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SATA drive vs ATA drive

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[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 25, 2005
Messages
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I'm aware that the SATA interface offers more bandwidth as well as other advantages compared to the ATA interface. It's similar in comparing the PCI-Express bus to the AGP bus. But we all know that most (if not all) graphics cards on the market have currently been unable to use all the bandwidth available on the AGP bus. Thus, a PCI-Express card would perform identically to its AGP counterpart.

But is this true for SATA drives? Would the SATA version of a hard drive perform as well as its ATA version?
 
Performance is basically identical within a few percent.
 
The drives are still mechanically the same. If you mutlitask heavily with multiple programs that will access the same physical disk at the same time, then you'll benefit from NCQ, but that's the only performance reason to consider a SATA drive over a PATA one.
 
Like everybody said....no performance difference.
But you could save a couple of bucks going PATA....they are generally a few dollars cheaper than the SATA or SATA-II.
Plus....PATA drives are being put on sale more often at the moment.
I guess all of the manufactures are trying to clear out some stock.

 
Thats like saying 3-4-4-8 @ 200 mhz ram is like 2-2-2-5 ram @ 250 because the nubs can't notice the difference after getting 25 fps in doom 3 on xbox and not noticing the stuttering either! :rolleyes: Sure the same EXACT drive on PATA and SATA is probably roughly the same since the PATA drive didn't max out the bus to begin with but if you actually get say a raptor or one of those new seagate drives with NCQ then umm yeah kiss your PATA goodbye! BTW i'm going full SATA within a week or two. Buying said seagate with NCQ (400 gig) to replace my current 3xMaxtor PATA drives! :D
 
There's not much difference unless you're doing something (ie- more than one app doing disk I/O at the same time) that can take advantage of NCQ.
 
zandor said:
There's not much difference unless you're doing something (ie- more than one app doing disk I/O at the same time) that can take advantage of NCQ.
Click to expand...

How many people only open IE here and nothing else? k then. :p In my case i'm buying a big SATA drive for the big switchover so why not spend alittle more for a drive that gets close to SCSI speed according to some benches i saw earlier! :D
 
Tazman2 said:
Thats like saying 3-4-4-8 @ 200 mhz ram is like 2-2-2-5 ram @ 250 because the nubs can't notice the difference after getting 25 fps in doom 3 on xbox and not noticing the stuttering either! :rolleyes: Sure the same EXACT drive on PATA and SATA is probably roughly the same since the PATA drive didn't max out the bus to begin with but if you actually get say a raptor or one of those new seagate drives with NCQ then umm yeah kiss your PATA goodbye! BTW i'm going full SATA within a week or two. Buying said seagate with NCQ (400 gig) to replace my current 3xMaxtor PATA drives! :D
Click to expand...
A Maxtor PATA drive with a 16MB buffer will outperform those SATA Barracudas, NCQ or not. Once again, interface is irrelevant to hard drive performance in most desktop access patterns. Even the WD740GD, the fastest "SATA" drive you can buy, has a PATA controller board and a SATA bridge chip.
 
DougLite said:
A Maxtor PATA drive with a 16MB buffer will outperform those SATA Barracudas, NCQ or not. Once again, interface is irrelevant to hard drive performance in most desktop access patterns. Even the WD740GD, the fastest "SATA" drive you can buy, has a PATA controller board and a SATA bridge chip.
Click to expand...

I don't see how. Thats like the EE p4s with double the cache only run 1-2% faster on everyday apps. Plus isn't the drive i'm looking at 100% sata?
 
Ahh, but the mechanical parts of the hard disk and the buffer are by far the most important parts of the disk. The 16MB drives use a superior buffer startegy to retrieve data faster with fewer seeks, giving the Maxtor drive an edge.

Also, the Seagate drives are indeed native SATA, giving them a compatibility edge over drives that use a bridge chip. However, bridge chips are rare nowadays. Even WD is abandoning their use.
 
Really the best reason to go with SATA is to free both IDE channels to have you're DVD-RW and another optical on the other - keeing the UDMA settings optimal and lessening the risks of optical-optical burn failures.
 
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