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i have a 52 or 54x cd rom drive made by sony (not rw) and it has trouble reading cd-rw or cd-r media...it reads...then you hear a click...click...click...seems as if the laser looses its place when it tries to read that media...i have the latest firmware...it is very annoying...it is so slow that if i play a divx movie from that drive...the movie pauses every 10 seconds...but play a cdrom and it works fine...go figure...

If you are not overclocking you should get the 200mhz fsb 3000+ its only like 33 or 66mhz slower than the 3200+ and is a good deal cheaper...if you have the $$ splurge on a 9800pro...but that 9500pro should be faster than the 9600pro...but there are currently nice deals on 9700np's

So easy to fry yet tastes so good...
Silicon: The other, other, other white meat :evil:
 
Yeah that might be a consideration, but if I upgrade my CPU, I'm going Intel. AMD mids are just so cheap I can't refuse.

But what do you think? Say I've got an extra 200$ (cdn) to invest, lay it into the cpu or the video card??
 
I do plan on Over Clocking. With only a Volcano 7+ I don't know how far it'll go, but I'm giving it a try.

but there are currently nice deals on 9700np's
Click to expand...

I hear that all the time, but unfortunatly I can't find one. That 9500pro is about 270$ Cdn but the best 9700np I found was 369$ cdn. And for the extra cash, I'd rather get the 9800pro.

Thanks for the comments, it's helping.
 
you should get that cpu over 2ghz with a volcano...more like 2.1-2.3...if you get lucky you may hit 2.4-2.5....in this case i would stick with the 2500...it will overclock just as well as the 3000 or 3200...the 9800pro is a fine graphics card...stay away from the 256mb version...it offers very little performance gain for the money...

So easy to fry yet tastes so good...
Silicon: The other, other, other white meat :evil:
 
Yeah I think so. I'm building the exact system for a friend, except with less ram, and a downgrade in the video card and speakers. Except he's not overclocking so I might go with a faster non-barton cpu. Should be going down to pick it up early next week.
 
Okay I am going to go out on a limb here. The ABIT NF7-S has all the same features as the ASUS minus the 2 extra USB ports. If that becomes and issue, USB hubs can be had for very cheap (<10 dollars US for a powered hub). It offers better o/c'ing and has a better layout IMHO. I have the NF7-S and I love it.

Now for the HDD. SATA has 2 advantages in my mind right now. 1 Lower CPU overhead and 2 Smaller cables = more airflow in case. I have my 20GB Maxtor PATA HDD using the SATA convertor (oh yeah you can get the PATA HDD and use the SATA convertor that comes with the ABIT board and try out both ways!) and it is faster on boot than b4 on PATA (this is where I notice the diff anyway).

Just a computer junky
 
Yeah I've looked into that. Now I know the abit's are really good overclockers. But are they really that much better? The only place I can find to carry the NF7-s's are 167$ where the asus boards are 180. So for the extra 13$ I don't have to use a usb spliter. So is the oc'in ability that much better?

And back to the hard drives. Sounds like SATA's a good idea for the few extra bucks. Here's the options:

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120G 8M SATA150 OEM <b>179$</b>
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120G 8M 7200RPM SATA150 OEM <b>176$</b>
Western Digital 1200JD 120G 8M 7200RPM SATA150 OEM <b>185$</b>

Non-Sata's:

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120G 8M 7200RPM ATA133 <b>158$</b>
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120G 7200RPM ATA100 8M OEM <b>149$</b>
Western Digital 120G 8M 7200RPM ATA100 OEM <b>153$</b>

What's the best choice here????

Oh yeah and I should also ask, how bad is not going with pc3500 memory going to hinder my oc abilities? For fast memory it's atleast another 120$, money I don't want to spend unless necesairy (keeps me from even fantasizing about a 9800 pro).
 
133mb/s transfer or 100mb/s transfer

Of course they are all backwards compatable...most drives don't even use the full bandwith of ultara ATA 66...

There is no point getting an amd system with sata...because even if the drives COULD use the bandwith....they are limited to the 133mb/s of the pci bus...so whats the point?

So easy to fry yet tastes so good...
Silicon: The other, other, other white meat :evil:
 
thanks. I was wondering about that. What about future stuff. Like say when I move to the intels and prescotts later, I'm sure I'll want to keep my hard disk? Sould I bother with the 133 or even the sata150?
 
The point is that SATA has LESS CPU overhead. It uses the CPU 7% of the time whereas the PATA uses it 43% of the time. The abit NF7-S is quite a bit better in o/c'ing than the ASUS. ASUS goes up to 1.85V, the NF7-S goes over 2.0V on CPU core voltage (not that you may need that, but you never know). My Tbred is running 9.5x220 in my NF7-S Right now and it is rock stable. I don't think there are any ASUS A7N8X boards that are running that FSB. Plus they have some memory comaptibility problems even with the V2.0 ASUS boards.

So is SATA "faster" no, not neccessarily, but when you look at cpu utilization it will end up a faster system because the CPU is free to do other things. SATA also has the capability of more speed in the future. Like I said though, if in doubt get a SATA Adaptor(or get the NF7-S that comes with one....your choice) and use the SATA adapter on a PATA drive. Do that for a week then, put it on PATA for a week and see if you notice a diff, if you do then next time you can get a SATA drive.

Just a computer junky<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Maverick494 on 07/24/03 01:29 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
Alright. So SATA sounding good now, for the few extra bucks I have better future capability. So out of those drives listed earlier, which looks best?
 
PATA will stay around for a while cause so far sata does not have atapi (optical drive) suport...i doubt cpu utilisation goes up to 43%...but i will agree that it is less

So easy to fry yet tastes so good...
Silicon: The other, other, other white meat :evil:
 
Ok, so I went and did a wee bit of homework. And it's looking like a PATA100 is fine for now. I use the SATA adaptor, and worse comes to worse a few years down the road: I buy a second hard drive to run all my aps off of and I use the PATA to store all my vids, mp3 and such. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
True optical drives currently do not have SATA support, but they don't need 150 MB/S do they? They also will convert to SATA one day when it becomes more of a "Standard." I think that will be about the same time as the shift from the current PCI to PCI Express. PCI express shows some great potential to eliminate the PCI bus bottleneck. Once that is done SATA can fly, the question is whether or not hard drives can keep up with the available bandwidth SATA has the potential to offer. Optical drives need to pick up the pace a bit IMHO, they are lagging behind the speed curve. Everyone seems to be focusing on getting a faster burn speed than in making the drive xfer data faster these days. SATA will come into it's own. right now IMHO it is still a good buy for not a lot more money.

Just a computer junky
 
That sounds like a great idea. That is what I did. I have my Maxtor 20GB PATA 133 MB/S HDD using a SATA adaptor. When I finally get the money for a 200GB SATA drive it will be a slave drive. Then when I get my second SATA it wil be a PATA drive that is a MP3/video drive.

Just a computer junky
 
the reason otical drives cap at around 56x is that at any higher speeds...the cdrom drive spins the cd fast enough to physically destroy many cds...not that the tech cannot handle it...it is the actual cd design at fault...but there is no excuse for dvds...IMO it is the wrong time to buy a dvd-rw drive cause currently they are very slow.

You are right...cdrom drives don't need the bandwith...but nor do hard drives and they switched over...atapi support will come to sata wheather i am ready to leave ide or not...

still...until i see a better slection of sata drives i will still recomend pata to people who can stand the cables...the only sata drive that is worth it is the wd raptor...because it offers a noticable performance increase over standard ide drives (immagine 4 of those in raid 0) but then again they do not offer more than 40gb of storrage...if floppy is still around...then ide should stay for a while...

So easy to fry yet tastes so good...
Silicon: The other, other, other white meat :evil:
 
Good point PIII. Drooling over those 4 raptors raid 0 for a moment. I remember now that the limitations is due to the CD now. Thanks for reminding me. I agree DVD-r, -rw, /r, /rw or any combo of the afore mentioned is not a good choice. I have yet to see a "industry standard" emerging for them either and they have been around for about 2years now. It didn't take CD-R that long to get a standard. Oh well maybe by the time it is 40 dollars for a DVD-writer there will be a standard and it will be a good one.

As for Hard drives not using the bandwidth, that is true, but it all comes down to capability. ATA 133 was a pipe dream with the current setup of IDE. Hell most hard drives might manage a burst speed of 80 MB/s if that. I just look forward to the possiblity that SATA offers to the Hard drive and eventually Optical drive makers.

Just a computer junky<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Maverick494 on 07/24/03 02:42 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
i am looking forward to the day when we use solid state drives...that would just be amazingly fast...i think that memory cards are the euture...hell they can even get those little things up to 1gb+ (for quite some $$ though)...

I was just wondering...how much utilisation do usb drives require? Why not just skip sata for that...already have a faster theoretical banwith than sata does...

So easy to fry yet tastes so good...
Silicon: The other, other, other white meat :evil:
 
I have had that problem too. I have a CD-RW media that i have Multi-sessioned three or four times. I put it in my friend's Sony CD-Rom drive and it cud not read it at all. A couple of my other friends have LG CD-ROM and the multi-sessioned CD reads with no problems at all.

<b>I hate scottchen. :wink:
Scottchen's</b> sig: I could only overclock my Barton 2500+ to 2645mhz. My Radeon 9700pro core/mem speed won't go above 410/720.
 
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