IDE throughput needs help

[HarryBeanbag]

I am getting terrible performance with ALL of my IDE devices.
My WD 60GB drive is udma100 and i have checked that dma is enabled in device manager (DMA mode 5)and in the bios, but i am still getting bad performance and sandra benchmarks of around 66MB/s.
The strange thing is that the problem is not just my hd both my optical drives are slow.
I have a 56X afreey, and a 12X8X32X8 Ricoh cdr/dvd and both are getting around 8X through put with Nero cd speed.
I have also checked that all those settings are good, but i still cannot burn a disk a 12x without lots of buffer under runs.
I have tried switching all the drive placements, master/slave-pri/sec
Ihave installed the newest 4in1 drivers, downloaded yesterday 4.29v.

Ihave been told recently that the southbridge with this board (686b) is notorius for bad IDE perfomance.

The system is: Abit KT7A(KT133A chipset), 1.2 Tbird, 512pc133 Crucial, Enlight 300W Power, Winxp pro, bios 6.00GP

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[AZGamer]

Two things to check:

1. Using an ATA 100/66 cable?
If not, this would throttle your performance to the level of cable used.

2. Using the VIA PCI Latency patch?
If not, there may be some slightly diminished performance of any IDE drives. You can download it here .

If your problem is still not solved, make sure you have the most recent BIOS and drivers for everything. Also, run a drive fitness tst of some sort on your WD hard drive. Finally, run Windows Update, and make sure all critical updates and device drivers are loaded.

If none of these solve your issue, you may need to RMA your board.

 

[HarryBeanbag]

Latency patch huh?
Sounds like a winner to me. I think that will do the trick.
I have already checked my cables and thier ratings, but the rest of your advice sounds good,

Thanks GAMER

 

[AZGamer]

<< Latency patch huh? Sounds like a winner to me. I think that will do the trick. I have already checked my cables and thier ratings, but the rest of your advice sounds good, Thanks GAMER >>



Sarcasm? Hard to tell on the web.

The PCI latency patch changes the PCI latency issues, and improves IDE performance in certain VIA chipsets. You can read about it here.

 

[HarryBeanbag]

Sorry, that was not sarcasm, i have been pulling my hair out to fix this dam thing and am still hungover from new years, sorry for the confusion.

 

[Benedikt]

Tecchannel writes that this patch could be dangerous. Does anyone know more about this? I'm wondering how VIA is patching this, or if a new chipset stepping is necessary. Would be interesting too WHEN VIA releases a patch.

 

[HarryBeanbag]

Well the latency patch hasnt caused any problems in my system yet so I don't know about it being dangerous.
Although it didn't fix my throughput problem either.