ATA33 vs 100

John Cooper · Post by **John Cooper** » Tue Jun 12, 2001 8:28 am

hey folks,

i had to reinstall windows 98 the other day, and i'm now constantly getting all that crazy ASIO Overload stuff in Logic. time to go back and review all the tips & tricks for optimizing the PC for audio. one part of <a href="http://planetz.ghostwheel.com/phpBB/vie ... um=3">this post</a> which bothered me:

steven says "set your Audio drive to ATA 33 (a better setting for Audio)".

what's that all about?? i'm using an IBM 30gb ATA100 drive, and it took some effort to ensure that it was running ATA100.

why on earth would it be better to use ATA33?! i know these hard disks can't burst much more than 66mb/sec, so perhaps there's not much benefit from ATA100, but they certainly can burst data faster than 33mb/sec!

-john

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Tue Jun 12, 2001 9:33 am

Don't worry, I noticed no decrease in performance using an ATA100 drive, 80-pin cable and ATA100 motherboard interface.

Perhaps most important is that you enable DMA on your hard disk.

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Tue Jun 12, 2001 9:34 am

That is to say, you should be fine if the ATA100 controller is part of the chipset, and not an add-on after thought like ABIT's onboard HighPoint Controller or the Promise on some ASUS boards. Those CAN cause problems (particularly the HighPoint thingies) including random lockups, slower disk access, blue screens, and black screens.

However any 815 board's "stock" ATA100 is part of the chipset and should be solid, such as on your Intel i815EEAL.

John Cooper · Post by **John Cooper** » Wed Jun 13, 2001 8:26 am

another thing that steven said in that post is not to use the Intel Ultra/ATA storage drivers, which he describes as "evil".

can anyone back that up with some references? i'm inclined to use the intel driver since otherwise, i'm not convinced whether the IDE interface is running ATA100, or just in ATA66...

thanks
-john

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Wed Jun 13, 2001 8:40 am

I believe I said that the Intel driver was "evil." It might be only certain versions, but I noticed abnormally high CPU usage with the Intel driver, and it was fixed once I removed it (I don't remember specifically how I did that).

Doing a search for "intel ata" on the pulsar-scope list, I found <a href=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pulsar-sc ... 21776>this post</a> (with this <a href=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pulsar-sc ... 21818>this fix</a>) where someone (Gabriel actually) else experienced the same problem with the driver.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: subhuman on 2001-06-13 09:49 ]</font>

John Cooper · Post by **John Cooper** » Wed Jun 13, 2001 9:12 am

interesting, ok, thanks sub.

i guess i should run some cpu usage tests while doing disk access. know of any good disk/cpu usage benchmarking tools?

-john

Mo · Post by Mo » Wed Jun 13, 2001 3:57 pm

this won´t help you, but... :
i had this problem during the last weeks when i wanted to test logic

then suddenly it left... i did nothing else than starting windows, running the system monitor (to look what´s up with the system when in the situation in which these errors occur), starting pulsar, starting logic, playing a little with it, and then realized that the terror had gone... no idea why.
then i did happy sequencing with a plenty of audio tracks, instruments, and even two fat verb plugs (that´s a lot for my old pentium 400...

)
sorry, this might not be of much use for you, john, but i think computers are some kind of unpredictable... so keep your head up

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Mo on 2001-06-13 16:58 ]</font>

John Cooper · Post by **John Cooper** » Wed Jun 13, 2001 3:59 pm

yeah, computers are frustrating sometimes!!

-john

Guimmar · Post by **Guimmar** » Thu Jun 14, 2001 2:11 am

I am using HDtach to benchmark the HDs. Its simple and free for basic testing purposes. It also reveals the shortcoming of Intels Ultra ATA drivers VS the Microsoft ones, in terms of CPU usage

John Cooper · Post by **John Cooper** » Thu Jun 14, 2001 6:50 am

cool, i'll check it out. thanks Guimmar.

-john

Micha · Post by **Micha** » Thu Jun 14, 2001 7:04 am

made a new win98 lately(CUSL2-C): Intel chip drivers must be installed, the ATA caused trouble with my 2940UW-Controller. (-> format c:) Checking DMA is ok for me (only 1 ATA100) and I wait till gaps between releases slow down. My impression in looking at developers@intel is that things are getting interesting soon. (gaps: ATA now about 7 weeks, chipset only 3) If you can, wait another month.
But it looks not too bad.
Happy pulsaring from Micha

Zork · Post by **Zork** » Fri Jun 15, 2001 12:40 am

A while ago I read that de-installing those intel ATA drivers followed by re-installing them should fix the extra CPU load issue.
Tried that & actually noticed a decrease in cpu activity myself.

This was on a CUSL2-C. One thing I don't like about this board is the lack of 2 additional IDE controllers.
I'd prefer connecting each of my 2 IBM drives to be master on it's own controller for perfomance, instead as a master/slave pair on the same controller.

Have been thinking about buying the Abit SA6R mobo to get the additional ATA100 Raid controller. It's another i815EP chipset based mobo, anyone experiences with this board?

Zork

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Fri Jun 15, 2001 8:08 am

The reason that the ASUS (and any 815 board with "only 2" IDE connectors) is THE BEST choice, is for a few reasons which may not seem immediately obvious.

1. The IDE ports on the 815 boards (eg CUSL2, CUSL2C, etc) DO NOT travel through the PCI bus! This is the main advantage an 815 board offers over a BX board (besides official 133mhz FSB support and the ability to turn your USB on again).

By adding a PCI card or an onboard IDE controller, you'll effectively be negating this advangtage and hindering your PCI performance (= less audio tracks, less sampler stuff, less reverbs).

2. Onboard controllers, specifically the ABIT Highpoint stuff, have been nothing but problems and headaches for every machine I've seen with them installed. I'd say that out of the 5 machines or so I've built around ABIT/highpoint combos, every single one had random bluescreen /lockups /datacorruption / crashes, and they all magically got better once we stuck with the "stock" ATA33 interface (but unfortunately on most ABIT boards, you can't even disable the Highpoint even if you're not using it! So it sits there stealing an IRQ regardless). Even still, these machines will randomly lock up here and there. I never get this problem with the Abit BX6 or my ASUS boards. I've had this problem with the ABIT KA7-100, ABIT BE6, ABIT BP6, and ABIT KT-RAID which all include that @#*() highpoint junk.

3. The Highpoint requires a sort of "sub-BIOS" that adds another 5-30 seconds to your boot time, which I find obnoxious (I can boot into windowsME in under 10 seconds without it!)

So, although it might not seem like it, the lower number of IDE connectors is a blessing and will boost your performance