Is this a bad idea

[malcore]

I have a Promise TX2 Ultra 100 controller card just lying around. My IDE devices are: WD 80Gig HDD ATA100
Plextor 40/12/40 CDR ATA33
Pioneer DVD ATA66
all on an Asus P4S533 mobo. The SIS drivers for this mobo are known to be a little slow on transfers. My question is, do you think it would be a good idea to use the Promise card and hook all my devices to it?

The advantages may be slightly faster transfers ( according to what I have read, up to 40% faster). Also, the card will occupy only 1 IRQ. If I disable my onboard IDE controllers I actually free up an IRQ.The last point I am not sure on. The card is capable of handling PCI 66MHz. Would this be an advantage if I were to do a little "responsible" overclocking, as on this mobo there is no option to "lock" PCI at 33MHz?

Any ideas?

[mjc]

Not going to say go for it....yet, but on the surface it does look like a pretty good idea.

The first thing you will need to know is if a drive on the card can be the primary boot device (it should be able to be...but just need to check to make sure, so when you disable the onboard you will still be able to boot.....).

I would also set the card up before you make the transfer, because some versions of Windows have problems with installing to or seeing the add in cards if they are on the card, but if windows is set up for the card before moving the drive over to the card then there are no problems.

As to it being more tolerant of the PCI bus running out of spec....not sure, it could be ok, but it could also be just a two speed card...33 and 66, which would actually be worse.

[malcore]

Hmmmm... Ok, just wanted to be sure this wasn't a silly idea.
Forgot about how Windows can behave in these situations. I will take your advice and set the card up before I move the drives. Thanks for that reminder.
I like the idea of freeing up an extra IRQ, and if my transfer speeds increase even slightly, that's an added bonus. Overclocking has always been an idea I have only toyed with and have never reached a conclusion as to whether the extra strain on my hardware is worth the added performance, so this point is rather unimportant anyway.
The card will allow drives to be bootable, and in fact it is recommended to put your boot device on the card even if not disabling onboard.
Conclusion: I'll give it a try. Thanks for the input mjc ;)

[gwallen4]

You could leave the DVD and CD-R on the old contoller. This would allow you to jumper them both as master and make it possible to copy CD's directly from the source (DVD) to the burner (CD-R) as opposed to having to write the info from CD to HD, then from HD to burner. Makes copying much faster!

[hiredgoonz]

It's going to add a lot of time to your bootup. And since the read/write speed of the drive is the bottleneck, not the transfer rate, I doubt you'll see much improvement over the onboard controller...