DescentBB

Is SATA better than IDE and why?

Does SATA have more conductors? My understanding was more conductors = more bandwidth . . .

Basically, it boils down to how the data is handled. Parallel is basically a row of bits (typically 8 or so). Once the buffer fills, THEN the data is sent on down the line. Serial is just one bit at a time, so theres no waiting for the buffer to fill first before data is sent.

MD-2389 wrote:Basically, it boils down to how the data is handled. Parallel is basically a row of bits (typically 8 or so). Once the buffer fills, THEN the data is sent on down the line. Serial is just one bit at a time, so theres no waiting for the buffer to fill first before data is sent.

No.

How large are the buffers on the your average SATA drive? 8 MBs.

If SATA was introduced a decade ago, yes what MD said holds water.

The benefits of SATA are being enjoyed largely by motherboard makers - from their perspective SATA as the same benefits as RAMBUS without the ligitious one-trick pony pushing it - reduced wire complexity.

your standard IDE drive now uses a 40 pin, 80 wire calbe, while SATA use a 6 pin connector. The primary limiting factor of speed for your standard drive was crosstalk from the wires in the connector - the extra 40 wires for ATA66 drives and up was to reduce crosstalk. With the reduction of the number of wire reduced the crosstalk potential and allows the possiblity of shielding the wires and longer wires. Also, by throwing away that big connector, you gain more space on motherboards - enough that current SATA boards can give 4 drives their own dedicated connection - no more dealing with master/slave relationships.

Also, with smaller wires, you can more airflow in your case.

Lastly, SATA can be used externally.

Thanks

That makes sense. Better shielding and isolation

I was looking at HDs for the system I want to build and noticed sata3G drives from WD and samsung. Are these any better than standard sata drives?
Is the sata raptor drive still the king as far as speed goes?

yep they're the only ones, and the 74gb is actually faster than the 36gb version, in actual performance, if I recall right.

The latest SATA drives, that use the SATA2 or 3 Gbit connection might also support NCQ, which can dramatically improve the performance of microsoft windows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ata

extra extra ... read all about it... or don't, w/e.

so which is better for a gaming system: the sata3 or the raptor ?

fyrephlie wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ata

extra extra ... read all about it... or don't, w/e.

Thank you, very interesting!

The interface has very little to do with performance of current drives

If you had two drives, each spinning at 7200 rpms each with 8mb cache, there would be no difference in data transfer rates if it was done with serial ata or parallel ata

Why? Because the drive can't saturate the bus, the bottleneck isn't the bus, it is the drive itself.

The 8,000 RPM spec. is a mechanical spec. and not very changeable.

The electronics and data are forever waiting for a mechanically rotating platter whether serial or parallel.

that's why RAM is faster... no spinning parts.

exactly

so the raptor is the better bet, since it spins faster? or is the difference minimal compared to a bigger RAM HD, like the 16mb drives...?