> So, If I like to buy a new motherboard and a new HD, what > should I buy? Assume that I would like to get the best a > person might expect from a home computer.
Another issue holding back IDE performance is that the IDE bus is sometimes tied into the PCI bus which is limited to 128mb/sec (give or take). Everything that's on that bus will fight for that limited bandwidth (i.e. USB, sound, NIC cards, whatever) Some of the newer motherboard have the IDE channels on their own bus path. Even though it isnt THAT linux friendly, the new nForce 2 chips use AMD's hypertransport technology to provide the IDE bus with FAR greater bandwidth that the PCI bus can obtain (~800mb/sec). Some benchmarks from my... AMD 2500XP, 2x512 PC3200 in Dual Channel mode, Asus A7N8X Deluxe, http://www.asus.com/products/mb/socketa/a7n8x-d/overview.htm Windows XP :) WD1200JB on IDE channel (the lower read speeds on the 512 and 1024mb where due to me accidently starting Quake3 ) http://underthemain.net/~sweede/bench/bench_1.jpg Dual WD800JBs on SATA, RAID-0 (small file) http://underthemain.net/~sweede/bench/bench3.JPG (large file) http://underthemain.net/~sweede/bench/bench2.JPG The Western Digital drives are amazing. Newer Intel motherboards have build in, native SATA channels (meaning you can boot a dos floppy and see the harddrive). I would look into those and other modern equipment. Research at www.firingsquad.com , they usually have great hardware reviews. Just keep a watch out for linux compat. :) A good site for nForce 2 on linux, http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=29 Don't know of one for the newer intel-based motherboards, sorry. bjorn -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
