Controller Card Purchase Advice?

[opportunemoment]

I am pretty new to the scene and am looking for some advice.

I have a msi ms-6341 which supports upto Ultra DMA-100 IDE. I currently have a Promise ATA-66 card. I am wanting to upgrade to get the most out of my 1.4 TBird. Will the upgrade be noticeable and is it worth to upgrade? Also, which card would you recommend. thanks for your help.

-opportunemoment

[Rmcky]

opportunemoment, unless there's some reason why you don't want to use the ATA100 port on the motherboard, you don't need a controller card at all. Your motherboard is plenty capable of giving you all the performance you need. Additionally, if you plan to push that Bird, it may actually be a detriment, because most controller cards aren't known to take high PCI bus speeds very well. I'm assuming that your board may be better designed for the higher speeds since it runs a lot of stuff with them anyway. If you do decide you need one, IMHO you can't go wrong with Promise or even buy a new Maxtor drive and get a Promise/Maxtor ATA100 card free after rebate. HTH

Rick

[KennyPolo]

mm you dont really need a controller card :confused:

[opportunemoment]

My dilema is...I have 2 HD's, DVD,CD-R & zip...my board only supports up to 4 devices...is there any other way to do it?


-opportunemoment

[Rmcky]

That's what I was afraid of, you do need a controller card then, unless you want to upgrade your zip to a USB. Still, I would recommend the Maxtor/Promise Ultra 100 card. Wish I had known, just sold one today, but you can buy them new for around $35-50, depending upon where you buy them. You can even get one free, if you buy it and certain Maxtor harddrives, after a $50 rebate. You can find them on the for sale boards for around $25 or so. Another thing you might consider is doing away with your zip drive altogether and using the CDRW function of your burner to do those tasks. See, you've got a ton of options, so you shouldn't be too hard pressed to make a hasty decision. Hope this helps!:)

Rick