MSI K7T Pro2-A...No ATA-100 support in Win2000 :(

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tmac

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May 11, 2000
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Beat my brains out this weekend trying to figure out why my Deskstar GXP was performing so poorly and why I couldn't get DMA enabled for this ATA-100 drive. Seems that there is NO SUPPORT in Windows2000 for ATA-100 in the VIA 686B Southbridge. In fact the best you can do is UDMA-66 if you have an Intel chipset. Athlon owners and overclockers beware!! forget about getting optimal performance out of your HDD with this OS under Win2K.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q260/2/33.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0

http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/w2kata100.htm

I have installed all AGP patches and SP1 and without any benefit.

How do your Harddrives fare under Win98 and WinMe?
 
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w9design

Golden Member
Mar 1, 2000
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I just solved this problem on my setup today. It involves dropping it down to ATA/66 mode.... Which is still plenty fast.
Click Here
 
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rootaxs

Platinum Member
Oct 22, 2000
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I can't see why you say it's slower though considering that even at UDMA/66 no harddrive can reach the theoretical throughput much more at UDMA/100.
 
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fxsts

Golden Member
Oct 10, 1999
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The whole thing does not sound too good.

On the other hand, come on, tmac, you shold not be feeling the performance difference between ATA66 and ATA100. We all know that no IDE harddrives can go beyond ATA66 limitation as of yet.
 
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Davegod75

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2000
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how'd you notice it was performing poorly... Mine is working fine and i haven't done a thing to it. i'm getting @ 23000 in sandra's drive benchmark
 
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tmac

Member
May 11, 2000
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A little follow up in response to your questions and comments. I built this system for an acquaintance who wanted a stable computer for his office applications and only wanted to spend a limited amount. MSI mobo, Athlon 1.1Ghz,IDM 45GB GXP ATA-100, Mushkin Rev.2 CAS222 128MB RAM, Plextor 12X/10X/32X IDE CD-RW,Pioneer 16X DVD, use on board sound, Radeon 32 MB AGP Netgear FA311 NIC.
Noticed that I wasn't able to enable DMA on the primary IDE channel in Device Mgr yet I could do so for the optical drives on the secondary IDE channel. First benchmark that I used was 3D Mark 2000 v.1.1. Noticed that the framerates were slow and the program kept calling for "sips" off the HDD throughout the benchmark which was unusual in it's frequency. The default benchmark was abysmally slow (2700 3D marks). Next tried HD Tach v. 2.61. Performance in burst function was on the order of 2MB/sac...Like PIO mode 1...Hmmm.
Tried the registry hack suggested,but that did not help. Have not used a Sandra benchmark yet.Will do so tonight. I'm told I can fool Win2K into thinking it's an ATA-66 drive to boost performance so I will try that tonight. I'm aware that I cannot expect ATA-100 performance on any mobo right now, but I was surprised and frustrated by the lousy performance I was getting from this 'Hot-Rod' drive.
I welcome any and all help.Thanks to W9design.

tmac
 
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Davegod75

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2000
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i have the via bustmaster drivers installed which is supposed to enable ata-100 support ..maybe that'll do it for you
 
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tmac

Member
May 11, 2000
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Davegod75:

I have the same drivers. No joy. The bottom line seems to be that Win2000 does not recognize the 686B southbridge chip from VIA as an Ultra ATA device, as is. I am not aware if VIA is aware of this...Mobos with Intel chipsets initially had the same problem, but there is now a patch capable of recognizing the drive on these as ATA-66 ( even though the drive may be ATA-100). We need the same from VIA. BTW SP1 does not address this issue either. SP2, perhaps?......
 
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tmac

Member
May 11, 2000
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Hey Draco, Nice find. This looks like what I have been looking for. Now if it only works under Win2K...Strange that it's at Soltek's site and VIA's site has no mention of it. in fact there is precious little info. at that site.
Draco what OS are you using?
 
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Draco

Golden Member
Oct 10, 1999
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I'm just a 3rd party, I'm running Win2k right now, but I don't even have a VIA 686B board. I'm in the processes of upgrading my machine, and I have the IBM GXP (45gb). I plan to run Win2k with it, along side a MSI K7T-PRO2a... so I'll be in the same boat as you guys soon.

I figured I'd hunt around and see if I could find some drivers. Let me know if they work.

Cheers,
 
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BuckMaster

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
3,260
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I have 2 drives ATA33 and ATA66 drive running now. Were can I go in windows 2000 to see if there running at that? Also what program you guys using for benchmarks for Win 2000? The last I seen Sandra Soft wasnt supportded by 2000 I didnt think?

BTW good work Draco! Also it looks like I dont need to install the 4-1 drivers for my MSI K7T Pro2-A from the way it reads on that site since its already in Win 2000 OS? Im woundering If ill need to load anything off this MSI K7T Pro2-A CD? Anyone?

Thanks!
 
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Davegod75

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2000
5,320
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the cd is usually outdated when you get it. I never use anything off the cd. always search around for the newest drivers.
 
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Netopia

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,793
4
81
BuckMaster, right click on my computer and go to the hardware tab. Then click on the Device Manager button and scroll down to Hard Disk Controllers. Open that up and click on either the primary and/or the secondary and go to advanced. What I just wrote was by memory so the words may not be 100% accurate. You should see what the possibilities are and what the device is currently set at.

Hey.... just downloaded the driver and installed it on a machine with a KT7-Raid mobo and the IBM drive attatched to the regular ATA66 connectors went from 4.9 to 5.4 MB/s! Not a TON, but it did go up!

Now for my question... similar to BuckMaster's. Since I've got a stripe hooked up on the HTP370 controller and it has different properties under device manager.... 1)how do I determine what these drives are running at and 2)how could I change it if it's only running PIO? Perhaps use the IBM utility on them? This is an important one because I've put together a number of these mobo/drive combinations in the last couple weeks and a speed boost on all of them would be sweet. BTW.. for comparison, the stripe on the same machine listed above (also with IBM's) gets about 9.4MB/s which is not slow by any means... but I've I could add 10-30%...... :)

Joe
 
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Netopia

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,793
4
81
If it says that you're good to go. Originally mine said PIO and only after the driver did it switch to Ultra DMA.

Joe
 
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Netopia

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,793
4
81
Hmmm.... I just reread what I wrote late last night. Sorry... you're asking how you can tell SPECIFICALLY if your drive is running at ATA/33 and ATA/66, right? I was thinking you were just asking about how you could tell if they were running in any UDMA mode. My bad... and to make it worse, I DON'T KNOW! :eek:

Joe
 
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