I'm soon to get a hand-me-down 733 MHz 2001 Quicksilver G4 and I'd like
to put a big fast disk on it. The original issue hard drive is a 40-Gig
5400 rpm ATA66 device; I'd like to supplement it with a 7200 ATA133
talking via an Acard PCI interface. Does this make sense?

Checking the spec sheet on the G4 it has a 133 MHz system bus, but the
PCI slots are supposedly 33 MHz. Does that mean there's a 33 MHz
bottleneck at the slots and that having faster devices downstream is a
waste?

If so, I'm confused. The G5 has 133 Mhz PCI-X, but 133 MHz PCI ATA
interface cards have been around for quite a while. Does that mean that
nobody hanging a disk off a PCI controller could, until the G5, achieve
the 133 Mhz throughput?

Or am I completely out to lunch over what the PCI bus is and how it
works?

In article <gerard-35A87F.19525603092003[at]orngca-news02.socal.rr.com>,
Gerard Fryer <gerard[at]hawaii.edu> wrote:

> I'm soon to get a hand-me-down 733 MHz 2001 Quicksilver G4 and I'd like
> to put a big fast disk on it. The original issue hard drive is a 40-Gig
> 5400 rpm ATA66 device; I'd like to supplement it with a 7200 ATA133
> talking via an Acard PCI interface. Does this make sense?
>
> Checking the spec sheet on the G4 it has a 133 MHz system bus, but the
> PCI slots are supposedly 33 MHz. Does that mean there's a 33 MHz
> bottleneck at the slots and that having faster devices downstream is a
> waste?
>
> If so, I'm confused. The G5 has 133 Mhz PCI-X, but 133 MHz PCI ATA
> interface cards have been around for quite a while. Does that mean that
> nobody hanging a disk off a PCI controller could, until the G5, achieve
> the 133 Mhz throughput?
>
> Or am I completely out to lunch over what the PCI bus is and how it
> works?

I think I've figured out my own confusion: megahertz and megabytes/sec
may have the same dimensions but they are not the same thing. ATA133 is
133MB/s not MHz. Doh!

Ok, back to the original question (to which I now suspect the answer is
"Yes"): can I get a higher transfer rate to an ATA133 device talking
through a 33MHz PCI, than from an ATA66 device with its controller
sitting right on the 133MHz system bus?