okay, i have a spare 16x dvd-rom that i would like to install onto my computer. the problem is that i've run out of ATA ports, and buying an ATA133 PCI card will cost me $40, which i am not very excited about. i do have an old ATA66 card lying around that i am considering using. so my question is: will i be able to attain maximum performance from my 16x dvd-rom using the ATA66 card, or will i need an ATA100 or ATA133 to realize the drive's max potential?? in case it matters, i plan on using this drive for ripping and playing DVDs and reserve my DVD-R solely for burning.

 

DVD's transfer speed is roughly ~1.32MB/s at 1x at MAX speed.
At 16x, that comes out to around ~21 MB/s MAX.
ATA66 can push, you guessed it, ~66MB/s.

Shouldn't be a problem, so long as your PCI bus isn't saturated with any high bandwidth devices.

 

well, my video card is agp, and ethernet adaptor is part of the motherbord, so i guess the only thing that i have on PCI is my audigy 2 card. so if it was you, would you just go ahead and use the ata66 or would you spend some money on an ata133 card??

 

Definitely no need for the 133 card. Go with the card you already have.

 

 

ata66 is plenty. Bandwidth isn't horribly important in CD/DVD drives, access time is much bigger. If you don't want to use PCI, you could get a USB2.0 enclosure for the drive.

 

thx people. i guess the ata66 card will be making a home in my puter...

 

oh, one more question: even though i install an ata66 card onto my computer, the main board's ata ports will still be running at 133, right?? i just installed the card, and boot up seems a little laggy so i was just curious.

 

ATA66 would probably be enough to run your hard drives too. The newest ATA hard drives can sequentially transfer around 40-60MB/s max.

The reason why your computer bootup is slower is because the new ATA card is taking additional time looking for devices connected to it.

What do you have connected to your motherboard's connectors?

 

well, i have 2 HD on my PRI_IDE, a CDR and DVDR on my SEC_IDE, an AGP 8x video card, 1 SATA HD, an audigy 2 PCI card, and an ultra66 PCI card connected to a DVD-ROM.

my network adaptor is part of the motherboard, and the following are connected via USB2: mouse/keyboard, PDA cradle, printer, gamepad, and card readers.

overall, the system is fine, although i've noticed that ever since i installed my SATA HD and began booting off of it, the systems been a bit less stable. i've been getting error messages and programs have been crashing a bit more frequently than before the upgrade. i just reflashed my motherboard BIOS yesterday, and installed more recent fasttrak drivers, so hopefully that will make an improvement. other than that, my winxp bootup "pauses" a couple time throughout the process, which did not happen before i installed the ultra66 card. i've tried downloading newer drivers for the card, but since the card is so old, there are no winxp drivers for that card.