Hi all. Hoping there is someone on the list that knows
win2k. I am quite proficient with win98, but I am not
familiar with win2k AT ALL, so please keep that in mind. :)
A few days ago I installed it on a new hard drive and wanted
to test some things to be sure they are operating at peak
performance. The hard drive is about the fastest IDE drive
made, an IBM 20gb 60GXP series...ATA 100, 7200rpm, 2mb
buffer, and the highest areal density currently on the
market. (PIII 800e, 256mb CAS2 PC133)
I ran the diagnostics and benchmarking program "SiSoft
Sandra" some of are familiar with it, but you don't need to
be to see the problem. I ran a benchmark of the hard drive,
and it was a LOT lower than the HD on win98. For reference
purposes, all you need to really know or see is that the
difference in the rating was big. On win98, the "drive
index" was over 15,000. On win2k, it was only 8300! The
access time is quite good, buffered read and write times as
you can see are very high, at over 1200Mb/sec, but it
suffers tremendously with sequential read and random read
performance. (These should be several times higher which
evidently is what is bringing the rating down). This was
with "windows disk cache on" in the program's options, it
was even lower with 'bypass windows disk cache' checked.
http://orpheuscomputing.com/test.gif
It also gave a warning of:
"Warning W1204 - This device seems slow. While this does not
hamper the bus speed directly transactions with this device
will take longer and thus reducing the overall efficiency."
The program also said:
"PCI Latency set too high" which is 248 clocks.
"Fix: You cannot fix this - but keep it in mind when buying
your next device."
"Latency Timer - specifies the maximum length of a bus
transfer in cycles set-up for this device. Higher numbers
means this device can use more of the bus bandwidth but this
can slow-down other devices. You can set modify this value
from the BIOS, higher numbers (up to a point) are better.
The range is between 32-255."
Now just where does one change this setting? It is not in
my motherboard's BIOS. It is important to note that the
mobo is a Soyo SY-6BA+IV, quite a nice mobo...440BX chipset,
bus speeds to 155mhz, adjustable voltage, loaded and it has
the latest BIOS revision for the board. Something unusual
about this board is that it has FOUR IDE connectors, for a
total of EIGHT IDE devices. TWO of the IDE connectors are
ATA/UDMA 66 and oddly enough are considered SCSI devices
because these ports are controlled by the HighPoint
Technologies HPT 366 bios chip. This bios also has the very
latest revision. In the win2k device manager, the HD (as it
should) is listed as a SCSI device under 'disk drives', and,
in the 'disk properties' tab, the box 'write cache enabled'
is not only unchecked, but grayed out and cannot be checked.
How can this box be enabled? I'm sure this too is affecting
performance. I could not find any area like this in the
registry. I could not even tell you how I am "logged in" or
what "permissions" are set for my use. There is
administrative areas I can get to, so I assume I have win2k
set for 'administrative access', but there are 3 'user
profiles' listed on the PC under 'documents and settings'
and I only set up one that I was aware of when I installed
it. That one is my name, the other is 'all users' and then
'default user'. Can these other two folders be safely
deleted, are they needed? Should I, do I, need to add an
'admin' folder there and set that up to have that box
enabled? In the DM under 'controllers', the IDE/ATA
connector areas are all set for "Use DMA if available" and
they ARE using DMA, BUT, I am not sure if this area is
inclusive also of the "SCSI type" IDE ATA 66 controller due
to the odd scsi bios for the ATA 66 connectors.
There's more (OTHER areas), but I think I better post that
in another email. :-)
Thanks for any info,
-Clint
God Bless Us All
http://orpheuscomputing.com
Clint Hamilton, Owner
============= PCWorks Mailing List =================
Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines &
make sure you've followed proper posting procedures,
http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm
Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com
=====================================================
