Hi, have built my new toy - ASUS P4S800MX mobo and wacked my 5 year old WD EIDE hdd (14gb) in there. everything's fine. would i now benefit - extra speed - in replacing the EIDE hdd with a WD SATA ?? i am using plenty of DDR Ram (512mb) at present thanks fer any comment rob Central Coast NSW Australia

First of all "Plenty of DDr ram" really isn't 512, but it is beyond entry level for sure. Sata drives are faster and of course you haven't stated whether your old ide drive is 7200 rpm either, which all Sata drives are at least. But assuming both are 7200 rpm, there would be a noticeable difference but I find the real difference is both stability (as I have yet to see a sata drive go bad in a year and 1/2 while ide's are still volatile) is noise. the sata drives are super quiet in comparison, and i really appreciate that.

A 14Gb HDD will be running at 5400rpm so even a new IDE drive would be faster & an SATA drive faster still. Hard drives are still one of the bottlenecks in a system so the faster the drive, the faster the whole system. "I know that I'm mad - I've always been mad..."

"Sata drives are faster..." No they are not. SATA drives use a faster interface, the drives are physically identical to their IDE counterparts. Even with the ATA-100 spec hard drives cannot saturate the available bandwidth. The only benefit, in performance, at this time would be with the newer SATA2 interface with NCQ and other technologies which allow for minimal gains in seek times associate with caching of data. But, both the MB and the drive must support the new standard - and even some of the SATA2 drives do not have all of the SATA2 features! In your situation, a 7200 drive (either IDE or SATA) would be a benefit. You will see no noticable difference between the two. I would go with SATA if the price is the same or with IDE if there is a cost savings. Michael J

thank you very much for your replies guys. i understand what you said i think, yes, i'll go with a WD SATA. the EIDE WD hdd i am currently using has been faultless for 5 years.....so the new one will be WD. my new PSU has the SATA leads hanging off it, so may as well use them....lol rob Central Coast NSW Australia

just had a look at the features/details of my ASUS mobo on ASUS's website, in the mobo manual........and there is no mention that this mobo will support SATA !!! so i assume that i have to stay with EIDE hdd. may as well keep the present 14Gb 5yo WD. its going ok. its a 7200 rever. rob Central Coast NSW Australia

Hi Rob About your m/board. Hope this is some help to you: Main Specifications Product Description ASUS P4S800-MX - mainboard - micro ATX - SiS661FX Product Type Mainboard Form Factor Micro ATX Dimensions (WxDxH) 9.6 in x 9.6 in Chipset Type SiS661FX Max Bus Speed 800 MHz Processor 0 ( 1 ) - Socket 478 Compatible Processors Celeron, Pentium 4 RAM 0 MB (installed) / 2 GB (max) Supported RAM Technology DDR SDRAM Storage Controller IDE ( ATA-133 ) Graphics Controller SiS 661FX shared video memory (UMA) Audio Output Sound card - SiS963L Networking Network adapter - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 WinXP Pro. Nvidia:6800GT Dane Electronic Pro. Dual 1024MB 400MHz RAM Tagan 480Watt PSU: 28Amps on +12volt rail. Asus A8V Deluxe "WiFi" M/Board - AquaGate