2 Questions 1 memory and 1 Sata HD`s

[BonyTony]

1st off :- i need to buy some cheap DDR 400 memory and on the crucial site they have ...

512MB

DDR PC3200 • CL=3 • Unbuffered • Non-parity • 5ns • 2.5V • 64Meg x 64

Is it any good for overclocking and has anyone got some as to offer an opinion on it.

2nd :- I also need a new HD and was curious now that sata hard drives are the same price if they are any faster/better/quieter than the old ATA133 drives ?...also if anyone has got one your opinion would be helpfull...drive i have seen is

Maxtor 120GB DiamondMax Plus 9 (SATA)
SATA/150 - 8MB Buffer

Thanks.

 

[coathanger007]

Recommend my Hard disk and my RAM. As you can see, I'm running Kingston 2700 RAM at 400Mhz CL2.5. A proper PC 3200 Kingston will be even better. Kingston have lowered their price with the valueram series but the sticks still have superior overclocking.

Recommend Western Digital with 8MB buffer. Much better caching and speed then Maxtor. May also be quieter and more reliable for all I know. SATA HDDs aren't any better that 133 in real term performance. Even at 7200rpm and with 8MB buffer, you'll very very rarely saturate the 133 Bandwidth. SATA refers to the cable bandwidth and from my knowledge has absolutely nothing to do with quietness. But because 133 and 150 are so closely priced, you might as well spend a little extra for future proofing.

 

[RogerPhillis]

Hello Tony
I have the exact SATA drive you mentioned.
Upside is it reads @65 Mb per second and writes @40 Mb per second.
(My old Maxtor 60 Gb ATA drive has 23 /18 performance).
Its a bit of a pig to install with a gigabyte mobo.
as 1) the hard disc drivers have to be copied onto floppies and introduced during XP install , under F6 option
2) Some of the file attributes have to be altered to prevent error messages during install from floppies.
3) Despite altering boot order to SCSI and also same for first boot, system needs restarting 5 times from cold to recognise the SATA to boot from. Works normally on warm reboot.
Disabling the IDE drive(s) boot recognition makes no difference. I use DVD and DVDRW for IDE 1/2 masters.
The drive also runs hot but not noisy.
Despite all that, the drive speed and better air circulationwith smaller cable is worth it. and backups are much quicker.
I also have the DDr400 memory (1024Mb) although Samsung.
Have not tried anything with this.