Kris, why so hostile? Since FW400 is limited to 400Mbs, and a 5400RPM drive will run 3Gbs, how will a 7200RMP offer more performance when the bottleneck is in the FW400 itself? In any system, one needs to look at where the bottleneck is, and iJohn's guess passed the common sense test with me. An SSD addressed through FW400 will perform no better. Definitely faster? You sure?
On Jan 24, 2:51 pm, Kris Tilford <ktilfo...@cox.net> wrote: > On Jan 23, 2011, at 9:51 AM, iJohn wrote: > > > That's a hard one to guess at. But my guess would be no, I don't think > > you'd see a gain. Or if there was one, it would not be as large as you > > hoped. > > What? Why are you "guessing"? These are measurable "facts". "Guessing" > about things isn't acceptable. Either you know some factual > information or factual reasoning about a topic, or you don't. In this > case, YOU DON'T, so you shouldn't have posted. > > > I suppose it's possible that a 7200 RPM drive would still appear to > > perform faster > > than an internal 4200 RPM, but I wouldn't count on it. > > A 7,200 RPM HD is DEFINITELY faster in a FW400 enclosure than either a > 5,400 RPM or 4,200 RPM. Have you ever even booted from Firewire on a > daily basis? Have you made measurements? Have you streamed video off a > Firewire enclosure? Obviously your experience is limited. > > > More to the point, I feel fairly confident that you would not really > > be able to tell the difference between a (recent) SATA 5400 versus > > 7200 when connected via Firewire 400. > > BASED UPON WHAT FACTS? In my experience MEASURING the difference in > speed, the difference is LARGE and EASY to "tell the difference > between". > > > In other words, if you're going > > to go with a Firewire 400 external drive I'd suggest going with a 5400 > > drive and save a few bucks. With the recent improvements in platter > > bit densities over the last year or two, the throughput of 5400 drives > > has increased noticeably. The difference between 5400 and 7200 is not > > as noticeable especially when you put that 400 Mbps cap on the drive > > throughput. > > It's the HD ITSELF that's the limiting factor here, NOT the Firewire > connection. Any gain you make to the HD will transfer directly, > arithmetically to the Mini's HD performance. > =================================================== > > On Jan 23, 2011, at 10:22 AM, John Carmonne wrote: > > > OK then let me ask is the internal drive Bus 167 speed going to be > > faster than the same drive connected to the FireWire 400? > > A 2.5" HD connected to the internal ATA bus is going to be slightly > faster than any HD connected via Firewire 400, but if the internal > 2.5" HD is the standard OEM 5,400 RPM and the external FW400 is a 3.5" > 7,200 RPM the difference will be minimalized substantially. The > fastest you can achieve will be a SSD connected to the internal ATA; > followed by a 7,200RPM 2.5" or 5,400RPM 2.5" connected to the internal > ATA; followed by a 7,200RPM 3.5" connected via Firewire 400, and then > any slower HDs connected via FW400. > > > And does that relate to overall performance of my G4 PPC Mac Mini > > 1.25? > > The best thing you can do to your 1.25GHz Mini for performance is to > overclock it to 1.42GHz. It's a simple overclock IF you can see well, > the resistors are TINY. I never soldered mine, they were too small for > my soldering ability. Instead, to remove one I cut the solder with an > exacto knife (any tiny sharp knife or razor blade might work?), and to > add one I used conductive circuit paint using a toothpick. It's a free > 15% speed gain with no downside unless you screw-up and botch the job. > > As Newertech and several other companies noticed, there isn't much > downside to booting a PPC Mini from a 3.5" 7,200RPM HD instead of the > 2.5" 5,400 RPM OEM drive, and the proliferation of MiniStack > enclosures is a testament to that concept. I've been using my Mini as > a media-center computer and I'm trying to squeeze every last bit of > performance from it, so I boot from a small internal 2.5" 7,200 RPM > drive and use a 1 TB Apple Time Capsule for media storage, but this > isn't much better than booting from a MiniStack or any good Firewire > enclosure with a modern 3.5" HD. Note, there is NO difference in speed > between a 3.5" ATA133/150 HD and a 3.5" SATA HD inside a FW400 > enclosure. If an SATA HD & enclosure are cheaper, that's the best > deal, but if you have an older ATA 7,200 RPM HD & enclosure it should > be identical in performance. There are some Firewire 400 enclosures > with poor performance chipsets, but these are rare in more modern > enclosures. Definitely avoid anything by GeneSys Logic which will NOT > work. Oxford is best, and anything by a HD manufacturer is good. > > The 1.25 Mini is going to be a little bit too slow to play modern HD > video smoothly, the bottleneck isn't the HD, it's the Radeon 9200 > video which unfortunately can't be upgraded at all, and severely > limits these older PPC Minis. I suspect slower G4 PowerMacs with > better video cards can outperform these G4 Minis. About the only thing > you can do to get better video card performance is limit the > resolution to something smaller. Unfortunately on my HDTV the only > proportional resolution available is the highest resolution 1,920x1080 > which kills the video performance and renders HD quality video to a > stuttering mess. Any lower resolution would increase performance, but > in my case, such isn't possible. Tiger 10.4 is about 15-20% faster on > the G4 Mini than Leopard 10.5; but they offer DIFFERENT sets of > resolution/refresh rates, so that's something to consider also if > you're using the Mini with a HDTV as a display. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
