Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

Hi all,

I have the above mobo with a Maxtor 160GB SATA HD and a PATA DVD Burner.
When I benchmark the file system, it seems I only get 33MB sustained speed
on this HD.

I have checked on the internet, and some people recommend I place my single
SATA drive on the Silicon raid controller and enable RAID mode even with
just one drive. My question is: have I read these instructions wrong or
will this work and my transfer speed pick up a bit??

Thanks in advance.

PS. I am a bit gutted as I just upgraded to this board from an AN7. On the
AN7 with a PATA133 drive I benched 45MB sustained transfer. Does anyone
know why the IC7 board only comes with an ATA100 controller?

Joe

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

"Joe Harrison" wrote in message ...
> I have the above mobo with a Maxtor 160GB SATA HD and a
>PATA DVD Burner. When I benchmark the file system, it seems
> I only get 33MB sustained speed on this HD.

That's pretty poor. Are you sure all the drivers are installed and the drive
is working to its full potential?

> I have checked on the internet, and some people recommend I place
> my single SATA drive on the Silicon raid controller

There's no reason why you'd want to do that. The Intel controller is a
better option than the SI one.

> and enable RAID mode even with just one drive.

Now that you *might* want to try, but do it on the Intel controller by
enabling RAID mode in the integrated peripherals section of the BIOS.

> My question is: have I read these instructions wrong or
> will this work and my transfer speed pick up a bit??

Your transfer speed should really be a bit faster than that, even with the
system set up as it is, so I wonder whether there's something wrong with the
drive. Is this Maxtor a 7200rpm device?

> On the AN7 with a PATA133 drive I benched 45MB sustained transfer.

What make and model of drive was this? Presumably another Maxtor if it was
ATA133.

> Does anyone know why the IC7 board only comes with an
> ATA100 controller?

It's because ATA100 is the highest officially ratified parallel ATA
interface standard. ATA133 is an "unofficial" standard and thus Intel (and
all the HD manufacturers bar Maxtor/Quantum) refused to support it.

In any case, the lack of an ATA133 controller does not, as you appear to be
thinking, slow this motherboard's HD subsystem down. The interface speed
makes no difference at all to the real-world sequential read/write
performance of the drive. If you got 45MB/sec sequential benchmarks from a
specific drive on the AN7, you should be able to get the *same* figures from
the same drive when connected to your IC7, provided everything is working as
it should.
--


Richard Hopkins
Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
(replace .nospam with .com in reply address)

The UK's leading technology reseller www.dabs.com
Get the most out of your digital photos www.dabsxpose.com

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

should be even better on the Intel ICH5R controller in raid mode since that
controller doesn't share the PCI bus for bandwidth.

--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

ftp://geerynet.d2g.com
ftp://68.98.180.8 Abit Mirror <----- Cable modem IP
This IP is dynamic so it *could* change!...
over 130,000 FTP users served!
^^^^^^^




"Joe Harrison" <joe.harrison@fightthespam.woodlington.com> wrote in message
news:l_Qec.17$ua.13@newsr2.u-net.net...
> Hi all,
>
> I have the above mobo with a Maxtor 160GB SATA HD and a PATA DVD Burner.
> When I benchmark the file system, it seems I only get 33MB sustained speed
> on this HD.
>
> I have checked on the internet, and some people recommend I place my
single
> SATA drive on the Silicon raid controller and enable RAID mode even with
> just one drive. My question is: have I read these instructions wrong or
> will this work and my transfer speed pick up a bit??
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> PS. I am a bit gutted as I just upgraded to this board from an AN7. On
the
> AN7 with a PATA133 drive I benched 45MB sustained transfer. Does anyone
> know why the IC7 board only comes with an ATA100 controller?
>
> Joe
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

"Joe Harrison" wrote in message...
> Tell me about it - most gutted with my "upgrade" board!

There's nothing wrong with the board's design. The only question at the
minute are whether your benchmarks are faulty, or whether there's something
dragging the drive's performance down.

> Retested drive in another machine okay,

Did you try exactly the same benchmark as on the IC7 system?

> and the board drivers seem to be okay as XP was able
> to identify and install drivers for the AGP/chipset and NIC.

If you haven't already done so you should define the Intel ATA controller in
RAID mode in the BIOS, and make sure it's enumerated in the SCSI and RAID
controllers section of Device Manager.

> That's also what I would have thought, but I checked my Abit AN7
> board that I upgraded from and it has two ATA133 controllers.

Yeah. Like I said before, some manufacturers added ATA133 support to their
controllers, others didn't. However, don't get into thinking that your other
board is somehow "faster" because it has an ATA133 controller on it. As
stated previously, whether the interface speed is ATA100 or 133 makes no
difference at all to the real-world performance of the drive.

It's no great secret that the fastest parallel ATA drives you can get are
built by companies who only support the ATA100 interface, which just goes to
show that this particular aspect of the drive's design has little effect on
performance.
--


Richard Hopkins
Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
(replace .nospam with .com in reply address)

The UK's leading technology reseller www.dabs.com
Get the most out of your digital photos www.dabsxpose.com

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

"Richard Hopkins" <richh@dsl.popex.co.uk> wrote in message
news:407d2ef4$0$6541$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...

> Did you try exactly the same benchmark as on the IC7 system?
>

Yes.


> If you haven't already done so you should define the Intel ATA controller
in
> RAID mode in the BIOS, and make sure it's enumerated in the SCSI and RAID
> controllers section of Device Manager.
>

Check - have an Intel SATA RAID controller available.

> Yeah. Like I said before, some manufacturers added ATA133 support to their
> controllers, others didn't. However, don't get into thinking that your
other
> board is somehow "faster" because it has an ATA133 controller on it. As
> stated previously, whether the interface speed is ATA100 or 133 makes no
> difference at all to the real-world performance of the drive.
>

Fair enough. The Intel controller now has UDMA-6 listed as max transfer
mode, but SiSandra says the drive is still operating at UDMA-5. Wonder if
this RAID trick only works if I have two drives. However, I just want UDMA6
enabled on this single drive, rather than shell out and have to re-install
on a Raid 0 config.

> It's no great secret that the fastest parallel ATA drives you can get are
> built by companies who only support the ATA100 interface, which just goes
to
> show that this particular aspect of the drive's design has little effect
on
> performance.
> --
>

I agree - same principle as Radeon using older fabs, less pipelines than
Nvidia but still whupping Nvidia ;-). However, still doesn't explain why
this drive runs much faster in my old AN7 board.

Oh well - back to the drawing board.

Cheers.
Joe.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

Okay - all sorted. My BIOS settings have been correct and working all
along, as were the SATA drivers installed in XP.

Luckily I have now discovered that by installing my PATA Maxtor 8MB Cache HD
and booting XP from it on the ATA100 controller, I still get around ~45MB on
the primary PATA. Again, benchmarking the SATA drive as just another
storage drive I still get ~33MB, but this is no big deal as it was my OS
boot disk I was concerned about.

So in summary standard ATA100 or ATA133 controller seems to make bugger all
difference to the benchmark speed of my standard PATA drive, but the SATA
controller is just a bit slow on this board. Can't even be bothered to RMA
this as I am happy that I have got to the bottom of this.

Thanks to everyone for their advice!

Cheers.
Joe.