slooooow ... could it be SATA controller?

[CrazeD]

My computer seems really sluggish, and I don't know why.

I have a frigin Raptor 10k rpm HDD, yet it's slooow. Sometimes it freezes and takes a while to open/close apps, copy small files, etc. Like every time I start Firefox it takes like 15 seconds to load...WTF?!

I have the Raptor as boot/OS, with a 200GB WD SATA as storage/crap.

Other specs:
AMD Athlon 3200+ @ stock
Abit UL8
2GB Corsair XMS DDR400
ATi X800 GTO 256mb

My games are also pretty sluggish too. I used to get 70 - 90FPS in BF2 all day long, now it's only 30 - 40. Older games like MOHAA lag too, I get low frames. I used to get 400 something now it's only 70 or so...

It all started when I made the Raptor my primary drive, I used to have an IDE drive as the primary. I'd hate to think the drive is defective...

Could it possibly be a crappy SATA controller? Could a crappy SATA controller even do this? The reason I ask is because this board isn't the best of quality, it was cheap and has a horrible chipset, so I'm hoping this is the problem - not my beloved Rappy.


Thanks.

 

[CrazeD]

Anyone?

 

[sPlAtOiD]

I've never had a bad SATA controller even though the Motherboard is Cheap there are only a few SATA controller makers out there. I would do a read test on your hard drive with SI Soft Sandra or some other program.