Best Config

confused Hello, I have a question about a PC config, I have a P5-DL2 Mother Board with 4 X Sata Disks WD 250GB, 4 X DDR2 Corsair, P4D 3.4 945P CPU. I've put a DVD-ROM, and a DVD-RW on the 1st & 2nd primary IDE i.e. Master, Slave. would you think this is the best way to config this system, for max performance? any advise welcome. Thanks in advance.

 

Hello,


If I understand you correctly, you have put both your ROM and RW optical drives on one IDE as master/slave? If so, that works fine. It's only when you mix optical drives and hard-drives on the same channel that you run into problems.

Configuration also has a lot to do with how you intend to use your optical drives.

Now, I have my system set up with two SATA drives, both on their own channel - and have my DVD ROM and R/W drives also set up on their own IDE channel - i.e. both as master devices on their channel (the ROM is on the Primary IDE). I have no data to offer that says this configuration is any better then others - it appears to me to be faster, as I tend to use both drives at once when processing home movies (burn-on-the-fly) but this is just my opinion. It seems logical it would have a positive impact on performance, though; not having to share a channel ought to help data transfer somewhere along the way.

I didn't run any comprehensive tests with my system while trying different configurations. I'm not a bleeding-edge overclocker (though I have played at it, lol). There are some good free diagnostic and bench-marking programs here at MG - maybe you could look them over and choose one, and run some comparisons? I'd be interested to hear the results of such tests.

Welcome to MG!

 

Thanks for the advice.

Regards