Just general Questions

Hope you don't ming but I get confused, or is that stay confused.

Is a serial hard drive faster then just a regular hard drive setup?

Raid is two hard drives that are mirrored correct? Is that setup faster then a regular setup?

What is Hyper threading technology?

 

Serial harddrives have the potential to be faster, but it doesnt matter yet. They do help system performance, however, since serial controllers use less CPU power to run, and can run on a dedicated bus to the CPU instead of the PCI bus (direct connection vs sharing a connection with a bunch of other things)

RAID can take many forms. Mirrored is RAID1, and is nearly the same speed as normal, but if a drive fails, no data is lost. You need 2 harddrives, but only have the storage space of the smallest drive.
RAID0 is also common, where data is striped over both drives. If a drive fails, all data is lost. IT is much faster then running just each drive seperately. IT has the storage space of the smallest drive * 2

Hyperthreading is when the CPU can emulate 2 CPU's (its 2 logical CPUs on one physical CPU). It allows better multitasking, but has little to no affect on single thread apps (like games) when they are the only thing running. Run 2, and you will get better performance.

 

Thanks Chris,

Let me ask you another question. My hard drive is connected all alone to ide 1 the cd roms are connected to ide2 in that case would I gain anything by going to serial?
I in fact had a serial drive on the computer that went bad, when I replaced it I just put a regular one back in. I'm just wondering what I lost if anything. I havn't noticed anything but I really don't have much loaded back on it yet.

 

Ok, heres the slightly longer explanation of serial (SATA) drives.
the actual way the data is stored is exactly the same; a current high end harddrive can transfer data at a max of about 80mb/sec, but that is a burst speed, continuous is always lower (~50mb/sec for a good drive).
ATA supports up to 133mb/sec from each device (each cable can have 2 devices; only one can send/receive data at the same time. So, if there were 2 hdd's on the same cable and are transferring files, the first drive sends data to the ATA controller, which stores it (in the computers RAM I guess, i dont think it has a built in buffer), then, the first drive stops sending data, and the second drive receives the data just sent. If they were on seperate cables, both drives would be able to read/write at the same time).
SATA currently is 150mb/sec per device (1 device per cable).
But since a drive can only put out a max of 80mb/sec (roughly), there is no advantage from this, yet.

Where SATA is better is that the SATA controller is more efficient (in general) then ATA controllers. So, the SATA controller does most of the work, where the ATA controller has the CPU do a lot of the work for it.
So, when a SATA drive is being used, it will use less CPU power then an equivalent ATA drive. Its only really a few perecent of CPU power, though (ie, 2% usage vs 5% usage), so, it really isnt noticeable, but it is there. Basically, it will allow you to perform other tasks faster while the hdd is being used (converting wav to mp3's or dvd's to divx would show the difference, since they both use the hdd and CPU extensively. That few percent difference is CPU usage savings will be equivalent to the amount less time that will be taken. ie, instead of taking 5 hours, if the SATA controller has a CPU usage saving of 3%, it will save about 10 minutes)

Also, SATA controllers have a dedicated bus to the CPU. ATA drives share the PCI bus with all other PCI cards, USB, firewire, and all ide devices. The PCI bus only has 133mb/sec total bandwidth. So, it is fairly easy to fill it, limiting the harddrives performance.
SATA can just talk to the CPU directly, no potential bottleneck (and quicker latencies, for ever so slightly better performance)

In your case, there isnt really a need to go to SATA just for the sake of it.
But when you upgrade again, do get SATA.

 

Thanks again my friend!

 

Oh, one more thing:
many motherboards use SATA controllers that run throught he southbridge and PCI bus (ie, many Nforce2 boards use the Sil3112 controller), so, the advantage of it having its own bus is lost.

Some boards have native support though (most intel boards, with the ICH5R southbridge, for example) run it through its dedicated bus.

 

Attention Mods

I think this thread should be posted as a FAQ. Chris, that's one masterful job of defining a relatively complicated thing in easy to understand language. Very good work

 

Where's he reputation adder for Chris? He deserves his props for that great explaination.

 

*Chris starts to take a bow, then, due to lack of sleep and that pesky exam in 45 minutes, falls over, landing in coffee whitener* hey, at least I found the coffee whitener
Seriously, thanks for the supportive comments. I guess I now have 3 posts I can call upon whenever needed (definiton of types of RAM, and my benchmarks of different RAM/FSB combinations).

Heres to the nap after the exam, to be followed by more cramming for Physics, which is 9am tmrw :s

 

Way off topic, but I also have a physics exam at 9 AM tomorrow. Wierd, eh?

 

Yes, nice "tute" Chris. I'll try to figure out how to 'rep' you.
Got my "edu" for tonight

Maybe you should just stay in academia and be a CS teacher or something!