Re: ASUS P4C800 Deluxe & SATA-2 drives?

In article <GJ_yf.14752$sq.3522@trnddc01>, "M. B."
<REMOVETHESPAMmystic02@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I have just "upgraded" from a Maxtor DiamondPlus 9 (120 Gig / Model:
> 6y120m0) SATA-150 drive to the Western Digital Caviar SE15 SATA-2 Drive. In
> case you are not familiar with these drives, here are links to the data
> sheets/specs for them:
>
>
http://maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/diamondmax_plus_9_data_sheet.pdf
>
> http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=133
>
> 1) I am using an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard, and the new drive is
> connected directly to the SATA-150 slot. Even though this new drive
> supports SATA-2 (up to 300 mb/s Burst Speed), my current motherboard does
> not. However, I was a bit surprised that by using HD Tach 3.0.1.0 (full
> version) and running it using "Quick Bench" that my scores from the old
> drive (Maxtor) to this one hardly improved. I thought that the difference
> in the 16mb Cache (vs 8mb on the Maxtor) would make some more difference.
> In any case, here is what I got:
>
> Maxtor Model 6y120m0:
> ---------------------------
> Burst speed: 97 mb/s
> Random access: 13.6 ms
> Avg read: 43.8 mb/s
>
> Western Digital Caviar SE15:
> ---------------------------------
> Burst speed: 130 mb/s
> Random access: 13.4 ms
> Avg read: 52.9 mb/s
>
> Do the above scores seem to appear normal? If I get an external SATA-2
> controller and plug it into the motherboard, should I expect further gains
> in the score on the new WD Caviar?
>
> 2) In my motherboard BIOS, under the IDE drive confirguration, I current
> have the "32bit data transfer" turned OFF for the WD Caviar drive. Should I
> turn it ON?
>
> I look forward to hearing back from the "experts" with some comments.

If HDTach uses a test transfer size larger than the cache, the burst
speed will be a blend of the true burst speed and the sustained
transfer rate. The fact that the number increased, means you are
doing better than before.

A separate controller isn't going to help you, because the PCI bus
will limit your performance. You might get 110-120MB/sec on the
PCI bus under normal conditions. The reason you were able to get
130MB/sec, out of a possible score of 150MB/sec on your SATA1
motherboard controller, is the SATA interface is connected
directly to the hub bus (North-South bus). The hub bus can transfer
266MB/sec, as long as no other Southbridge peripherals are using
the bandwidth at the time. (The 875 has a second hub bus, the
CSI, which is also rated at 266MB/sec, and that is connected to
a gigabit ethernet chip on the P4C800-E. On your board, I guess
that is not connected to anything.)

So, your choices would be to use the Southbridge, and be
limited by the 150MB/sec max cable rate (and have the luxury
of the hub bus 266MB/sec transfer rate, so no bottleneck).
Or, you could plug a SATA2 controller card, with a theoretical
max cable rate of 300MB/sec, but be bus limited by the PCI bus
to perhaps 110-120MB/sec. For your motherboard, I think you are
doing the best you can with your current configuration.

To be able to use an add-in card, and get something faster than
a 33MHz 32 bit PCI bus, you'll need a "workstation" motherboard
or a "server" motherboard, with higher performance slot(s) on it.
The upcoming 975 based workstation board, would be an example.

>From the list here, a P4GD1 or a P4GPL-X are PCI Express
motherboards, that accept S478 processors and DDR memory.
You would need to change video cards, to use this motherboard.
The motherboard is not available in all markets (which is why
you might not see them listed on usa.asus.com). The PCI Express
x1 card slots would make room for a SATA2 PCI Express x1 card
(assuming one even exists yet), and leave room for a theoretical
max of 250MB/sec burst. (I am not recommending these boards,
just pointing out the least cost incremental upgrade path.)

http://www.asus.com/products2.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1

You could also use a PCI video card, or a Matrox PCI Express x1
video card, on a PCI Express motherboard. That would leave the
PCI Express x16 video card slot, as a possible place to plug a
higher performance storage card. In that case, the bus is no
longer a performance issue. On some of the Athlon64 SLI boards,
the Areca PCI Express x8 RAID controller has been tested in a
PCI Express video card slot, and it works.

The "32bit data transfer" has nothing to do with your current
problem, and should be left off. Roger explains the OS side
of things here and why it doesn't matter.

http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus/browse_frm/thread/d08b2a0453c258d5/b30814168a1e4a42

Paul
.

Loading