Hardware Review 2003.07.31

"Today at GamePC, we've got a comparison of the latest Serial ATA RAID controllers on the market. We gone and looked at Intel's new ICH5-R native Serial ATA RAID controller in comparison to third party solutions from Promise and Silicon Image. We've also throw in a brand new true hardware Serial ATA/RAID solution from 3Ware, the 8506-4LP, to see how much of a difference having a dedicated I/O processor onboard really makes. It's pretty impressive to see what these controllers are capable of once they're hooked up to a few Western Digital Raptor disks."

More SATA goodness:
"Well basically the HPT372a processes the data and moves it thru the PCI bus, but the data coming into the card first passes through a Marvell 88i8030 Serializer-Deserializer chip (1 for each channel). So what does this mean for the end user? That basically you will be limited by the HPT372a to ATA133 speeds, and not the 150 speeds promised by the SATA interface."

Of course, you need some disks to put on those controllers:

"Built upon Seagate's native Serial ATA drive controller, the Barracuda 7200.7 is the latest in Seagate's 7200RPM SATA series. Find out if this 160GB version is faster than the previously reviewed 120GB model.

"Although its seek performance degraded only ever so slightly, the drive is no slouch when it comes to the IOmeter benchmark. In fact, its performance was not affected at all as it remains to be as fast as the 120GB counterpart. Because of this, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 is currently the fastest SATA drive (although upcoming contenders from Western Digital and Hitachi could seriously thwart their position). Those thinking of setting up RAID arrays using SATA drives would not be disappointed with its high throughput and quick response times."

Not sure how effective this would really be:

"The idea is to dampen the audible vibrations from your computer which is passed through the feet into the surface it is sitting on. If your PC is on a plush carpet read no further as these are unlikely to help because the vibrations are well muffled anyway. But if your computer sits on a desk or a wooden floor then these vibrations can resonate like the wooden body of a stringed instrument..."

You have to have a motherboard review:
"With the K7 near the end of its lifespan, it seems as if every mainboard manufacturer worth its salt is making one last big push with socket A boards. Since nVIDIA recently rehashed the highly successful nForce2-SPP chipset under the moniker of the new nForce2 Ultra 400 name there is no better time than the present. Of course you'll recall that nVidia's nForce2-SPP chipset officially supported the 400 MHz based AthlonXP processors, but it was starting to get old (nForce2 has been around for about 11 months already!) so it was time for a refresh. When nVIDIA released the C1 stepping of the nForce2 they decided to rename the chip the "nForce2 Ultra 400." I suppose any new stepping technically deserves a new name. In this review, PCstats will be testing out the spiffy AOpen AK79D-400 Max mainboard which, obviously, uses the "new and improved" nForce2-Ultra 400 chipset. The Ultra name may be more symbolic than descriptive, but I would expect a little extra performance?"