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From: GSV Three Minds in a Can on 15 Jan 2008 21:07
According to HDTACH (3.0) my SATA hard drive can only manage a burst
speed of 7MB/s running the standard M$ IDE drivers. Not surprisingly the
sequential access speed also shows as 7MB/s across the whole disk. 8<.

Running the nVidia nvata.sys ones it comes in as I'd expect - ~125MB/s
burst, 70->40 MB/s sequential. However the nVidia ones seem to have an
unfortunate ability to go t1t$-up with a blue screen crash whenever I
stress them (e.g. defrag) .. at least the ones in the last-issued ASUS
driver pack for this board do (and that was ~18+ month ago iirc).

Has anyone found a stable nvata.sys setup? Or are the benchmarks just
lying to me, and the M$ ones are fine (I must admit the machine does
FEEL more sluggish with the Microsoft drivers running though).

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
10,414 Km walked. 2,032 Km PROWs surveyed. 36.9% complete.
From: RobV on 16 Jan 2008 02:21
GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
> According to HDTACH (3.0) my SATA hard drive can only manage a burst
> speed of 7MB/s running the standard M$ IDE drivers. Not surprisingly
> the sequential access speed also shows as 7MB/s across the whole
> disk. 8<.
> Running the nVidia nvata.sys ones it comes in as I'd expect - ~125MB/s
> burst, 70->40 MB/s sequential. However the nVidia ones seem to have an
> unfortunate ability to go t1t$-up with a blue screen crash whenever I
> stress them (e.g. defrag) .. at least the ones in the last-issued ASUS
> driver pack for this board do (and that was ~18+ month ago iirc).
>
> Has anyone found a stable nvata.sys setup? Or are the benchmarks just
> lying to me, and the M$ ones are fine (I must admit the machine does
> FEEL more sluggish with the Microsoft drivers running though).

I have a system built on the Asus P5B-Plus MB, Intel chipset P965. I
didn't install the Intel Raid, or SATA drivers during XP install, so XP
installed its own standard IDE drivers. They work great on my 320 GB
SATA drive and two 300 GB WD drives (PATA). Using HD Tach 3.0, the SATA
has a burst speed of 215 MB/s, 64 MB/s average read and low CPU usage
and low latency (about 12ms).

I'm not sure how the nVidia drivers are, but they should be similar. It
may be the Microsoft IDE drivers are better than the nVidia. Try
reinstalling the IDE drivers for the MB you have and see if it helps.
Be sure the SATA drive doesn't have a jumper to limit speed to SATA1
specs. Many do, and removing the jumper will allow the SATA II speeds.

Also go into device Control and make sure each drive is running in DMA
Mode; usually 5. If it says PIO Mode, select other, then select the
highest DMA mode it allows.

Good luck!
Rob


From: GSV Three Minds in a Can on 17 Jan 2008 09:04
Bitstring <478db04a$0$6507$4c368faf(a)roadrunner.com>, from the wonderful
person RobV <robv(a)nowhere.invalid> said
>GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
>> According to HDTACH (3.0) my SATA hard drive can only manage a burst
>> speed of 7MB/s running the standard M$ IDE drivers. Not surprisingly
>> the sequential access speed also shows as 7MB/s across the whole
>> disk. 8<.
>> Running the nVidia nvata.sys ones it comes in as I'd expect - ~125MB/s
>> burst, 70->40 MB/s sequential. However the nVidia ones seem to have an
>> unfortunate ability to go t1t$-up with a blue screen crash whenever I
>> stress them (e.g. defrag) .. at least the ones in the last-issued ASUS
>> driver pack for this board do (and that was ~18+ month ago iirc).
>>
>> Has anyone found a stable nvata.sys setup? Or are the benchmarks just
>> lying to me, and the M$ ones are fine (I must admit the machine does
>> FEEL more sluggish with the Microsoft drivers running though).
>
>I have a system built on the Asus P5B-Plus MB, Intel chipset P965. I
>didn't install the Intel Raid, or SATA drivers during XP install, so XP
>installed its own standard IDE drivers. They work great on my 320 GB
>SATA drive and two 300 GB WD drives (PATA). Using HD Tach 3.0, the SATA
>has a burst speed of 215 MB/s, 64 MB/s average read and low CPU usage
>and low latency (about 12ms).
>
>I'm not sure how the nVidia drivers are, but they should be similar. It
>may be the Microsoft IDE drivers are better than the nVidia. Try
>reinstalling the IDE drivers for the MB you have and see if it helps.
>Be sure the SATA drive doesn't have a jumper to limit speed to SATA1
>specs. Many do, and removing the jumper will allow the SATA II speeds.
>
>Also go into device Control and make sure each drive is running in DMA
>Mode; usually 5. If it says PIO Mode, select other, then select the
>highest DMA mode it allows.

Nope, it won't play ball. With the Microsoft standard drivers in the
disk seems to revert to PIO mode 4, which is pretty pathetic speedwise.
The SATA drivers put it back to reasonable speed, but the ASUS ones
crash.

I did finally find a set of nForce4 IDE drivers from the nVidia site
which seem (touch wood) to work OK - version 5.10.2600.666 (Number of
the Beast .. great).

ASUS firmware and software still sux I guess. I tried 'asus update'
which tells me there are no Bios updates for my board available, whereas
I can manually see at least two as the Asus website. Plus Asus Update
updated itself (to 7.13.<something>) and promptly crashed and burned -
the latest one I can see at the ASUS website (under my Mobo) is 7.06.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
10,414 Km walked. 2,032 Km PROWs surveyed. 36.9% complete.
From: RobV on 17 Jan 2008 10:34
GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
> Bitstring <478db04a$0$6507$4c368faf(a)roadrunner.com>, from the
> wonderful person RobV <robv(a)nowhere.invalid> said
>> GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
>>> According to HDTACH (3.0) my SATA hard drive can only manage a burst
>>> speed of 7MB/s running the standard M$ IDE drivers. Not surprisingly
>>> the sequential access speed also shows as 7MB/s across the whole
>>> disk. 8<.
>>> Running the nVidia nvata.sys ones it comes in as I'd expect -
>>> ~125MB/s burst, 70->40 MB/s sequential. However the nVidia ones
>>> seem to have an unfortunate ability to go t1t$-up with a blue
>>> screen crash whenever I stress them (e.g. defrag) .. at least the
>>> ones in the last-issued ASUS driver pack for this board do (and
>>> that was ~18+ month ago iirc). Has anyone found a stable nvata.sys
>>> setup? Or are the benchmarks
>>> just lying to me, and the M$ ones are fine (I must admit the
>>> machine does FEEL more sluggish with the Microsoft drivers running
>>> though).
>>
>> I have a system built on the Asus P5B-Plus MB, Intel chipset P965. I
>> didn't install the Intel Raid, or SATA drivers during XP install, so
>> XP installed its own standard IDE drivers. They work great on my
>> 320 GB SATA drive and two 300 GB WD drives (PATA). Using HD Tach
>> 3.0, the SATA has a burst speed of 215 MB/s, 64 MB/s average read
>> and low CPU usage and low latency (about 12ms).
>>
>> I'm not sure how the nVidia drivers are, but they should be similar.
>> It may be the Microsoft IDE drivers are better than the nVidia. Try
>> reinstalling the IDE drivers for the MB you have and see if it helps.
>> Be sure the SATA drive doesn't have a jumper to limit speed to SATA1
>> specs. Many do, and removing the jumper will allow the SATA II
>> speeds. Also go into device Control and make sure each drive is
>> running in
>> DMA Mode; usually 5. If it says PIO Mode, select other, then select
>> the highest DMA mode it allows.
>
> Nope, it won't play ball. With the Microsoft standard drivers in the
> disk seems to revert to PIO mode 4, which is pretty pathetic
> speedwise. The SATA drivers put it back to reasonable speed, but the
> ASUS ones crash.
>
> I did finally find a set of nForce4 IDE drivers from the nVidia site
> which seem (touch wood) to work OK - version 5.10.2600.666 (Number of
> the Beast .. great).

That's good. At least you got the speed up to "normal".

> ASUS firmware and software still sux I guess. I tried 'asus update'
> which tells me there are no Bios updates for my board available,
> whereas I can manually see at least two as the Asus website. Plus
> Asus Update updated itself (to 7.13.<something>) and promptly crashed
> and burned - the latest one I can see at the ASUS website (under my
> Mobo) is 7.06.

Asus make excellent motherboards, but their support is extremely
lacking. It didn't used to be that way many years ago, but all things
change.

My P5B has listed 3 beta versions of the BIOS on the support page. How
can you have 3 different beta BIOS's? They couldn't tell me whether or
not the P5B will support the new 45nm CPUs. Unfortunately, you're
pretty much on your own for Asus support at this time.


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