Look at the hard drive you'll have. For example, my drive (IBM 10krpm
Ultra160 w/ 4MB cache) specs out at about 30MB/s sustained data rate.
ATA-33 can handle that rate, but it won't handle copying between two
drives at that rate, let alone any RAID improvement.

ATA-100 should only really help over ATA-66 if you have two very
fast drives on one controller and they use their caches. The caches
can operate at the full bus speed.

As for RDRAM, go check out tomshardware.com and that Apu page.
Basically, what others have said is true: If you will be doing
memory-intensive applications, or will be, or will eventually
sell this box to someone who will, then it just might be worthwhile...
or not.

Also, most RDRAM machines come with the cheaper and slower PC600
RDRAM versus the faster and MUCH more expensive PC800. (To go from
PC600 to PC800 on an IBM w/128MB RAM adds $400!)

And Tom, I know I could be starting a religious war here, but I
just built a pretty fast machine, and I'm not at all sure I'd do
it again. You can get really very good machines from vendors (I
think at least IBM and Dell sell machines with no hard drive,
for example), but you do have to monitor their choices of
components.

OTOH, I would feel very comfortable building a machine that's not
on the bleeding edge.

Chris

> From: "Thomas T. Veldhouse" <veldy at veldy.net>
> To: <tclug-list at lists.real-time.com>
> Subject: Re: [TCLUG] RDRAM or no RDRAM
> Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 08:17:30 -0600
> Reply-To: tclug-list at lists.real-time.com
>
> Well, if ATA-66 compared with ATA-33 is any indication - that should be
a
> wonderful improvement.  However, you will notice very little with RDRAM
and
> it is a hell of a lot more expensive to upgrade RDRAM memory than SDRAM
> memory.  To be honest, if you are looking to make a new high end
purchase
> soon you should wait for the DDR boards to come out.
>
> Also, if you have the inclination to build your own box, I can't stress
> enough the benefits of building your own PC versus buying a factory
> assembled one.  I have been burned twice now on factory made PC's.  Once
> from Packard Bell (P100) and once from Compaq (Athlon 600).  I have
totally
> rebuilt the latter PC - only thing original is the hard drive, CPU and
> mouse.
>
> Tom Veldhouse
> veldy at veldy.net
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Bresnahan" <mbresnahan1 at mmm.com>
> To: <tclug-list at mn-linux.org>
> Sent: Monday, December 11, 2000 4:45 PM
> Subject: [TCLUG] RDRAM or no RDRAM
>
>
> > Dell will sell me a Dimension 4100 with 133Mhz SDRAM and a ATA-66 hard
> > drive for $2178.  For $400 more, they will sell me a Dimension XPS B
> > with RDRAM and a ATA-100 hard drive.  Can you tell me what the extra
> > $400 buys me?  How much better is RDRAM over SDRAM and ATA-100 over
> > ATA-66?
> >
> > Both desktops come with a 1GZ PIII processor but the motherboard is
> > unspecified.
> >
> > Mike Bresnahan