Brian Frank

Oh, I've been looking into SCSI myself (need to educate myself on it anyway) and quite a few drives come with 8MB caches, some with even 16 meg 8) WD is the only ATA drive company to come out with 8meg cached ATA drives. Also, SCSI has use still: 1 controller, but quite a bit more devices per channel than standard ATA controllers. Another one is that SCSI acts as a bus and is better with multiple drives on one channel. It's also available now. You have to look around, but SCSI controllers (new and from reputable retailers) can be had for under $100--and I'm talking U160 here too. SCSI is better for multi tasking. ATA can only do this with one drive per channel. SCSI can have 7 devices per channel or more (depends on the controller) and work fine.

Hopefully, then, they will also add a faster spindle speed. The reason it appears to be a fairy tale, is because the average throughput on ATA drives really doesn't go above 40MB/s, not including burst rates. 2nd, Isn't the PCI bus limited to 133MB/s, or am I misinformed. If serial ATA doesn't have a faster bus of some sort to go on, that'd prove a bit of a problem for SATA 1.0 and above. Those documents, while intresting didn't tell me a whole lot.

Burst rates probably, but unless Serial ATA is a major change from what we have now in ATA technology, that's a fairy tale. Nice, but probably not happening. Plus, U320 SCSI is supposed to be coming out in a little while.

Looks like it's gonna be a few years before it hits the mainstream desktop. It's gonna start up high with the Itanium and AMD's x86-64 chip and gradually migrate down to our level. After that settles in, we'll all be waiting for 128-bit architecture to hit:p

Time for another bumpity-bump. I plan on getting a Tekram DC-390U3W U160 SCSI card and a Fujitsu 18GB 10k RPM 68-pin drive (with 8MB cache--yum!) to go with it. That and the power supply...

Cool!

Actually no. The CE version is just a specific stepping of the KT333. It's main advantage is being able to overclock very well. It is not a new chipset. It is still the KT333.

Yeah, last I heard the PCI bus does top out at 133MB/s. 64-bit/66MHz PCI and PCI-X don't have that limitation, but they're needed for high-end SCSI and Gigabit (and the new 10Gb) Ethernet. They'll need to implement something like that into mainstream desktop boards before they can really hope to do anything that will really up IDE transfer speeds (10k RPM anyone?)

In otherwords, moray, ACPI is not necessarily the problem. I have had several different setups, all of which do not have problems with several items on the same IRQ.

Just because it has KT in it doesn't mean you can just jump over to another KT chipset w/o a hassle. Some review I saw had the guy going from a KT133 to a KT133A chipset (same manufacturer, board with new chipset), and he had to do a clean install to get things running.

Only thing I can tell is the 5.1 channel sound and the $10 price drop.

If you've got a slow CPU and a small amount of RAM, running an AV, especially some older versions that tend to be CPU cycle hogs, that could also be coming into play here. Another thing to keep in mind...

Here, let me give you my opinion of Windows: it rules. Like any OS, yes it does have problems. Also, as it's run on 95% or more PC's available (in one form or another) guess what people are gonna go after. 2nd, these anti-MS pukes want to tell me Linux is the future of the desktop. HA! If I want anther desktop OS, I'll be hitting Mac OS X before I hit linux. Reason: Linux and easy to use are polar opposites. Even with KDE and Gnome, Linux feels like a washed up imitation of Windows and is not as user friendly. Also, how many distributions are there of Linux? How different versions of Windows? The former has waaaay more, plus it's split into Debian and Red Hat variants. Windows most recent release is on one core: NT. Also, as much as Windows gets knocked, MS provides a lot of good support. Take into account how easy it is to go into Best Buy and the like and grab Linux software. 'Even Mac software is easier to come by. The last thing I'd like to metion is that some of these people are morons and/or are jelous that MS and Bill G. have made the big bucks and they didn't. And that concludes my rant...

I'm all for Linux, but there are a few problems: Where's the games for it (HL, Serious Sam, Jedi Knight, etc.)? May be lame, but I enjoy my games. I know all of my hardware isn't supported, not necessarily a fault of Linux, but the fact that it's not seeing drivers from everyone. I can set it up, but the it's like "What the heck do I do with it." I've already sold my soul to Bill G. anyway (for the right to be his protege and eventual ruler of MS and the world;))

NTFS all the way...in case you need another vote. Since doing so, a sudden power loss has yet to give me a CHKDSK, unlike FAT32. Much better OS. People claim a speed loss, but if there is, I can't tell.

I've had really good luck using the 21.81/83 dets. Before that I'd used the 10.80's for quite awhile.

Lemme guess why you changed: there's a bunch of devices on 1 IRQ. You can go from Standard PC to ACPI, but make sure you enable it in BIOS once you do the switch. Also, make sure to uninstall as many devices as you can before switching to minimize the fuss. As a precaution, back-up first.

#2 is your problem. IDE can only access one device at a time per channel, and as both drives are on the same channel, it's going to be slow. You can set both HDD's as masters on the separate channels and have the opticals as slaves, or buy an UATA controller card and attach a couple drives to that.

It's not for non-Star Wars people. You can see the backstory starting to develop---Anakin turning evil, the introduction of Owen and Beru, the start of the eventual Empire...etc. Obi-Won is more like the one in the original Star Wars, there's a reason everyone turns to Yoda for guidance, Count Dooku is real bad-***, C-3PO has bad jokes...

Sounds cool!

Yeah, but considering the Xbox is powered by the NForce, it could be rather easy to make the transition to a full blown PC.

I'll be seeing it late tomorrow nite. (well actually tonite, it's 3AM right now...)

You also may want to look at the Hercules Fortissimo II. It's a nice little card, and is a tad cheaper, depending on where you look, than the Santa Cruz. IMO, it sounds better than the Audigy. While Via may be part of it, Creative doesn't deem it necessary to follow the PCI specs like other companies. They are getting pretty arrogant from what they are putting out.

Via latest chipset probably won't be out in the near future, so keep that in mind too. Those are just previews of the chipset. I haven't had any experience with Soyo, so no comment there.

For what your asking, go XP. I've found it to be a bit quicker in gaming than 2k. My machines are on 24/7 unless I'm on vacaction or working on them.