Speed gain with an Ultra100 card on BH6?

Hi,

Before I go ahead and buy a Promise Ultra100 IDE card, it would be nice to hear
any opinions whether it's worth it or not...

My MoBo is an BH6 1.01 (Tualatin [email protected]) and I have an IBM/Hitachi 180 GXP
Ultra ATA/100 disk connected to the on-board IDE ("DMA/33").
Is it likely that I will notice any change in "HD speed"? Increase in percent??

Any input most welcome!

/ MW

 

What kind of sisoft "file system" benchmarks are you getting with the
current setup?

Forrest

Motherboard Help By HAL web site:
http://home.attbi.com/~hal-9000/

 

Nowadays it would be difficult to buy an ATA 33 HD and HDs on the
market are almost ATA 100 and some of them are even at ATA 133 speed.
I am using Maxtor ATA 133 HD with an ATA 133 card on my BX6 board
running Celly 1.4G. The programs are opened up much much faster on
using ATA 133 HD when compare with the old ATA 33 HD.
You will certainly find the difference and an additional card is
highly recommended.

 

Ok I know this is not a binary group but here is what the
Promise Ultra 100 TX2 does on my BH6 P3 550Mhz 768 meg ram system does.
The Seagate is out of a dead Mpeg recording machine so I am only
guessing at the specs on it.

Seagate ST340825 U Series 5AV Drive, ATA100 5400RPM NO-DMA ATA33
Random Access Time(milliseconds, lower is better) 20ms
Read Burst Speed(megabytes per second, higher is better) 7.8mbps

Seagate ST340825 U Series 5AV Drive, ATA100 5400RPM WITH-DMA ATA33
Random Access Time(milliseconds, lower is better) 20ms
Read Burst Speed(megabytes per second, higher is better) 25.6mbps

WDC WD200BB-00AUA1 20 gig ATA100 7200RPM Promise ATA100
Random Access Time(milliseconds, lower is better) 13.9ms
Read Burst Speed(megabytes per second, higher is better) 69mbps

Maxtor 6L060J3 60 gig ATA133 7200RPM Promise ATA100
Random Access Time(milliseconds, lower is better) 12.5ms
Read Burst Speed(megabytes per second, higher is better) 78.4mbps

REMOVE the NOCRAP in my address to reply.

 

Len,

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Hi "intervoice",

Well, as I originally wrote, I already have an ATA100 drive, so any increase in
performance would totally depend on the Promise Ultra100 TX2...

With my current setup (BH6's onboard IDE) , I get a "Read Speed" (in HDTach) of
29660 kps.

/ MW

 

Hi Len,

I might be missing something, but it seems to me that you haven't compared an
ATA100 drive with and without the Promise Ultra100 TX2 card.
The "Read Burst Speeds" you are getting are well above two times of what I am
getting with an ATA 100 drive on the BH6's onboard IDE, but the "Read Speed" are
about the same. I guess the motherboard is the limiting factor for "Read
Speed"...?

Anyway, it would be very interesting comparing benchmarks for an ATA 100 drive
hooked-up to the BH6 onboard IDE with the same drive on a Promise card.

/ MW

 

Hi "gumpy",

I don't have Sisoft Sandra... HDTach gives the following results:
Random Access Time: 13 ms
Read Burst Speed: 30,4 MBps
Read Speed: 29660 kps (average)
CPU Utilization: 0,0 %

Would any of those be significantly increased by using a Promise Ultra100 TX2
card?

/ MW

 

HDTach (free ver.) gives you a max data speed between HDs electronics
& the memory of puter, which rarelly occurs in real life, so double
that speed seems like a 5% more practically... (same does Sandra
MemBench for sys Ram!)

But Sisoft Sandra HD Bench does give you a real life performance
regarding performance practically because is writing/reading a set of
tests files based on average use programs for 5min or so & here is
quite REAL even if sometimes tels otherway lies! Install it & check!
(borough that add card & make with it some compare!)

90% IMHO of practical HD performance relies on its meccanics &
firmware !!! and also DMA enabled in chipset! (& not on electronics
data burst speed - that Ata66-ata133 stuff or SATA)




-- Regards, SPAJKY
- http://freeweb.siol.net/jerman55/HP/Spajky.htm
Celly-III OC-ed,"Tualatin on BX-Slot1-MoBo!"
E-mail AntiSpam: remove ##

 

Correction!
My current drive is ATA66, the one I'll get next week is ATA100...

Sisoft Sandra benchmarks my drive running off the BH6's onboard IDE giving it a
"drive index" of 19381 (kB/s).

Hasn't anyone benchmarked an ATA100 drive with onboard IDE (@ 33 Mhz) and with
an ATA100 controller running on the same motherboard?
Seems there are lots of contradicting opinions about the difference an
ATA100/133 card makes...

/ MW

 

Well I took that Maxtor 6L060J3 off the Promise card and put it on the
BH6 ata33 controller,

Maxtor 6L060J3 60 gig ATA133 7200RPM ata33 no dma
Random Access Time(milliseconds, lower is better) 12.4ms
Read Burst Speed(megabytes per second, higher is better) 8mbps

Maxtor 6L060J3 60 gig ATA133 7200RPM ata33 with dma
Random Access Time(milliseconds, lower is better) 12.4ms
Read Burst Speed(megabytes per second, higher is better) 28.5mbps

If you want the screen grabs you will have to send me an email so I can
send them to you.

I also timed the boot up

desktop background no hourglass
no-dma 1m 35s 2m 30s
dma 1m 46s 2m 35s
Promise 1m 30s 2m 10s

Computer also shut down over twice as fast when boot drive is on the
Promise card.

I was planning to load a program and time it but forgot, all I can say
is if you plan to use the faster drives in the BH6 and are in the USA
the cards are much cheaper than here in Canada I would buy one if I was
you, hell if I could find another BH6 board for the right price I would
still buy another Promise card, would look for a used one but would buy
a new one if I had too.

REMOVE the NOCRAP in my address to reply.

 

I have a abit kx7 motherboard and a IBM 180 GXP drive (60 gig).
Depending on which partition I test, my benchmarks range from 25,100
to 35,400. So depending on how much data was on your disk when you
tested it, I would estimate that you should see anywhere from a 0 to
20% improvement.

Forrest

Motherboard Help By HAL web site:
http://home.attbi.com/~hal-9000/

 

BH6 $20 plus shipping from NYC

 

According to your table, setting DMA slowed your system down, but adding
the Promise card sped it up only slightly.

Did you run the hard disk with or without DMA when you used the Promise
card?

I'd rather prefer it started up twice as fast.

 

Ya I messed up there desktop should 1m46s for both
and no hourglass the no dma and dma should be swapped.

Benchmarks you cannot always go by, all I can say is that the whole
system seems much faster than it was without the promise card.

When using the drives on the promise card there is no option for turning
dma on or off on any drives on the card.

I am certainly happy with my card, so many of the tests you see on the
net or from people that have tried any of the cards are basing it on the
ata66 card, the ata100 is much faster with the correct drives, wish I
had the ata133 now, lol.

REMOVE the NOCRAP in my address to reply.

 

The maximum throughput of a 33 MHz PCI-bus is 133 MB/s(it's 4 bytes
wide), so a ATA133-card is not a waste of "bandwidth".

 

I have a abit kx7 motherboard and a IBM 180 GXP drive (60 gig).
Depending on which partition I test, my benchmarks range from 25,100
to 35,400. So depending on how much data was on your disk when you
tested it, I would estimate that you should see anywhere from a 0 to
20% improvement.

Forrest

Motherboard Help By HAL web site:
http://home.attbi.com/~hal-9000/

 

Goodie. I think I will pick one up this week.

Thanks for the info.

 

My sincere thanks to everyone that has responded to this thread!
None mentioned - none forgotten!

/ MW

 

Very good estaimation!
I borrowed a friend's Ultra100 TX2 card, and SiSoft Sandra benchmarks showed a
14% improvement in drive performance with an Hitachi/IBM "ATA 100" drive on my
BH6 1.0, compared to onboard IDE. Barely noticeable...

Conclusion: no Promise Ultra100 TX2 for me...

/ MW