HotRod Review

[Perce]

Having just read your review of the HotRod66 card by ABIT, I am extremely appalled. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif Your tried to test an ATA66 Controller Card, with HDDs that were not reflective of the latest ATA66 spec. Also, your information was not complete, you did not state the model of Seagate, I assume that it was an ST39140A 9GB Seagate? You compared this UDMA/33, 512K, 9.5 ms 7200 RPM drive to a WDC AC31300, 512K, 9.5ms ATA66 HDD. This is not a test of an ATA66 HDD controller http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif What you should have done was connected a 7200 RPM HDD with 2MB of cache(a true ATA66) and done this test to get results that show the performance of the card. Your conclusions showed that the slower(rpm HDD, WDC 31300) was faster, but your test was extremely sad in showing the performance of the HotRod card!!!! If you are going to test a product, please do so, don't do it half-way http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by Perce (edited 07-19-99).]

[Joel Kleppinger]

I think you misread my description of the testbed and test configurations. The Seagate drive was the boot drive in both tests (Master, Primary controller of the HotRod, ATA 33) and the WD was the test drive (Slave, Primary controller of the HotRod, ATA-33 in the ATA-33 tests, and ATA-66 for ATA-66 tests).

Please Read:
The Seagate drive was not tested AT ALL except for the fact that it was included in the system configuration of the testbed system. None of the benchmarks reported were run on the Seagate drive, but rather on the WD drive.

Perhaps what confused you was the fact that I used the 1st and 3rd Parition references. Note that those are the 1st and 3rd Partitions of the Western Digital drive.

I hope that clarifies it a bit.

Oh, and I would have connected a faster drive had I had one. I used what I had, plain and simple.

[This message has been edited by Joel Kleppinger (edited 07-19-99).]

[Perce]

What confused me was the fact that you took a good ATA66 card and ran tests that were not worthy of the Card at all http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif Sorry for the saracasim, but Anand's and Tom's ran testes similiar to yours months ago. Their conclusions laid claim to months of us PC Techs fighting the "slow ATA66" rumors. LOL If your purpose was to test an ATA66 controller, you should of used a 2MB, 9MS, 7200RPM HDD for comparison. This would have validated your testing of the card. I'd highly recommend redoing the Test with a good ATA66 HDD, then post review and that way you can say that you did a valid test http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif Sorry for the heavy critque, but I, and I assume other people, like good solid tests based on top performance that reflect the true status of the tested product http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif by the way you have a good site here, keeps us informed and helpful to others http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by Perce (edited 07-19-99).]

[MadMax]

Hey Joel, maybe you should just leave off the pretty graphs in your reviews. It seems that some folks have a hard time moving beyond the pretty pictures to actually read what you've written.....

jm2c http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[BBA]

I think people miss the purpose of the review.

First is that there are very few ATA 66 controllers out, other than Abit stand alones and motherboards. This means that a real controller comparison is not possible, but an informative review is great. Thats the way I saw it and I'm sure that when other devices become available, a direct per category comparison is possible.

Comparing it to a current ATA 33 drive/controller combo is relevant to most as we already have the current and want to know if its worth it to buy or hold off.

In that aspect, it was a good review.

BBA

[800XL]

Hmm, it may be just me, but comparing drives of differing cache sizes puts the weight of the test on the cache size and away from the controller.
Ultra ATA/66 hard drives are 100 percent backwards compatible with both Ultra ATA/33 and DMA, and with existing EIDE/IDE hard drives, CD-ROM drives and host systems. From Western Digital's website.
Personally, (previous aassupmtion a given) I would test the exact same drive at the same speed. Cache size should be completely removed from the equation of a controller test. I've done a little hardware testing in my time (~2500 hours) and that experience tells me that a performance comparison should be made on a level playing field. Apples to apples. The review I read here made that comparison, same drive to same drive at different speeds. Certainly, it was not the fastest ATA66 drive with the most cache available, but it was a drive not that uncommon in the real world. If I had a choice, I would rather read a review of a controller with a drive that I might possibly own rather than one that has barely hit the shelf. Of course if I had every choice, I'd read a review of the card with a wide array of drives from old 540MB PIO mode 2 to 10kRPM 30gig ATA66. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif