Serial ATA ?

[Knightshade Dragon]

Ok, so I'm thinking with games like Doom 3, Vampire, and Half Life 2 on the horizon I need to upgrade.  There are a ton of boards out there that have Serial ATA connections, what does that do for me with my EIDE?  Is that board completely incompatable with my current hard drives or will I just not get the performance bennies of Serial ATA?

[AgtFox]

EIDE drives will still work, but they are supposedly on their way out the door.  I believe even in the latest boards there are still 2 IDE channels (Primary/Secondary) as well as at least 2 Serial ATA drives.  I believe the only problem you would encounter is that the SATA drive would have to be the root drive.

SATA is just faster than IDE with a different type of interface.  Your EIDE drives should work just fine, you will just have a cap of ATA133 (if your drives support that).

[Knightshade Dragon]

http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket939/a8v-d/overview.htm

That is the board I'm looking at, and it seems that it supports both, I just want to make sure I'm not gonna be the kid who gets the shiny new firetruck at Christmas only to find the damned thing didn't come with a ladder.

[jimmyorr99]

i think you should be ok, it looks like it will work agt seems to be right, from what i know...but he obviously knows more than me. they are different types of connections, but like he said if it is supported by the drivers in your system you can use any one.

[AgtFox]

On my new system I have one SATA drive and one IDE drive.  Didn't have a problem at all.  I heard early on there were problems with them working together, but obviously the newer BIOS drivers probably fixed whatever problem there was.

[Knightshade Dragon]

But you don't HAVE to have a SATA drive, correct?  I'm just too excited about replacing two 80 gig drives so early....

[AgtFox]

Correct, you don't have to have one.  The connection is just there if you want to use it.  Kind of like the AGP port.  If you want to use a PCI video card (yes, I know...impossible) you can, you don't have to use the AGP port.