Is Serial ATA worth waiting for?

[Zaul]

In the article on the nForce2 chipset it's mentioned that Serial-ATA will be available in the not too distant future, but is not included in the nForce2 chipset. I'm not sure if this is worth waiting for. I know I'll get a new board with AGP 3.0/8x about the time it comes out. The dual memory control sounds nice and seems to be exclusive to the nForce chipsets for AMD based systems so far.

What I am basically wondering is how much of a factor serial-ATA will be to performance. I know this is premature as far out as the tech is and with all that can change, but I'm still curious.

Zaul

Today's just another day where everything you do affects your future.

 

[PCcashCow]

I am wondering the same thing. But ive heard leeked reports from a friend of mine in the tokyo office the serial ata has some unstable qualities to it when appilled though controller cards mixed with older hardware. For now the only thing i hear that is worth getting is the new 120s with 8mb cache. The serial ata is ganna be a pretty penny. The only way worth waiting will be helpful is if you really wait and see what comes though the forum when it comes out.

Tim

It seems that every time I reboot my wallet get smaller.

 

[Oracle]

We will probably only know once it's here.
It looks good on paper, but the same thing was said about ATA133­. There are so many bottlenecks that 133M/s is never reached. The best ATA133 performance i've heard so far is about 80M/s in ideal conditions.
In any case, wide acceptance and implementation of Serial ATA will take a while and the "real world" gain will probably be marginal. That's why I wouldn't hesitate to invest in a ATA133 drive right now.

<font color=red>Floppy disk?!? What the heck's a floppy disk?!?</font color=red>

 

[sjonnie]

It depends what you want to do. If you just have one hard disk then serial ATA will be of no benefit to current chipsets.
Serial ATA will be extremely useful for setting up large RAID arrays or 4 to 12 disks due to the simplified cabling, installation and improved airflow around a thin 2 wire connector.
As far as performance is concerned, serial ATA will make little difference as the ATA interface is not what limits hardisk throughput. Having said that, generation 1 SATA will have a throughput of 150Mb/s, with following generations expected to double and even triple that. Clearly a 450Mb/s throughput interface would be ridiculous on todays hardisks /PCI bus.

 

[o0oSPuNKiEo0o]

I don't really know too much about how serial ATA works. Has tom done an in detal article about it, or does some one want to take a stab at explaining it to me, or just link me some where that does.

Thanks

 

[sjonnie]

<A HREF="http://www.serialata.org" target="_new">http://www.serialata.org</A>