Performance difference noticed

jlanka

Splendid
Mar 16, 2001
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0
22,780
Just slapped together a system for a friend yesterday, but used his old drive (Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 30G ATA/66 7200RPM). Used a Gigabyte GA-7VXRP KT333 with a 1700+.

I've assembled a fair number of RAID boards in the past few months and always use a pair of ATA/100 IBM drives in RAID 0 config. This time I had to put the drive on IDE1 (non-RAID of course).

Bottom line: Even though it should be a jet, it seemed like a turtle with that single slower drive on it. I checked all performance paramters in the BIOS and everything was set right. Process activation was the worst part. Once things wre running they were acceptable.

I told the guy that if he's disappointed in the performance to just give me another $200 and I'll re do it with the RAID array.

I just didn't think it would be THAT noticeable. Live and learn, I guess.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>
 
It may be the mobo drivers, or additional 3rd party bus mastering drivers bunging up the works. Likely?

DMA enabled?

Alone on the IDE channel?

It should still be fairly fast. In RAID 0 configs, there is no option for DMA. In single IDE configs there is. I found this can (in certain set-ups) make a huge difference.

<b><font color=blue>~ Whew! Finished...Now all I need is a Cyrix badge ~ </font color=blue> :wink: </b>