The most budget friendly set-up.

[kenji]

Hello there. I am on a very tight budget but I have to buy new hardwares for my MDD FW800. Primary usage will be iMovie projects, iDVD, and video encoding (DiVX). I know I need big hardrive space here. The Mac already have a stock 7200 RPM 180 GB PATA drive in it. Basically, its enough for iMovie project since an hour of DV raw file takes about 13 GB of space. However, I want to separate drive for video capture. I want to go SATA but I need to buy a SATA controller card also. ( By the way, I have a spare Sonnet ATA-133 PCI card)I also want to buy a PC Radeon 9800 for flashing. I want to replace the stock Radeon 9000. I can't buy all the hardwares at the same time. So what is the best budget friendly set-up?

1. Buy a PATA drive and use the Sonnet ATA-133 card, then buy the Radeon 9800?
2. Buy a SATA controller card, SATA drive and another PATA to SATA converter card for the on-board PATA drive then forget the Radeon 9800 for a while?

By the way, I don't play games in the Mac.

Thank you.

[aquamac]

Hi Kenji,

As you don't play games, I think I would be tempted to get a sonnet controller card and a sata drive. At a later date you can replace your current hard drive. I have tried a number of controller cards in the MDD, some have annoying issues, but the one that is fool proof is this one:

www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_serial_ata.html

If you get 2 Sata drives eventually, you can stripe them in a raid configuration and see some real speed benefits! This is the setup I have and believe me the speed increases of disk write times are excellent.

If you are interested in replacing the graphics card at a later date, then that would be beneficial too. You don't say which card you have currently?

[kenji]

Thanks for the info aquamac. Its really nice to get advice from the experts ;D. The Sonnet SATA card you've mentioned is available here. Its a good thing you mentioned about trying different SATA cards in your MDD, at least I know I'm taking advice from a person who actually tested different cards. Cool! I will go Sonnet SATA As for the videocard, I'm still using the stock Radeon 9000.
Thanks again.

Update: I just ordered the Sonnet SATA card for $87 (converted from YEN) including postage. It will arrive in the next couple of days. ;D

[aquamac]

Sounds like a fair deal if it also includes delivery.