Mountain Biking - standard or compact drive

what do you reckon is better, compact or standard drive? or does it depend on what i want to use it for? If i get compact cranks, compact chainrings, what kind of cassette do i need, can i just use an ordinary one, such as the shimano XT 9 speed cassette, or do i need to find a special compact cassette to go alongside the rings and crank?

I went for standard, because I largely ride on road. I can't think that the rear cassette matters too much other than giving you the ratios you want, but there are more knowlegeable people on this site than me ;)

Richard

i think one gives you more lower gears and the other more higher gears but im not sure. Also i get low/ high gears confused, i can never remember whether low is easier or harder to pedal.

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Originally posted by martin
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WTF is that? I understand why u did that, but DONT!

Micro-drives were invented by Suntour to give the same ratio as standard (older) MTB cranks, but using less metal.
The smaller rings are used with smaller cogs to give a transmission system which is lighter and has greater ground clearance.
The dissadvatange is increased friction and rate of wear , increased stress on the teeth, leading to chipping.
Microdrives often use a 9 tooth cog, but professional cog engineers I have spoken to (on bike rides) consider 10 the safe minimum.

You should choose yourt gear ratios according to your own needs (strenth/terrain etc). Measure them in gear inches for comparison:
(no of chainring teeth/no of cog teeth) X wheel diameter (in inches ie 26)

so for XC what do you reckon would be more suitable, im kinda leaning towards compact, but i dont want to find out that standard is better for XC than compact. Or is it just more down to personal taste rather than say standard for road, compact for XC.

I strongly favor 110-74mm BCD drive over compact, because of the chain, cog, and ring wear issues mentioned earlier. Over the years, a compact drive will cost significantly more to operate. For those who care about how their gear ratios interleave from chainring to chainring, the larger cogs and rings provide better arithmetic selection than the smaller ones.