Poor RAID performance

[flood]

Heres my system:

Abit KT7-RAID
Athlon 600
Plextor 12/10/32
256mb pc133
geforece 2 mx 32mb
guillemot maxisound fortissimo
netgear network card
matrox millenium (dual monitor setup)
2x IBM 15gb 7200 rpm RAID 0

In sisoft sandra, I get 25k, whereas I've seen people getting 40k or so.
I'm pretty sure I have DMA enabled, but I cant see where I set it in device manager for the high point controller

 

[Pederv]

Hmmm, your right I am getting about 40K or so. There is no DMA setting for the RAID contoller. Do you have a card in PCI#5? If so that may be why your benchmark is low.

 

[flood]

which one is PCI#5?
th etop one or the bottom one?

 

[Pederv]

Down by the ISA slot. The one right next to the ISA slot is PCI#6.

 

[LuNoTiCK]

Mine is bad also I get 21K. My drives are also detected as scsi, but I heard that doesnt matter, o, well. And I spent a lot on my comp
T-bird 1ghz @ 1.125
512mb infineon
2x ibm deskstar 45gb raid 0
tdk 12/10/32
radeon 64mb ddr
intel pro 100+ nic
I could use the help also.

 

[Pederv]

I took on the attitude that my system doesn't share the IRQ's for my IDE controllers(IRQ 14 and IRQ 15) why should I let it share the IRQ for my RAID controller? After all that's where my IDE devices are. That's why I left PCI#5 empty.

 

[flood]

got it!
my agp video card is sharing irq 11 with the raid controller. Interestingly, my pci video card doesnt list any irq's being used.
Device manager wont let me change the irq of my video card... :-/

 

[flood]

oh yeah
im running win2k

 

[flood]

^
?

 

[Pederv]

Running win2k does make a difference. Most people trying to get the most control of thier systems resources disable ACPI in 2k. This allows them to have more control over where IRQ's are assigned. But something else to take a look at is right after the RAID controller bios initializes a list of where the bios is assigning IRQ's is displayed on the screen. With win98 I've found that the most stable configuration is achieved when the list that is shown by the BIOS matches how win98 is assigning IRQ's. Check the list that the BIOS generates and see if the RAID contoller is sharing an IRQ with anything.
An example of how much of an influence this can have:
Neither of my cdroms(pioneer-DVD/plextor-12/10/32A) would work in DMA. The bios list of IRQ's and windows list of IRQ's agreed except for my SBLive, the bios was assigning IRQ5-windows IRQ11. When I changed IRQ5 to legacy ISA(so the bios wouldn't assign it), the bios assigned IRQ9 to the SBLive and so did windows. So both the bios and windows are assigning IRQ's the same and now both my cdroms will run in DMA.

 

[flood]

ok, took a card out of my PCI5 slot
now the scores are at 35k
how do i disable acpi?

 

[Pederv]

This is how Hifimaster told someone else how to do it:
"The reason these are sharing irqs is because acpi is enabled,if you want to disable it:

Open device manager (right click my computer,go to propeties,hardware,device manager),open the computer tab (first one down),Double click on "Advanced configuration and power interface" (to get to proporties)click the drive tab,and go down to "update driver",once you get there choose "next",then "display a list of known drivers for this device so that I can choose a specific driver" click next,then show all hardware for this device class,then you will see a list of drivers, you want:
Manufacturer=standard computer Models=standard pc
Install this driver (it will say it wont work but it will) Reboot after you install this (it will ask you to reboot).

When you restart it will load all your devices again,you may need to track down certain files and drivers using the "find files or folders" tool ,once it reloads all your drivers you will reboot and then everything will be ok. "

I can't try it and see if it works because my 2K machine is for work and I can't risk altering it.