If you can pick up a 133 card cheap I can't see it hurting anything if you'll have a pci slot to spare. If your feeling even more adventurous you can go uw320 scsi

Well I'm not getting new drives, more do I want a cheepo card. My problem is that I tend to always have trouble with them.

But I don't know they are cheep, maybe I'll just get one and test it.
I did want to do a raid setup with the system.

I don't think it's worthwhile to get a PATA-133 PCI card unless you want more PATA ports. Most of the PATA drives won't hit the 66MB/s ceiling and even if it does the performance punishment is trivial comparing to the sluggish seek time of spindle disks. Seagate 7200.9 PATA drive has a sustained transfer rate of 65MB/s and 7200.10 has 78MB/s, and that's the last PATA offering from Seagate. If you want something fast and cool and don't want to cheat with an SSD you can get SCSI like what chrismeyer6 suggested. Does your board have PCI-X slots? Dual channel ultra-320 is the way to go if it does, otherwise go with something like 29160N or 19160. Some PCI-X cards work in PCI slots but I just hate dangling pins.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Well I'm not getting new drives, more do I want a cheepo card. My problem is that I tend to always have trouble with them.

But I don't know they are cheep, maybe I'll just get one and test it.
I did want to do a raid setup with the system.

I didn't see this post when I wrote my last one. With RAID you have a strong reason to get a PATA PCI card.

ATA-133-Card worth it? YES. 😀

The answer is probably not.

Unless you are using a SSD or new sata drive, you're not going to even max out the 66 on the motherboard. If your going to buy a ide card, you might as well get a nice SATA one and a new sata drive (or ssd). Only then will it be worth the effort.

luckybob wrote:

The answer is probably not.

Unless you are using a SSD or new sata drive, you're not going to even max out the 66 on the motherboard. If your going to buy a ide card, you might as well get a nice SATA one and a new sata drive (or ssd). Only then will it be worth the effort.

That was exactly my thoughts, but thought I'd asked to be sure.

I chose to go scsi, I needed 3 more drives for raid 5 or 10 anyway. I picked up 4 36gb Quantum Atlas drives.

ATA-133 is one of the thing's I really want in my K6-III-400. It is running ATA-100 right now.
The reason for this is the same as the mem. Go for something a bit overkill on these.
To clear it up a bit further. I choose to run PC-133 Ram at PC-100 speed.
This is only to get a bit more stability on the system. PC-133/ATA-133 for stability. 😉

Running higher performance RAM can make sense as it allows you to use more aggressive timings even if you're not increasing the RAM clock. ATA 133 doesn't confer those same advantages. It doesn't make an ATA 100 storage device faster or more stable.

Not worth it IMO. These slow CPUs cannot process the data fast enough. Just compare how a fast Pentium III boots Windows 98 or loads Quake III levels compared to a Socket 7 PC. Sure for plain file copying, there is a benefit. Going through a PCI controller might actually introduce latency?

I'd focus on low access time.

Yeah I was thinking pci would increase latency.

Hmmm.... Sounds like a title for a Youtube video: "ATA-133 vs. ATA-100, is it worth it?"

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Not worth it IMO. These slow CPUs cannot process the data fast enough. Just compare how a fast Pentium III boots Windows 98 or loads Quake III levels compared to a Socket 7 PC. Sure for plain file copying, there is a benefit. Going through a PCI controller might actually introduce latency?

I'd focus on low access time.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Yeah I was thinking pci would increase latency.

If he got a VIA Apollo Pro 133T based motherboard the north and south bridge are allready connected by the PCI bus, so in theory there shouldn't be any more latency when using a PCI controller.

If he got the Apollo Pro 266A the history is a bit different.

Kamerat wrote:

If he got a VIA Apollo Pro 133T based motherboard the north and south bridge are allready connected by the PCI bus, so in theory there shouldn't be any more latency when using a PCI controller.

If he got the Apollo Pro 266A the history is a bit different.

Pro133T doesn't support SMP. Pro133A (694MP) and Pro266T do. Not sure if it's possible to make 694MP work with dual tualatin, though.

lazibayer wrote:

Pro133T doesn't support SMP. Pro133A (694MP) and Pro266T do. Not sure if it's possible to make 694MP work with dual tualatin, though.

Looks like Tyan didn't care much about that. 😜

Kamerat wrote:

Looks like Tyan didn't care much about that. 😜

Damn you Tyan! Damn you!!! 😠

Board has pro 133a

brostenen wrote:

Hmmm.... Sounds like a title for a Youtube video: "ATA-133 vs. ATA-100, is it worth it?"

The boards from that era are 33, at most 66. I don't think I have any gear that can saturate ATA 100 or 133, even my low capacity stuff is all SATA. Fast / large IDE drives seem expensive, so at that level I would go straight with a SATA controller.

if i remember, someome compared a SATA card against the ATA-100 ports of his dual P3 board with an SSD via IDE to SATA Adapter.

The ATA-100 + SATA to IDE converter was much faster in acess times if i remember