Littlewhitedog has just completed a very comprehensive review of Promise"s Ultra133 TX2 controller and Maxtor"s D740X-6L hard drive. While these components may bring the ATA133 drive standard to your system, are they really needed?
Littlewhitedog ran a series of four different benchmarks on the Maxtor D740X (along with two other drives) using the Promise Ultra133 TX2 controller, and then ran them all again on a Promise ATA100 controller to see if there are any benefits to using this new standard.
Quote: "In the speed arena, the added bandwidth an ATA133 compatible controller can give you is unfortunately not a selling point at this time. This is not the fault of the controller though, even the ATA133 compatible Maxtor D740X (with it"s 2MB cache and 7200 RPM platters) cannot "push" the data fast enough to take full advantage of the large pipe it has at it"s disposal. If a RAID version of this card is ever released (very likely), a pair of Maxtor D740X"s would probably give the ATA133"s pipeline a run for its money - or at least have it "walking a little funny" the following day."