G5 harddisks and PCI-X

Serial ATA & PCI-X

The specs of the hard drives are that they are 3.5 inches big (the same physical size as all desktop hard-drives), they spin at 7200rpm and they use the serial ATA interface. Performance of these drives should be near SCSI level but I suspect that it will not be too long before 10,000 rpm versions are made and sold. In the new PowerMac G5 cases there are two bays for the hard-drives compared to the four bays of my QuickSilver.

PCI-X appears to offer one 64 bit 133MHz slot and two 64 bit 100MHz slots. I think the PCI slots of my QuickSilver are 32 bit 33MHz with one at 66MHz. Considering that all G5 Powermacs come with 8X AGP for the graphics card, PCI-X may be overkill for anyone other than high-end users who might plug a high definition video card or a top-of-the-line SCSI card.

 

Just remember RPM isn't everything, those 7200 RPM drives are WAY faster than a 7200 RPM normal ATA drive.

 

Western Digital makes a 10,000 RPM S-ATA drive that is available now, but would have to be added as an aftermarket upgrade to a G5 unless Apple opts to include them as an option in the Apple Store.

 

Most 10,000 RPM S-ATA drives are similar to SCSI drives... the biggest I've seen is 36GB....

 

Re: G5 harddisks and PCI-X

pcix has mega bandwith for instance if tou add a dual 320 scsi card and enough 15000 rpm scsi drive you could transfer 640MB per second with the same insanely small access speed that many pro audio and video guys use.
there are 10000 rpm sata 36GB drives available now for about the same as 36GB scsi drives $150 and they bench asd good or better then scsi except in server(multi drive), transfer speed, and access speed and they are very close to that. my idea setup would be 3 sata in a single volume raid max 180MB and 1 large firewire or sata with to back up those 3 speed anad space.

 

good site

www.storagereview.com