High CPU usage with SATA Drive

[Makaveli]

I just went from an 80GB PATA hard drive to a 120GB SATA drive.

So far the 120GB drive does seem abit quicker, but I believe that is because of the platter setup nothing else.
What I am concerned about however is the Cpu usage is alot higher with this drive compared to my other drive.


Cpu usage with HD tach is 30% with WD 120GB SATA

Where as my PATA 80Gb was in the 10-12% range.

Is this normal For SATA drives?

 

[MDE]

What SATA controller and motherboard, what brand drive?

 

[DarkSarkas]

I would suggest, if you're using your motherboard's SATA, do a bios flash up to the newest version, and update drivers for it.

In fact, no matter what the sitaution, I would bet that drivers are the reason for it being so high, though I have heard that some drives take up just a little more system resources than others.

Good luck!

 

[mechBgon]

Cpu usage with HD tach is 0

Where as my PATA 80Gb was in the 10-12% range.

Is that a typo? <--- me

 

[Makaveli]

sorry forgot to post my specs

Asus A7n8x Deluxe using Onboard Serial ATA
MB bios version 1.004
haven't tried the newest one yet going to do that now.





My Specs

 

[MDE]

I get 33% usage on my Raptor (Abit NF7-S, same SATA controller) and 28% on my IDE drive running on the onboard Nvidia controller, yours looks fine.

 

[mechBgon]

It could simply be that the data is coming through that much faster, too. I recall putting a Dell's Hitachi 7200rpm IDE drive into my work system to do an antivirus scan, and CPU usage was mostly floating around 25% because that's all the faster the drive could cough up the data With my SCSI drives, CPU usage was typically floating in the 70% area during an antivirus scan, because the drives are better able to keep the CPU fed.

 

[Slammy1]

Having followed HD benches due to recurring HD problems on my P4P800=D, I'd say you're seeing a benching artifact. There really aren't any good benches for HD performance. I've seen CPU usage in the range you've stated, and on other benches they performed exceptionally. Something else to consider, are there any tsr's running when you bench? And again, don't put too much concern in a single benchmark. They're all so succeptable to other influence that you cannot draw definite conclusion, especially from that stat. With HDTach I would only be concerned if you were noticing spikes in drive performance compared to others. Have you tried AIDA32 to confirm your findings? They pretty much test the same thing, and I think AIDA is better (though longer). Also see if benches that test Windows transfer rates (like Sandra or the ever popular and highly accurate PCMark02) are in the expected range.

PS I was being sarcastic about PCMark but it is somewhat useful.

 

[Makaveli]

I updated my bios to the newest one which updated my Serial Ata bois, % dropped alittle but not much. I guess the Serial ata interface just stresses the cpu more than the PATA one. other than that everything works fine, and from all the benchmarks I've tried
this 120GB SATA drive is faster than my 80GB PATA one.