Performance transferring from onboard Promise IDE to Via IDE ?

[flexy]

hi,

i have 2 VIA IDE ports, IDE1 and IDE2. And i have two additional
Promise IDE Ports IDE3 and IDE4. I can put master drives each on any
of the four ports.

Question:

If i put my HD on the Promise IDE3 and a burner on the VIA IDE1 - do i
get the same performane as if i would put a burner on VIA IDE2 and the HD
on VIA IDE1 ? (ie. both drives on the VIA)

Is there any performance loss transferring data from the (onboard) Promise IDE to the VIA IDE ?


---
Config:
Soyo Dragon +, Maxtor DX640 in UDMA5 (on IDE3), Lite-On LTR52246S
burner on IDE1. [The plain HD performance/CPU usage [acc. HDTach] on the Promise
port for my HD is about the same as on the VIA port.
Question is whether some performance is lost on the way from the VIA IDE to the Promise and vice versa ]

greetings

 

[MasterHoss]

I've seen some tests about this very topic. In general, there was no difference with the IDE channels controlled by the VIA Southbridge when compared to IDE channels compared to the onboard Promise controller.

You'll encounter no performance loss transferring between the Promise controlled IDE channels and VIA controlled IDE channels.

 

[Lord Evermore]

The performance will be essentially the same. The Promise controller does run on the PCI bus, whereas the VIA controller is directly accessed by the southbridge, however with only a single hard drive the PCU bus usage won't be too heavy. There is a slight latency penalty I'm sure from having to switch between controllers and cross the PCI bus, but it's essentially unnoticeable.

Using the VIA controller though means you can disable the Promise controller, freeing up an IRQ as well as removing the extra drivers for the Promise chip.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
The performance will be essentially the same. The Promise controller does run on the PCI bus, whereas the VIA controller is directly accessed by the southbridge, however with only a single hard drive the PCU bus usage won't be too heavy. There is a slight latency penalty I'm sure from having to switch between controllers and cross the PCI bus, but it's essentially unnoticeable.

Using the VIA controller though means you can disable the Promise controller, freeing up an IRQ as well as removing the extra drivers for the Promise chip.

Thanks for all that replies !

Actually, i just enbaled my promise chip because i got a burner and i wanted all three drives (HD, Burner, CD) as master...if i disable the Promise then i have to put one as slave which i wanted to avoid. Better each drive a master on it's own port 🙂

greets

 

[Lord Evermore]

You'd probably never notice a difference with one of them as a slave. Put the two optical drives on one channel, neither of them is so fast as to have a problem with the other drive using the bus.