Does anyone know for a fact that NCQ works now, with the lastest NF4 drivers

[shira]

I realize from reading the "New Nforce 4 Drivers Release" thread that enabling NCQ is no longer breaking anything. But has anyone been able to tell if NCQ is actually occurring on their NCQ-capable HDs? And by the way, how WOULD you be able to tell?

 

[Sqube]

What motherboard do you have? It's not like there's just one set of drivers for all NF4-equipped mobos.

 

[PascalT]

My Windows says it is enabled. Check your 2nd nvidia IDE driver in Device Manager.

 

[shira]

Originally posted by: Sqube
What motherboard do you have? It's not like there's just one set of drivers for all NF4-equipped mobos.

I don't have an NF4 MB yet. I'm waiting for a couple of new products (Antec P180 case, Venice CPUs), and also for the kinks to get wrung out of the DFI NF4 boards and for the bios and drivers to mature.

With respect to drivers, I thought there was just one set of Nvidia drivers for all NF4 MBs, the latest being 6.39. Presumably, that set of drivers corrected, among other issues, the problem with data corruption of NCQ HDs when NCQ was enabled. Hence my post.

And even if Windows Device Manager says that NCQ is enabled and you have an NCQ-capable HD, how do you know that the HD is actually USING NCQ? Is there some test you can perform which will let you know?

 

[PascalT]

Well i dont think there's a test for it. but if Windows says it's enabled it likely is.. but i could be wrong.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

You can download a few benchmark programs and compare the results with NCQ enabled and disabled.

 

[shira]

Originally posted by: ChineseDemocracyGNR
You can download a few benchmark programs and compare the results with NCQ enabled and disabled.

Yeah. What we need is a good benchmark whose results are highly sensitive to NCQ.

 

[waiting godot]

I read in a German PC magazine that the old Winbench99 2.0 should do the job.

In the same magazine I read (in another articel) that you shouldn't install the Nvidia IDE drivers because of certain bugs. But without them, how do I enable NCQ?

Godot

 

[PascalT]

I installed them and have had no problems.. i dont think you can enable NCQ without them AFAIK.

note that NCQ gives little boost, depending on the drive you're using. From what i've seen it's either equal, a bit slower, or a bit faster compared to non-ncq.