sata problem

[chaotic_uk]

just reinstalled vista using the ahci mode for my sata II drive but it seems alot slower , when i used the ide mode it had a burst speed of 150mb/s but now only has a burst speed of 66mb/s . why is this

[Sihastru]

In device manager, in the Disk Drives section, click properties on your HDD then the policies tab, check "Optimize for performance bla bla bla...", "Enable write caching on the disk bla bla bla..." and/or "Enable advanced performance bla bla bla...".

[Morrison5891]

^^ what he said ...

[chaotic_uk]

already done that , but below is what i was told to do at the msi boards

Set it to IDE mode, as that's faster anyway

this is not correct is it ?

[crtecha]

Yeah AHCI maybe a tad faster but not that you will significantly notice. Does your board support legacy native sata? There is less compatiblility issues with that.

[chaotic_uk]

i dont think it does , but then again this mobo is crap tbh

[Mussels]

AHCI isnt slower than IDE mode.

You possibly mis-read teh results, burst mode is 150MB/s in SATA I, and 300MB/s in SATA-II. 66MB/s sounds about right for a sustained read on your drive.

[Icewind31]

Originally Posted by chaotic_uk

just reinstalled vista using the ahci mode for my sata II drive but it seems alot slower , when i used the ide mode it had a burst speed of 150mb/s but now only has a burst speed of 66mb/s . why is this

I've noticed that on my board that in AHCI mode.. my vista takes about 50-60secs to boot vs 20sec in IDE mode... also if you do the performance tests in Vista (I know I know ) I get a 5.9 w/ my raptor in IDE mode but in AHCI it's 5.6.

Not sure exactly what causes it, (I believe it's a driver thing, I have an AMD board) so until I figure it out, it's staying in IDE mode.

[Mussels]

AHCI slightly slows some drives in sequential read and write tests (basically, benchmark programs) but speeds things up in real-world random reads and writes. it re-orders the read requests so that your drive isnt spazzing out going back and forth between files, and gets it done in one big sequential order.

Basically you reduce the 'top' speed, to gain a higher 'worst case' speed.

[Icewind31]

another note I just remembered... it didn't do the slow down on the initial boots until I installed the AMD drivers... so I'm pretty sure it's just a driver thing.

[chaotic_uk]

so the below image looks about right ?

[Sihastru]

You must be doing something wrong, there's no way AHCI in Native Mode will be slower then IDE in Legacy Mode.

What's you PCI Latency Timer set to?
What drivers have you actually installed (what is your mobo)?

[chaotic_uk]

Originally Posted by Sihastru

You must be doing something wrong, there's no way AHCI in Native Mode will be slower then IDE in Legacy Mode.

What's you PCI Latency Timer set to?
What drivers have you actually installed (what is your mobo)?

not sure will have to check the latency , anyways my mobo :

http://global.msi.eu/index.php?func=...=&prod_no=1612

[chaotic_uk]

PCI Latency Timer set at 64 , whats the best to set it at ?

[Sihastru]

Originally Posted by chaotic_uk

PCI Latency Timer set at 64 , whats the best to set it at ?

for AMD systems thats perfect.
for Intel systems 32 is best.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by Sihastru

for AMD systems thats perfect.
for Intel systems 32 is best.

my mobo, and an antique 754 board here have a default of 8. off topic, but got a link to tests related to that?

The access times seem high in that test, but i dont know much about hitachi drives so it could be normal. Since your maximum rate is above your burst rate, i'd say somethings wrong, somewhere. (possibly with the benchmark)

[chaotic_uk]

here is the info for my hd which ht tune gives

[Mussels]

nothing wrong there. i think HD tune is just giving you a false burst rate reading. Try with HDtach instead.

[chaotic_uk]

Originally Posted by Mussels

nothing wrong there. i think HD tune is just giving you a false burst rate reading. Try with HDtach instead.

hdtach results

[Mussels]

that HDtach looks completely normal to me.

[Sihastru]

go to this page. Select your operating system, then Integrated/Motherboard then HD3300 then in the list that appears download the South Bridge Driver (SB750).

Install it, maybe you have the wrong driver, try again.

About the latency, just take my word for it, I played around with that setting. Choosing a smaller number will make the system seem more responsive, but data on the buses will be fragmented (for a HDD this means lower apparent bandwidth). Choosing a larger number will make the system seem less responsive, but the data buses will have less fragmented packets (and for a HDD this means higher apparent bandwidth).

This setting controls how fast data is released to be processed from the devices. It is in fact an IRQ queue. If the number is high then the legacy IO Controller Chip will have a longer queue (a device will have to wait for longer before his data is sent) and a smaller queue if the number is low (the device will send it's data sooner). This is why some sound cards will have clipping sound and why some TV Tuners will blank out or crash the system. Bus Mastering will work around this problem, but not all devices support bus mastering.

[chaotic_uk]

tried new drivers but made no difference , time for a new drive + mobo me thinks

[Sihastru]

Originally Posted by chaotic_uk

tried new drivers but made no difference , time for a new drive + mobo me thinks

me thinks you're overreacting... now that me sees the hdtach results me also thinks you might be affected by a placebo effect. You have a very good motherboard. And the results are very good for an older 160GB HDD (you can't expect 333GB density results).

me also thinks that you changed from XP to Vista...

[Polarman]

Tried AHCI here and there's really nothing worthwile to say about it. Native IDE is just as good.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by Polarman

Tried AHCI here and there's really nothing worthwile to say about it. Native IDE is just as good.

as has been said: it adds features, NOT performance.