Parallel vs SATA

[MattG]

Alot of people are probably wondering which is faster and worth there money at this time.

Well with the recent boom and price drops of SATA - more people are thinking about it. You should know the stats of them, to see if its actually worth it.

I stumbled across this page, which gives a good comparison of the both.

http://www.directron.com/patasata.html

They state that Parallel is running at 133mb/s now. and SATA is running at 150mb/s now, and 300mb/s later in a few years.

Taking a look at newegg.com, i can get a Maxtor SATA 120 GB 7200 RPM 8mb Cache drive for little over 100 dollars.

Worth it? almost seems it to me.

Just thought id share that with you...as i was thinking about it myself.

 

[Didou]

Well the answer isn't as clear as you might think.

Not so long ago boards used an onboard SATA controller from Promise or Sillicon Image in order to provide SATA & those controllers are connected to the PCI bus ( still running at 33mhz providing 133MB/s ) meaning you wouldn't have a chance to reach 150MB/s even if your HDD wanted to.

& also early SATA drives were PATA drives disguised as SATA with a converter circuitry hidden inside so then again you wouldn't notice any speed gains.

So if your board has SATA provided by the southbridge & the HDD you're thinking of getting is a real SATA drive, then go for it. Otherwise you might as well stick to PATA especially since prices have dropped on them.

 

[XtR-X]

Originally posted by MattG
Taking a look at newegg.com, i can get a Maxtor SATA 120 GB 7200 RPM 8mb Cache drive for little over 100 dollars.

Worth it? almost seems it to me.

Yeah, it's worth it. SATA drives almost don't even account for more cost nowadays. But if you don't have a SATA controller like Silicon Image (for example), it's not worth it. Or if you have a converter from SATA to IDE-133... its not worth it either... unless you're going to upgrade your stuff soon.

G'luck.

 

[Rick]

It's worth it to future proof your system, but the difference really isn't tangible enough right now to say SATA hands down.

 

[MattG]

Well my motherboard comes with SATA onboard...so i was looking at it wondering if i should or not =]

 

[XtR-X]

Originally posted by MattG
Well my motherboard comes with SATA onboard...so i was looking at it wondering if i should or not =]

Of course! Take advantage of a new opportunity.

 

[Rick]

Originally posted by MattG
Well my motherboard comes with SATA onboard...so i was looking at it wondering if i should or not =]

In that case, use it!