[geeks] The ol' trusty G4...

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Tue, 2007-09-11 at 07:40 +0100, Mark wrote:

> Nate, I'm interested where you got your FirmTek card. I'm looking for  
> one for my B&W G3 (it uses standard 64-bit PCI slots, same as the  
> G4s, which I think the Firmtek works with?). I'm ideally looking for  
> a 1V4 64-bit card with internal headers. If I can find one I'm going  
> to use my old B&W (768MB RAM and a G4/500) as a NAS box as it's much  
> more power efficient than the current NAS server I have (P4/2.8).  
> Trouble is I can't find a UK vendor for the damn things *anywhere*.

The FirmTek card is probably a better card, but much the same benefits
are gotten from using SIIG cards, which are a good bit cheaper.  The
SIIG card is regular 32 bit PCI rather than 64 bit.  Using approximately
middle tracks on a SATA150 7200 RPM 80 gig drive, I get about 50-60 MB/s
on reads and writes.  I expect that if I was using a Raptor I'd be
getting better performance.  Or even if I was using a newer drive.  

In other words, go for a SIIG card unless you are going to
simultaneously use enough drives to saturate PCI.

BTW, I believe that Jonathan Patschke uses the same card I have in a
quicksilver and is happy with it.