big diff between 32bit vs 64bit pci gigabit transfer rate?

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paulmofyourhand

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im building a lan server machine here soon, which will be leeched like hell, and maybe serve some games here and there...

my question is, taken the account both are intel based nic cards. will the transfer rate be faster or slower on a 32 vs 64 bit pci connection?

im curisous if i should spend $40 or $100 on a nic, so its pretty big price difference.

machine specs so far:
tyan dual amd board
dual 1800+ MP
1gb ram
2- 160gb in RAID 0
(and giga nic still awaiting for decision)
 
I assume they are both gigabit cards? what OS you using, what other hardware? (mobo specifically)
 
Tyan S2468

im thinking of a linux OS (well actually my friend is the linux guy, he's going to choose which ever one works), windows XP pro, or server 2k3
 
I've got the Gigabyte GAsomething or other Dual MP Board with dual 2800+, 1Gig ECC reg, 4x 120GB in raid 0+1

I bought the Intel MT nic for $100, and no complaints here.... very little CPU utilization...

QJ
 
here's the rub. the 32bit card is not only 32 bit, but 33mhz. so assuming you can plug the PCIX card into a 64/66 slot you will have a max theoretical bandwidth of 533MBps for the $100 and only 133MBps for the 32bit card. now, are your hard drives fast enough to sustain or burst reads that exceed 133MBps? if so, then the $100 will show some benefit.

i would guess your drives are not going to get much use out of the added bandwidth of the $100 card. i would perhaps more importantly offer the comment that if you have 320GB of data in raid0 you are asking for heartache. does your card support raid10?
 
RAID 5 would work well too if you have good hardware (u320 scsi raid card, drives, etc) or hell it might work well with IDE or SATA too...I have never done RAID with IDE
 
As big daddy mentioned above, it's all about availability. Since you have a board that handles PCIX then I'd suggest you shell out the extra cash and use it... for future-proof sake if nothing else.

If you are using ordinary IDE/SATA drives then you probably will not notice much difference between the two -- but if you put together a high availability raid array you may.

If it were me I'd pick up another 160 drive and a dedicated hardware raid5 controller instead of raid 0. That would probably add about $200 to your spec but would pay you back in throughput, availability and reliability in the long run.
 
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