Which is better IDEFix Express or Powerflyer?

[tjaoz]

IDE-Fix Express is comparable in speed with the PowerFlyer Junior. Both were reviewed in Amiga Format. You can read this review here. PowerFlyer Junior is a 16-bit version of the A1200 PowerFlyer (aka FastATA 1200) controller. 32-bit version is about twice faster in the same config.

[tjaoz]

@humppa

Using an Apollo 1240/40 I nearly achieved 5 MB/s.

In the same config with FastATA instead of IDE-Fix Express you should have about 10MB/s. Here is a page with the FastATA 1200 test results.

[tjaoz]

@humppa

The Sysinfo drive benchmark is buggy anyway and you can't use it for comparison.
DiskSpeed 4.2 results (at the bottom) are more realistic.

No. The Sysinfo drive benchmarks are not buggy.

It looks that you do not understand what is tested by different benchmark programs:

1. Sysinfo and DriveSpeed measure disk raw speed. These programs are the best to test how fast the IDE controller transfers raw data from the hard drive.

2. DiskSpeed measures the speed of reading and writing data from/to the file. DiskSpeed results highly depend on the file system which is installed on your hard drive.

You cannot compare apples to oranges. I mean you cannot compare Sysinfo IDE-Fix Express results with DiskSpeed FastATA results, or to compare the results from systems equipped with the different turbo cards.

The Idefix Express is less of a hassle to fit, especially when using a Mediator.

I have FastATA under the Mediator board and I did not have any problem with installation.

[tjaoz]

@humppa

They are not reliable. When I had the Idefix Express connected, my Seagate drive always reported something around 5MB/s, the values kept on changing each time I measured, everything ok there. The other drive (Quantum) always reported exactly the same value of about 7.8MB/s (!): A value that is not realistic for the device. Further, it is very unlikely that the raw speed always exactly stays at the same byte without any fluctuation.

Even making simple tests requires some level of skills.  :roll:

If you want to obtain reliable results from programs like SysInfo or DriveSpeed you should perform tests when your system works without any patches. The good habit is to boot a computer from a clean OS partition for any tests. Before starting a benchmark program, start Setpatch and the driver for the controller (ATA3.driver in case of FastATA and IdeFix in case of IDE-Fix Express) only.

The speed-test in Sysinfo is a nice add-on, but I would always prefer dedicated programs which measure more than just raw speed.

In the end we are interested in real-life performance, not something like those buggy values I got from Sysinfo.

We are talking here about performance offered by two pieces of hardware: FastATA 1200 and IDE-Fix Express, not about how slow your computer is "in real-life performance" due to improper or not optimum configuration of your software. To compare performance of the hard drive controllers you should use test programs which test raw speed, not programs (like DiskSpeed) whose results heavily depend on the filesystem (OFS, FFS, SFS, PFS3) installed on the hard drive.

Congrats. But you started comparing an Apollo clocked at 44.4Mhz with SysInfo benchmark to a number given by me for an undefined program and a clock speed of 40Mhz. So who actually compared apples to oranges?

This is not true. Please read once again what I wrote. You wrote that using an Apollo 1240/40 with IDE-Fix Express you achieved nearly 5 MB/s, and I answered that in the same config with FastATA instead of IDE-Fix Express you should have about 10 MB/s. I had Apollo 1240/40 (not overclocked) and my hard drives achieved about 10 MB/s.

It is obvious that performance of FastATA is twice better than the IDE-Fix Express performance. It results from differences in their design.

Speed of any fast IDE controller used in Amiga 1200 is limited by the design of the A1200 turbo card. The FastATA 1200 controller accesses a hard drive at the maximum speed with which the particular A1200 turbo card can read/write data to/from A1200 motherboard. IDE-Fix Express cannot operate faster than 1/2 of this speed. It is because the FastATA 1200 is connected via the 32-bit data bus, and IDE-Fix Express is connected via the 16-bit data bus only. So in each transfer from/to the turbo card the FastATA receives/sends twice more data than IDE-Fix Express. Period.

[tjaoz]

@CLS2086

The big point is that some people lost their systems with FastATA, some Mobo burnt, some hdd lost their data due to a bad quartz (changing the original quartz for a good 33 1/3 or 32 Mhz sightly improve the reliability)..

You have to make up another fairy tale... FastATA 1200 has no quartz at all.

Find something else. :-) Here is the photo of the controller.

[tjaoz]

@Xanxi

Indeed, i often heard about compatibility issues with Powerflyer

Here where I live, in Poland, FastATA is very popular. Most of Amiga 1200 users who I know have fitted their machines with these controllers. I have never heard of any compatibility problems. I used to have FastATA 1200 since 1998, no problems at all.

On our old computers, stability is better than a minor increase of speed

300% is a minor increase for you?

for a major increase of trouble.

Symptomatic that problems are quoted by those who do not have this controller :-)

Why don't you try it yourself instead of parroting gosspis?