Question about ASUS motherboard

[cmhatter]

As i said in my last post, this is my first build in a VERY long time. I purchased the following motherboard:

ASUS P5N-D LGA 775

Why is it that it only has ONE IDA spot on the motherboard? It makes installing new drives much more difficult imo.

[Rick]

That Motherboard is designed to use the Sata drives

Storage Devices
PATA 1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max
SATA 3Gb/s 4
SATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1/5 JBOD


You can hook up 4 sata drives and two Old type pata (IDE 40 pin connector) drives (cd-dvd)
Plus it has full sata 3Gb support
The Raid option makes it even more desirable

In your case it sounds like you want to use Your OLD 40 pin ide/pata drives
For the best performance on this new board
get yourself a new HDD or two. Just make sure you get the SATA drives

Also note.
with 4 sata drive connections and the $$ you can remove the old pata bottle neck completely and install sata cd-dvd's as well

[cmhatter]

Thanks... I figured there was something new out.

What do you recommend?

Western Digital or Seagate? Or something else?

[Whyzman]

Personally, I'd look for the best warranty...

[Rick]

What do you want.
Price?
performance?
Capacity?


I prefer the raptor 150Gb 10K drives for the Operating system.
If you not in a rush to get it together and want this kind of performance .
Wait awhile the new Raptor is coming out soon. 300Gb 10K sata

Also when the new ones hit the market the older ones will drop in price

[Sun-Tzu]

The Velociraptor is out in limited numbers now.

[Heartborne]

A hard drive is a hard drive is a hard drive, unless the company is in Taiwan.

[Rick]

A hard drive is a hard drive is a hard drive, unless the company is in Taiwan.

and a Video card is a video card is a video cad

Or are they ?

I'll bet you will argue there is a difference..

[Heartborne]

all right, I'll qualify. A hard drive is a hard drive is a hard drive unless it's a raptor drive. :)

Come on Rick, we're talking apples and oranges here. Your choices with a hard drive are 7200 rpm or 10000 rpm. there are a thousand flavors of video card out there!

If you're getting a standard 7200 rpm drive, so long as you buy from a reputable manufacturer you're golden. Manufacturer of the hard drive is as important as the manufacturer of the video card. Whether your ##00 ?? is made by EVGA, XFX, PNY... whatever, they're all the same card. If your 500 gb 7200 rpm drive is made by seagate, wd, etc. It's still the same drive. I would never buy a leadtek video card, nor would I buy some bargain bin hard drive.

[Rick]

Hard drivers are NOT limited to 7200 and 10K
try 4200, 5400, 7200, 10K, 15K

Pata, Sata, Scsi

Pata eide-100, 133

Sata 1.5Gb/s
Sata 3Gb's

Scsi
scsi Ultra 320

With an on board cache of
2MB, 8Mb, 16MB and 32MB

In the case of the latest batch of drivers from Manufactures Like WD and Seagate
Even the newest revisions make a difference

SO IMHO They are Not all the same



If you're getting a standard 7200 rpm drive, so long as you buy from a reputable manufacturer you're golden.

You may also want to Look at the warranty ..
1 Year? 3 Years? 5 Years?


And revision
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

* Cache: 16MB

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

* Cache: 32MB

[Heartborne]

I suppose those small details matter to some users, but what kind of a noticeable difference in application performance would a person actually notice with a larger cache?

Warranty is very important. That's why I use EVGA boards... lifetime warranty.

[mjc]

The onboard cache of a hard drive can make a big difference in disk intensive activities...and most users will notice THAT.

[Rick]

Just Minor details

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
# Cache: 16MB
# Form Factor: 3.5"
# Average Seek Time: 8.5ms
# Average Write Time: 10ms
# Average Latency: 4.16ms

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
# Cache: 16MB
# Form Factor: 3.5"
# Average Seek Time: 11ms
# Average Write Time: 12ms
# Average Latency: 4.16ms

Raptor

# Cache: 16MB
# Form Factor: 3.5"
# Average Seek Time: 4.6ms
# Average Write Time: 5.2ms
# Average Latency: 2.99ms

Sorry they don't list it in FPS

[Heartborne]

ouch Rick! Perhaps I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but a 5 ms difference in seek time is not anything I'd ever notice.
As far as cache goes, what is something specific that I would notice a difference about? Would files move faster? Would apps load into memory faster? Would apps that are using a tremendous number of data files (i.e. itunes, etc.) run better? Would it be noticeable to the end user?
That's the real question. Yes, on paper it all looks like a huge difference... but will Joe PCuser notice any difference at all?

[Ajmukon]

ouch Rick! Perhaps I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but a 5 ms difference in seek time is not anything I'd ever notice.
As far as cache goes, what is something specific that I would notice a difference about? Would files move faster? Would apps load into memory faster? Would apps that are using a tremendous number of data files (i.e. itunes, etc.) run better? Would it be noticeable to the end user?
That's the real question. Yes, on paper it all looks like a huge difference... but will Joe PCuser notice any difference at all?

Yes to all points. the biggest change will be in START-UP time.

16 vs 32 will increase startup time by a bit, esp. loading.

[Rick]

YES..

Even in Games

From http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3161&p=7

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/seawd1tb_11250781147/16090.png

We are talking a full second difference here Just loading the first level
How Many times and How much data does a gamer draw from the HDD ?

Then think about Video and or Heavy data crunching