Sonnet Tempo ATA100

[Dr. No]

I have a Blue and White with a Maxtor 40 GB Ultra ATA 100 hard drive. Will it be faster to use the onboard IDE (only ATA/33) or use a Sonnet PCI Ultra/100 card?

I have heard that using a PCI card can make the computer slower, since it has to access the PCI bus.

 

[seamuskrat]

Overall, I do not think you will notice a perceptible difference. In benchmarks, on disk intensive tasks, the Sonnet will be faster.
But I use many old B&W that have these cards, and the day to day uses there is no perceptible difference.

We also have PCI videocards installed. What I can notice is if I play a game, like Diablo II that uses the drive attached to the Sonnet AND the PCI videocard, we saturate the PCI bus. So, for games its not faster. But normal ops, it allows larger drives with no performance hit and possible some speed gains from faster disks.

I have a Blue and White with a Maxtor 40 GB Ultra ATA 100 hard drive. Will it be faster to use the onboard IDE (only ATA/33) or use a Sonnet PCI Ultra/100 card?

I have heard that using a PCI card can make the computer slower, since it has to access the PCI bus.