Motherboard and harddrive questions

[ap]

Seems like all the recommended boards these days have onboard audio. Is this bad?

Is firewire better supported on the board or PCI card...or is mobo firewire even available? The ASUS site doesn't mention it on the P4C800-E deluxe, but www.tomshardware.com says it's on there.

What happened to ultradma 133 harddrives? Alot of the ASUS mobos only mention 133 on the raid controller. Does this mean you have to run RAID to use 133?

What's the latest word on SATA vs. PATA? After quite a bit of research, I still can't figure it out other than the SATA advantages of hot swapping and smaller cables.

Thanks.

 

[wheelema]

Seems like all the recommended boards these days have onboard audio. Is this bad?

No, it is easily disabled. Well... easy if you know where to look.

...is firewire better supported on the board or PCI card...or is mobo firewire even available...

You know, that is a REALLY good question. But, first of all, yes, firewire is available on motherboards, but as to which is better, PCI card or mobo, I would have said mobo without flinching until yesterday when I learned that it might be possible to burn out a firewire port. Still and all, given the high cost of the expansion board, I am going to have to vote for the mobo option.

What happened to ultradma 133 harddrives? Alot of the ASUS mobos only mention 133 on the raid controller. Does this mean you have to run RAID to use 133?

No. That would have to be feature of the hardware, not the logical drive configuration (e.g., RAID). Maybe SATA caught it by surprise and ate it's lunch??

What's the latest word on SATA vs. PATA? After quite a bit of research, I still can't figure it out other than the SATA advantages of hot swapping and smaller cables.

Well... hot swapping is quite an advantage, but it appears that SATA offers the potential for substantially greater throughput.

 

[ap]

Ok, this is from the ASUS site:

South Bridge:
-2 x UltraDMA 100
-2 x Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1
Promise 20378 RAID controller:
-1 x UltraDMA 133 support two hard drives
-2 x Serial ATA -RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, Multiple RAID

So, can I use my 133 drive in true 133 operation or would it actually run at 100?

Is it true that the raid controller goes through the PCI buss, while the Southbridge doesn't, and therefore, you're taking a slight penalty by running a drive on the raid? I'm not really interesting in RAID really, I'm just wondering if it's possible to run just one 133 drive on that raid controller. Sounds kinda crazy/stupid, but I'm just trying to figure this stuff out.

In actuality though, isn't it really all moot since hardly any drive, SATA or otherwise, can put out more than 60MBps?

 

[Outlaws]

In actuality though, isn't it really all moot since hardly any drive, SATA or otherwise, can put out more than 60MBps?

Well, they miht only sustain at around that....but the burst rate is where they excell.