8IPXDR-EC (leaning toward iWill or Tyan, dont know if i like the features on the gigabyte...)

the HD i was looking at was the 120 GB Seagate SATA...

thanks a mil, i dont know too terribly much about all the lil details about hardware so i ask questions from you guru geniuses and learn! )

Peace...
Jesse

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[jim552]

I don't know if SATA will give a noticeable performance benefit in a single drive system or not.

I think that if you have multiple drives, there will be improved performance. (Because, at least in theory, SATA access should be able to overlap on a drive-by-drive basis rather than on a controller-by-controller basis in IDE.)

One thing I can say though is that while there are very litter difference between ATA-100 and ATA-133 there is a HUGE difference if you use a Western Digital Raptor SATA drive vs Standard SATA drives!

(one problem though, the Raptor drive is relatively small by today's standards.)

Hope that helps,
Jim