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question about adding aother 512 of ram (for a total of 1 gig)

C

Corporate Thug

Lifer
will going from 512 to a GB of ram prevent my computer from slowing down when i burn cds/dvds? thats the only thing bothering me right now, its very hard to use the computer because if lag when a cd/dvd is burning...
 
I never see this on my system but I did get lag when exiting UT2003 before I went to 1GB of RAM. What software are you using to burn CDs?
 
When I burn CDs, my computer doesn't lag and I only have 256mb of ram. I am adding 512 on Christmas though. Of course when the CD takes about 2 minutes to burn, I usually just sit there and not do anything.
 
Check the Commit Charge Peak in Task Manager to see if it is even using more than Physical Memory. Even so, it shouldn't be "lagging" the PC unless there is a problem with the storage system and it cannot read from the HDD fast enough for both burning and normal file operations at the same time. Check the ROM drive, HDD and ATA Controller in Device Manager. Make sure the correct controller drivers are installed and DMA is enabled.
 
Well, you have a 52x writer- that's going to pull a fairly serious amount of data while burning, but if left alone, Windows should be fine if you have DMA turned on for the hard disk(s) and the CD drive(s). Are you burning lots of little files or few big files, is your drive defragmented etc?

These things can have a big impact on CD burning performance.

Oh, and Auric, I checked my Peak Commit Charge on a whim - 943496 Kb 😱 heh
 
I'm with Auric and DopeFiend in that I think it's because you don't have DMA enabled. I've seen the exact symptoms you mentioned when it wasn't. Enabling it clears things right up.
 
If it is not set to DMA and you set it to DMA and reboot and you're still getting a slowdown, check it again. I've seen windows get stuck on PIO mode, even if you set it to DMA it'll go back to PIO. The solution to this is to uninstall the controller from device manager and reboot and it should fix it. Keep in mind that this is ONLY if you set it to DMA and are still getting slowdowns and it shows PIO again when you check the settings.
 
it won't help.. the reason your computer is going slow is cause you are burning at high speed and it's saturating the PCI BUS... the hdd is working hard, and so is the CD drive/burner.

unless you run SCSI drives, i believe you will always notice some sort of slow downs.

if you want to be able to use your PC while burning, just burn at a slow speed if you have time to kill. should help.
 
Did you install your dvd burner to a fresh system? Or did you add it and not reinstall the os. Because I added mine after windows had been on my pc for a while and I got huge lag. But after I reinstalled I had no lag even when burning at 4x speed. Maybe do a fresh install of windows and then that will fix the problem. I only have 512 mbs of ram in mine... though a gig would be nicer for games and stuff.
 
You're problem isn't 512MB of RAM. Try a different burner program. Does your computer display the same behavior when you do HD to HD file transfers?
 
Originally posted by: CraigRT
it won't help.. the reason your computer is going slow is cause you are burning at high speed and it's saturating the PCI BUS... the hdd is working hard, and so is the CD drive/burner.

unless you run SCSI drives, i believe you will always notice some sort of slow downs.

if you want to be able to use your PC while burning, just burn at a slow speed if you have time to kill. should help.
Click to expand...

It's either the PCI bus thing, or, with my nForce2, it's just that it's relying on the hard drives a lot, and the burning software is probably operating in a High Priority mode - if it needs the CPU, it gets it before just about anything else.
I've got an nForce2 system with a DVD writer; as far as I know, the IDE controllers are separate from the PCI bus, however that doesn't mean that the system will work at full speed when burning. The system is going to devote its full resources to the burning operation, because if it fails, you've got a useless piece of media.
Ok, hopefully that was coherent...kind of been sick lately, and my mind is sort of like a hard drive in front of a degausser coil.
 
Gigs of info getting pulled out of a 7200 RPM HDD into a 2-8 MB buffer will slow any system down. Solid state hard drives are the future. Keep looking ahead 🙂
 
Indeed. You should be able to watch a movie from the HDD while burning and that's about as storage intensive as possible short of defragging. It will be interesting to learn what shady06 discovers but I am surprised by the other comments of supposed "lag". Describe exactly what is happening and what you are doing that causes it.

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I had not really given it much thought before as I have not noticed any problem but actually more intensive would be a large copying operation since it would be reading and writing at the maximum possible ability and presumably at secondary priority to the burning operation. I just performed a test by burning a movie at 48x while simultaneously playing a movie from HDD, copying another movie from one location on the HDD to another, and downloading yet another movie. The copying operation took longer than normal but there was no loss of framerate in the movie nor apparent reduced burning speed (such as a pause in burning from a buffer underrun).
 
Sorry CraigRT but you've got things completely backwards. IDE busses moved off PCI a few years ago, and are now typically seperately connected to southbridges or intel's ich. In fact I might be wrong, but I think this has been the case for every Intel chipset produced in the 8xx series. The interconnects like hypertransport or v-link among others that would "limit" ATA or SATA transfer rates on modern motherboards are probably an order or so wider than the fastest drives of today could hope to saturate. On the other hand the vast majority of SCSI devices are still connected through 33 Mhz 32 bit PCI slots, unless it's a server board which might have 64 bit 66Mhz slots, but that's certainly not the case here. I agree that it is probably a DMA issue that can usually be resolved by installing the latest drivers from the chipset maker (Intel calls their busmastering drivers the intel application accelerator, 4in1 for Via and so on). Even a 52X burner shouldn't stress an unfragmented drive made in the last 3 years enough to be noticeable and almost all cd burning programs cache the small files before burning.
 
i've tried a million diffrent programs, i mainly use nero. by lag i mean it takes a while to pop up IE when burning a cd, or nothing will type in word and then the whole sentence comes out, etc...

cpu usage is always under 5% when burning

edit: all devices are set as DMA
 
Originally posted by: shady06
i've tried a million diffrent programs, i mainly use nero. by lag i mean it takes a while to pop up IE when burning a cd, or nothing will type in word and then the whole sentence comes out, etc...

cpu usage is always under 5% when burning

edit: all devices are set as DMA
Click to expand...

Hmm, queer. I could understand a delay in a proggy opening if the HDD was very slow and heavily fragmented but not the delay in typing display thang. That does seem to point more towards a memory problem or priority conflict. And your system rig, if that's the problematic one, is rather marvy fab, as the kids say. Is the controller correctly shown as Intel 82801ER or somesuch rather than Standard? Is Write Cache enabled under Disk Drive Properties? Is DMA shown in Nero InfoTool Configuration too? Latest Nero version? Latest BIOS? Correct CMOS Setup? What is the memory bandwidth (CTIAW)?
 
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