Best IDE motherboard performance? (Is intel top?)

[Ghamu]

I currently have a Via kt266a (Fic an11 stealth running XP with NTFS, 1700 XP, mildly overlocked), and having been a lot of problems, either in the form of windows explorer locking up, or crashing in error messages. The problems usually occurs when accessing my hard drives with lots of small files on them (60K files in a directory on unusual). I've noticed that using the file intense HD's on the on the onboard raid channels ampliefies the problem. Besides locking up, the HD access is EASILY the biggest bottleneck in my system, access times are loooong.

1) My question is does Via really have a noticeable problem with IDE hard drives? Will intel be better? Could I even go with SIS for better perforance?
2) Right now I'm so fed up I am willing to totally jump ship and get a P4 solution. Which of the 1.6a overclock ready boards will give me the best, most stable system and IDE performance?
3) Does NTSF really suck or is it just me, especially when I access folders with LARGE amounts of small files.

My Hard drives are as follows, all NTFS unless noted:
1) WD 100GB (2mg cache): boot and windows drive, split into a FAT boot, and a 25 and 75 virtual drives
2) WD 120GB (2mg): Mostly large video files, not much problems.
3) Seagate 'cuda IV 80GB: using the raid channel, lots of small files, LOTS of problems accessing drives with lots of small files.

4) WD 120 GB (8mg) not yet installed
5,6) recently 'de-comissioned' 40 GB hard drives, soon to be sold to help pay pay for new P4 system?

-Commen problem with all drives, transfer of files b/w drives slow, hit or miss if a large # or amount is attempted to transfer.

 

[mechBgon]

What brand and model of power supply are you using? All that seeking could be causing instability simply because you have a surge in electrical demand, if you're skating by with a power supply that's marginal in either power output or power regulation.

NTFS is slower, but relatively robust compared to FAT32. One thing you might look into is adjusting the latency of the PCI bus. I've heard that scooting it up to 64 may help things. Also, take a look at VIA's site and see if you need any patches: http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=66

 

[Ghamu]

Using a enermax 350 power supply.... will look into latencey on PCI bus, I assume thats in the BIOS startup, on that note, does increasing the FSB help or not? Right now its around 140, relativley mild, I used to take my KT133a to over 160 without any problems, but with FAT not NTFS. All drivers up to date as of 2 months ago.

 

[mechBgon]

The PCI latency adjustment is in the BIOS (hopefully your board's BIOS allows adjustment). If it does allow adjustment, the boards I've worked with require that I hold the minus key (-) to adjust it down until it goes backwards past 0 to 255, and on down to 64.

The 140FSB shouldn't do any harm, that's only 5% over... and your PSU is nice quality... so I don't know what to say except you might try that RAID Patch at VIA's site, and try the PCI latency adjustment. Hope it works out for you!

Keep in mind that Intel's latest chipsets have some PCI bugs of their own, which limit total throughput to 90Mb/sec. Props go to jaeger66 for this: ftp://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/specupdt/29824705.pdf and look at page 12, #5.

5. Sustained PCI Bandwidth

Problem: During a memory read multiple operation, a PCI master will read more than one complete cache
line from memory. In this situation, the MCH pre-fetches information from memory in order to
provide optimal performance. However, the MCH cannot provide information to the PCI master
fast enough. Therefore, the Intel® 82801BA terminates the read cycle early to free up the PCI bus
for other PCI masters to claim.

Implication: The early termination limits the maximum bandwidth to ~90 MB/s.

Workaround: None

Status: There are no plans to fix this erratum.

I guess I should be fair and mention that this problem affects the Intel ICH2, which is not used on all Intel P4 boards. It's used with i845 (aka i845D in DDR boards), i850 and i850e chipsets.

 

[Ghamu]

...kinda sad, wanted a excuse to get P4 I have few things running on my system right now, I'll try those patches and the latency adjustment in a few hours. For some reason I thought Via's cheapsets gave crappy HD performance (read that in a article a few months back). Anyways, will report in few hours if your adjustments help, thanks!

 

[VSEKH]

You didn't mention how much memory you have in your system. If you don't have enough memory in your system, this can cause access to the hard drive for virtual memory. Also, make sure your C:\ drive is not fragmented a lot. If so, try running disk defragmenter.

 

[oldfart]

Best IDE motherboard performance? (Is intel top?)

Yes, it is pretty well known that they are. The IAA drivers speed them up even more. Without a doubt, better than VIA or SiS. I run just one WD1200JB on an 845 board running NTFS. I don't have any of the slow downs you speek of, but your system is quite a bit different than mine. You dont have file compression turned on by any chance do you?. BTW, My God you have a lot of HD storage there!!