duron 700 @ 950; upgrade from P2 450; hard drive transfers slower

[SimeonArt]

Here is my setup:
Duron 700 @ 950
ABIT KT7
1 128MB PC100 Mushkin Cas2 (running at Cas3)
1 128MB PC100 Kingston ValueRam Cas3
IBM 75GXP 30G (Boot drive)
Maxtor 5400rpm 16G
CL GeForce 2
Turtle Beach Montego II
Toshiba DVD-ROM
Plextor 8-4-32

I was just wondering why my hard drive transfers or reads seem to be much slower in the Duron setup than with my old P2. Software installations are much slower too. I set up the BIOS according to APU's Hardware "KT7 BIOS Guide." Is there something else I should be doing or should this slow down be expected? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[BlueScreenVW]

1. If you are using Windows 2000, you should definitely download the beta VIA 4in1 4.26 drivers from VIAhardware. Otherwise your DMA 5 turns into PIO 2 or so... Also, when you install the VIA drivers, make sure you click the box "enable DMA".

2. If that doesn't work, make sure that the DMA mode is 5 for the IBM 75 GXP in the HPT 370 bios. But this is generally default/auto-sensed, so it should be correct.

3. Use the latest Abit KT7 RAID bios, and the corresponding HPT 370 driver. I use the uz103b1 bios with very good results (unofficial). Check out Abit KT7 faq for BIOS links. Stay away from the "wg" bios (with "wg" in name, that is), though: this appeared on an Abit beta site a few days ago and has already crashed a lot of ROM:s. But the very newest beta "wt" seems OK so far.

4. Remove the Maxtor from the cable and check the performance of the IBM with some benchmark program. I use Sisoft Sandra for quick testing (to see nothing is really wrong). My non-RAID setup (see signature) gives about 23500-24500 hdd benchmark points in the Sandra hdd test, as a reference.


Good luck!