clintfan

To quote some text, paste the portion of text you want and surround it with quote controls, like this... I'll use curly braces to explain it, but you really need to use square braces....

{quote}any text you want to quote{/quote}
(but use [ and ], not { and } )

For example, to quote the next stuff, I type {quote} and then paste the passage and finish up with {/quote}. I've done it so much it's pretty mindless and I usually don't make a typo.



I think the comparison would hold for same-GHz ratings. Meaning certain benchmarks probably show that a 3.2E Prescott processor performs a bit slower than a 3.2C Northwood processor. But performance is sensitive to the particular application. Benchmark tools are only a relative comparison measure and run in batch mode, and may not match what you notice when you use the machine interactively.



The 1394 has to run through your VIA VT6307 Firewire chip. This chip is on the PCI bus. In this instance I think the firewire will be the slow link in the chain, not the SATA drive or the PCI bus. Max firewire speed is about 400Mbit/s, or roughly 50MByte/s, not including overhead. Both PCI and SATA can handle this if the proper drivers are installed and the path is clear. But if you copy to another device on PCI, sucg as any drive attached to the Promise chip, there will be a lot of collisions and your throughput will drop significantly.



Let's make sure I have your configuration straight. This is how I understood your system originally, I'll letter the drives for reference:

PRI_IDE Master= C= WD 120JB PATA
PRI_IDE Slave= D= WD 120JB PATA
SEC_IDE Master= E= CDROM1
SEC_IDE Slave= F= CDROM2
SATA1= G= Seagate 200GB (new)
SATA2= H
SATA_RAID1= I
SATA_RAID2= J
PRI_RAID= K= WD 200B PATA
firewire= L= WD 200B PATA

Among these ports, H, I, J & K are all on PCI. Ports C,D,E,F,G, & H are all in the same ICH5 chip. Within this, G is one controller, H, is another controller, and C-D-E-F is a third controller. We think these all share a common bus inside the chip. Further, C-D share a cable, and E-F share a cable.

Let's guess at some speed rankings among these ports, it would take some simple testing with a 1GB file to validate this...

1. Data moving between C and D, or between E and F should be slowest due to the cable sharing, and also it's within the same controller.
2. Data moved between H,I,J, or K might be next, because it has to go out one device, over PCI to memory, then back over PCI into the other device.
3. Data going between, say, C and E, or D and F should be only slightly faster because it's still activity within the same controller.
4. Data going between, say, C and G should be medium, since it's activity within the same chipset sharing the same internal bus...not too bad but still slow.
5. The fastest data movement should be between ports on PCI and ports not on PCI. For instance, between G and K, or between C and K. Although the PCI bridge is inside the ICH5, testing shows these paths are the fastest on these models.

USB2 runs 480MBit/s (52MByte/s) but again that's the theoretical max and with various overhead you won't achieve it. But less than 19MByte/s sounds pretty low to me, again it would be low if you're copying to PRI_RAID. Devices rated 2.0 will only run 2.0 if their mobo connection allows it, and I think sometimes the 2.0 ports will connect at lower speeds. Not sure.

Your comment about video capture concerns me. Because video capture devices typically run on PCI --e.g. the Firewire 1394 port-- your capture recording drive needs to NOT be on PCI. In particular, the best placement for a recording drive would be port G or H. This assumes the OS is on drive C; this makes either C or D not-ideal for capture recording, due to the OS traffic on that IDE controller.

Conversely, we can see that for burning a CD on port E or F which are not on PCI, the best placement for the source of the data would be a port on PCI, namely port I, J, or K. The way this is typcially done is to configure the recording software to use DAO (Disk At Once) or "Make a copy first" and configure the temp storage area down on one of these ports. Systems configured in this way will perform smoothly during burns (instead of running in jerky fashion with lots of invocations of the "burn proof" feature).



OK, in view of the above analysis let's think about this a minute. What they say is true IF what you want to do is just be able to copy files quickly between, say, port C and I. But if you want to do video capture onto port I, this will work terrible because you're in the PCI-to-PCI case (2.) above.

In summary, your drive placement MUST match your planned usage, or at least most of it, and for the rest of it you'll have to tradeoff some performance.


Read through this ranking analysis and see if you can make sense of it. I hope that it may help you to see why some things you might be trying to do, aren't working as fast as you thought they would. I'm sure I don't understand the complete picture of your plans.

-clintfan