How fast is SATA? 4

[TheGoatMan]

I'm currently running a 7200rpm ATA133 Maxtor drive with a 2mb buffer. My board supports raid for SATA. I've been looking at the WD raptor 10,000rpm drives. I want to run 2 with raid 0+1. Will this be a significant difference seeing as how my memory transfer rate is higher than my friends dual 120gb IDE with raid? Is it worth it?

 

[SYAR2003]

Things to be aware of:

The Intel 875P chipset southbridge has an integrated
Serial ATA controller, it's still limited to 150 MB/s
by the intregated controller.
Bandwidth between southbridge and northbridge is another story.
Maybe in the near future we can see a next generation 300 MB/s serial ATA controller.

Another mistake is this thing about the sata controller
is connected to the PCI bus.
Every devices are connected to the PCI bus
(AGP bus is a kind of PCI bus), and most of the mobo's are
limited for the PCI bus, that is 133 MB/s, in theory, and
127 MB/s in pratice.
Promise and Highpoint ATA Raid controller on board are
connected to the PCI bus, SATA on board controllers are
connected to the PCI bus too, but all of them are limited
to PCI bus,133 MB/s.
Of course there are other chipsets
(dual mobo, server mobo) but in genaral the SATA controllers are still limited to 150 MB/s.

Best benefit of it today is running RAID 0,( 0 1 )
but as a sigle disk ,i would not consider it .Cabling is
a benefit of course.
But personally i'm gonna wait to the next generation.

 

[AJ1982]

I have an Asus A7V8X and boot my O/S's off the WD 36Gb singular. The words to describe it are FAB

Ta

AJ

===

Fatman Superstar (Andrew James)

CCNA,
(CCNA Cisco Academy Instructor Trained)

 

[cdogg]

The SATA interface is limited to 150MB/s, and as SYAR2003 said, a lot of chipsets have SATA connected through the PCI interface which is limited to 133MB/s, having to share resources with other PCI devices.

However, I have read some reviews of newer chipsets correcting this issue, connecting the SATA controller directly to the southbridge chipset getting the full 150MB/s.

More importantly though, you must realize that ATA/100 is still good enough to handle the fastest IDE hard drives today. Even the fastest rarely average more than 45MB/s transfer speeds. Eventually though, SATA will pay off as IDE surpasses 10,0000RPM. Besides, SATA cables are a heck of lot tidier!


~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein

 

[SkipCox]

"Even the fastest rarely average more than 45MB/s transfer speeds."

Very true.

Skip

http://home.comcast.net/~scox9/index.html

 

[paparazi]

Bottom line is, you will feel the differance! Going from the 2mb cache 7,200 Maxtor, to a 10,000 rpm 8mb cache Raptor.
I've seen it and it is worth it for power users.
Note* the larger capacity version of the Raptor is out any time now! 72gig? something like that. Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[SYAR2003]

I think the question for the post
should be how fast can the S-ATA bus transfer data.

One thing is the transfer speed on the S-ATA / P-ATA bus .
Still the drive itself has to read/write from/to the plates , and it's here the large cache comes handy.

 

[TheGoatMan]

Well you get the picture. Does the southbridge chipset on a KT600 run through the PCI bus? This would limit me to 133/mbs max right? If not then 150mbs?

 

[SYAR2003]

MSI KT6 DELTA-FIS2R KT600

Chipset
North bridge: VIA Apollo KT600
South bridge: VIA VT8237

An IDE controller on the VT8237 provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA133/100/66/33 operation modes

Serial ATA/150 controller integrated into VT8237 provides support for up to 2 SATA drives with RAID0 or RAID1 formats

IDE RAID via Promise PDC20378 RAID controller. Supports RAID0, RAID1 (for both PATA and SATA), RAID 0+1 for PATA + SATA

 

[SYAR2003]

http://www.via.com.tw/en/k7-series/kt600.jsp#blkdiagram

 

[TheGoatMan]

So if I'm seeing this right the southbridge is linked directly to the northbridge right? So it wouldn't be linked through the PCI bus?

 

[SYAR2003]

North Bridge is connected to the VIA VT8237 South Bridge via something they call 8X V-Link witch is a high-speed throughput bus running at 533MB/s.

 

[cdogg]

Goatman:
The chipset is divided into two sections: northbridge and southbridge which are always connected directly to each other at extremely high bandwidths. The PCI bus is never a factor in their relationship.

With that said, the PCI bus limitation I spoke of earlier is when the SATA controller is connected through the PCI bus limited to 133MB/s. If the SATA controller is connected directly to the Southbridge bypassing PCI, then you get the full 150MB/s. Make sense? PCI and SATA have nothing to do with the connection between northbridge and southbridge.

According to the diagram that SYAR kindly posted, the SATA controller on your motherboard will run at 150MB/s (it doesn't go through PCI).


SYAR:
Paparazi's answer isn't that far off really. TheGoatMan was considering making the jump from ATA/133 7200RPM 2MB cache to SATA 10,000RPM 8MB cache wanting to know if it would be worth it. "Being worth it" was his answer.


~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein

 

[SYAR2003]

Cdogg ,Paparazi !
Of course it makes a positive diffrernce .
The higher RPM on the drive increase uncached read/write ,
and from 2MB - 8MB casche increase cached speed.

I was adressing the bus interface only.

The increase of the bus ,133MB/s to 150MB/s
Well how fast you can read or fill up the cache of the drive.


I think you also would feel a positive difference
going from a IDE-2MB to a IDE-8MB drive to with same RPM.

There is three factors here:
BUS interface
RPM
CACHE

 

[ceh4702]

SATA only refers to the speed of the transmission of the data. Unfortunately if the drive is still spinning at the same rate of 7200 rpm, you cant expect to get any real improvement. This is because for a one drive system, the IDE ATA100/133 cable and controllers are keeping up with the drive. So no real improvements can be made. It still takes longer to read than it does to transmit.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[TekTippy4U]

Still;
thanx folks
Some very usefull info here, all around, so some *'s are in order.

TT4U

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.

 

[stangman77]

I am having the same problem here with my SATA drive which I just installed XP Pro on. It had been running fine and I shut it down for the evening. Turning it back on the next day and the rest of the story is spoken of in the thread. Has there been any more found out? Thanks!

 

[jurgen36]

As a matter of interrest I just build a new computer and did some testing in regards to tranfer rates.
The rig

Mobo Intel D875PBZ
CPU Pentium 4 3.2 HT EE
Memory 2 Gbyte 400 Mhz
FSB 800 Mhz
Drives 2 x in dual raid Sata 220 Gbyte Maxtors ATA 150
2 x in normal IDE 220 Gbyte Maxtors ATA 133
2 x DVD Burners

The drive tests were as follows

Sustained transfer rate on the Sata Raid 92.8 MByte/sec
Burst rate on Sata 142 MByte/sec

Sustained transfer rate on IDE 42 MByte/sec
Burst rate on IDE 65 Mbyte/sec

I realise that my new Mobo does not use the PCI channels for
drive access, also the Sata is a Raid array, but if you half this transfer rates for a normal system it should give you some idea of what to expect. I posted the same test results in another forum.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[jurgen36]

Re: my posting
I forgot to mention that all drives have 8 Mbyte cache. Regards

Jurgen