hi, got a second hand pc from parents work with Gigabyte GA-7N400E MB PNY verto fx5200 gfx card CPU, unknown athlon XP i think but was under influence last night and didn't fancy starting pulling bits out It's only got the norm 2x IDE connectors on the mb and i was wondering what the performance increase would be from getting a sata controller and whether i can install boot partition on the controller or if it'd have to be a secondary drive installed after setup of windows? Never used SATA drives before and the PSU with it doesn't have the power cables for them, guessing this doesn't matter as the drives come with both connectors right?? Any replies (excluding tools with nothing but critisism, not that there are any) most appreciated, hopefully i might have a pc capable of playing WoW finally
don't blame you, it takes me all my time to do something when i'm sober no, you would need a mobo with an option in the BIOS to boot from SATA, you would have to boot from standard IDE and just use the SATA drive for free space no, you'll have to get a new PSU or use molex to SATA adaptors Any replies (excluding tools with nothing but critisism, not that there are any)[/QUOTE]see, no critisism[ot]although i can take the p1ss out of you, thats if you want me to[/ot]
thanx for reply. Reckon i can leave the sata card for a while, dont mind the hit on dvd drive performance from having another drive on the cable. Found out the cpu's ahn athlon xp 2800 barton or at least that's what i think it is. The motherboard does like pumping in the numbers on auto settings on the fsb and multiplier tho. The cpu's running at 31deg C with a normal fan and heatsink cooler, need to investigate 'overclocking' or just getting it to the right clock speed for now PS feel free to flame but in doing so you are then mentioned to be a tool Thanx again
SATA PCI controllers typically use Silicon Image SATA controllers that you see on motherboards. As long as your motherboard supports booting from an external (meaning not with the chipset ATA) drive, a SATA controller should work. As far as benefits, a speed boost wouldn't happen because of the SATA interface. It has more to do with the higher densities, RPM, and cache, so a drive from, say Segate's 7200.10 line, would vary next to nothing, if anything, between SATA and PATA (IDE) interfaces.
