SCSI vs. SATA - Which is Faster?

[grego]

This topic just came up in a thread and some people seem to be a bit stuck in the past on it. The findings in this article are, well, pleasing. At least, I was happy to know I can get the same (often faster) peformance as SCSI with a much cheaper Raptor...and thats not even putting two in raid!

http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=19

 

[Chankama]

Well, which "interface" is faster?. It really depends. There are multiple SATA interfaces available (150/300/600 MB/s) and there are multiple SCSI interfaces available. A quick scan of wikipedia tables indicate that the best SCSI interface speed is higher than that of the SATA equivivalent. But, the interface means jack shit if the HDD sitting on the other side sucks.

So your question should be posed in 2 parts: interface type AND hard drive type.

EDIT: when I said 600 MB/s are available, I really meant WILL be available . As far as I know the highest SATA in the market right now is 300 MB/s interface.

 

[horndude]

Well, there's another issue too, overhead, for example IDE causes CPU overhead, not alot but it can be readily seen with any program that montors the system, so under load conditions when your running apps at the same time you start moving files around SCSI will usually have an edge because it does its own control of the drive(s) taking that duty from having to be handled by the mobo.To a small extent SATA is the same way, I prefer to think of SATA as kind of a SCSI/IDE hybrid,I think you'd find all else being closely matched or equal, under really high load conditions, the SCSI would win,but only under really high loads, and that article bears that out.

Bang for the buck wise, SCSI loses badly these days, has for quite some time.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

SCSI is a crapload faster if you have a good SCSI drive.

 

[ShoobieRat]

Sure, first generation hybrid SATA's are only half as fast as SCSI...but despite speed, they have all the advantages. Not to mention that SATA-II will be blowing away SCSI hands-down...again with all the added advantages.

 

[Elbatrop1]

Although the SCSI interface is faster than the SATA interface, the speed is really limited to the access time of the hard drive.

If you have a 10000 rpm SCSI and a 10000rpm SATA drive, they will perform the same, because the actual drive itself is the bottleneck, not the interface.

SCSI is really utilized to its full potential when you have a bunch of drives chained together, because that is when the interfaces bandwitdth is actually getting filled.