UDMA/66 Performance Problem

[cptnjim]

I have been running benchmarks on several new systems my department has received for some of our clients. When running benchmarks for hard drive speed on these new machines they bench with about 4 MBytes Per second throughput on a Ultra DMA 66 Drive with Ultra Dma 66 onboard controller and Ultra DMA/66 Cable. One of my coworkers just purchased a new machine and his hard drive with ultra dma 66 benches many times faster. I have yet to find a system we have received in the office that has good dma/66 performance. This is true even between differant brands of systems (I have benchmarked systems from SAG Electronics and Systemax) both don't perform well at all for dma/66. The SAG system has an IBM DMA/66 Hard Drive and a Intel 820 Chipset motherboard if this helps any. Let me know what you think.



[This message has been edited by cptnjim (edited 03-17-2000).]

[This message has been edited by cptnjim (edited 03-17-2000).]

[Spencer]

I would like to know also, because that's about what I get (approx. 4MB/sec). I think the real speed is the transfer rate from the HD buffers. Cache disk speed which should be close to 66MB/sec. I have a WD Expert 10.2 HD.

[cptnjim]

I just found the answer to my problem, in windows 98 in the hard drive properties in the control panels system device manager the DMA checkbox is not checked by default and seems to be left that way by a lot of system manufacurers. Anyone with similar problems try checking the dma box for any UDMA/66 Drives and you should get much better performance.

[broadkipa]

If you have the Intel ATA66 driver installed then you shouldn't have a DMA checkbox to tick.I built a computer around the new Intel 820 chipset and to get my drives working in ATA66 mode I had to download the ATA66 driver from Intels web site. The file you need is intelata_enu this driver is now at version 5.1 and was updated by Intel a month ago.When you install this driver you also get a diagnostic utilty which is usfull for checking your drive configs.It even tells you what cabel you have conected to your drives,40 pin or ATA66 80 pin. Just go to Intel.com and then support.

[gyuri]

Caution: 820i chipset mbo .The Intel 5.1 Ultra ATA driver is not good. [acknowledge by Intel Tech support on their forum they did duplicated teh problem a nd they working on it to release soon a new driver ,so do not install it ,i didnt and have no problems, with it install yo ul have a scanregw error each time yo uinstall new hardware or software on the PC.

[cptnjim]

Thanks for the info, unfortunetly I found that out the hard way, I installed the Intel driver and on reboot received a windows protection error and that was it. Fortunetly I was able to boot into safe mode and uninstall the driver and fix the problem.

[broadkipa]

I'm sorry you had trouble with the Intel ATA66 driver. I installed ver.5 not 5.1 and had no problems at all. I had not heard of the problem with ver 5.1 or else I would I would have warned you against it. Have you fixed your hard drive problem yet.

[paulande]

I have an Ultra ata66 controller card as my MB only goes at DMA33. Using norton's benchmarking utility I get 63Mb/sec when using the logical method,but when I use the physical method I only get about 2Mb/sec. Why? I know It's a stupid question. I'm no sysopt, I'd call myself a Power User wanna be.

[TonyMan]

I use both Norton and Wintune98 for checking my drive out. I have an FIC 503A and I see the difference between this & my old 503+ which only supported UDMA33. However, if I check the DMA box my performance drops. Unchecked I get about 3.8 meg(Wintune) and when checked it drops to about 2.6. I am using the Windows 98 drivers, not the VIA buss mastering.

Just curious about why the performance would drop with DMA checked.

[broadkipa]

I don't know why but when I installed the Intel ATA66 driver the DMA checkbox dissapeared from my Hard drive page in device manager.It may be that using ATA66 dosn't use the same settings as UDMA33. That may be why you get a perfomance drop when you check the DMA box.