raddygast
08-01-02, 06:29 PM
Ok, I posted this on the Abit mobo forum too, but I am crossposting here as it may be a problem you video tweakers are more familiar with.
I'm having a problem that has plagued me on previous systems, so I think this may have to do with XP itself or something, but I wanted to be sure.
I have my HDD running off the primary channel on the HPT372, but no raid. CDRW and DVDROM are on the ICH IDE. Anyway, my problem is (I think) that the ide LED on my case blinks consistently once per second (thereabouts). Of course it blinks more rapidly if there is heavy disk activity, but no matter what, it pulses like that. I have tried disabling system restore, I've switched back and forth between "Programs" and "System Cache" in the memory settings of XP, to no avail. I have disabled tons of services and I can't find what's causing it. Killed MBM5, no go. No matter what I do I can't see what's doing this (writing or reading from the HD once per second)
The reason it bugs me is that I am getting a "stutter" effect in 3dmark2k1SE (haven't tried any games yet because I'm still doing stability testing with this config). I read some ATI message saying that if you have 512MB of RAM with the 8500, you should set AGP aperture to 128. I have. I think it may have helped a bit... in fact I thought it solved the problem at first, but somehow the problem is back now, not sure what I changed.
I have tried alternating between vsync on and off using rage3dtweak. No matter what performance enhancements I use (i.e. set aside 64KB of RAM for DMA, optimize page buffer size, etc.) it still happens.
It is most noticeable when something is moving horizontally across the screen, it almost seems like they do a little skip-stutter. It's not as bad as I've seen in the past, but noticeable if you look. It is most noticeable at high detail settings, esp. if I enable any AA, then it gets real obvious.
So I think this MAY have something to do with that disk activity, because the frequency of the stutters is as far as I can discern the same. I'm not sure if they're totally syncronized because I can't look at the screen and HDD LED at the same time, but I think this may be the culprit.
So, anyone know what this could be and how to get around it? I tried to make sure my drive was in DMA mode but you can't get at that in WinXP, it treats the HPT372 controller as a SCSI controller and there are no DMA settings in device manager.
Any tips or advice? Lastly, if not, can I just plug the drive into the ICH IDE controller and reboot, to test if it's the HPT? Will WinXP barf on me if I suddenly switch the boot drive from ATA133RAID to Primary IDE?
Thanks.
I'm having a problem that has plagued me on previous systems, so I think this may have to do with XP itself or something, but I wanted to be sure.
I have my HDD running off the primary channel on the HPT372, but no raid. CDRW and DVDROM are on the ICH IDE. Anyway, my problem is (I think) that the ide LED on my case blinks consistently once per second (thereabouts). Of course it blinks more rapidly if there is heavy disk activity, but no matter what, it pulses like that. I have tried disabling system restore, I've switched back and forth between "Programs" and "System Cache" in the memory settings of XP, to no avail. I have disabled tons of services and I can't find what's causing it. Killed MBM5, no go. No matter what I do I can't see what's doing this (writing or reading from the HD once per second)
The reason it bugs me is that I am getting a "stutter" effect in 3dmark2k1SE (haven't tried any games yet because I'm still doing stability testing with this config). I read some ATI message saying that if you have 512MB of RAM with the 8500, you should set AGP aperture to 128. I have. I think it may have helped a bit... in fact I thought it solved the problem at first, but somehow the problem is back now, not sure what I changed.
I have tried alternating between vsync on and off using rage3dtweak. No matter what performance enhancements I use (i.e. set aside 64KB of RAM for DMA, optimize page buffer size, etc.) it still happens.
It is most noticeable when something is moving horizontally across the screen, it almost seems like they do a little skip-stutter. It's not as bad as I've seen in the past, but noticeable if you look. It is most noticeable at high detail settings, esp. if I enable any AA, then it gets real obvious.
So I think this MAY have something to do with that disk activity, because the frequency of the stutters is as far as I can discern the same. I'm not sure if they're totally syncronized because I can't look at the screen and HDD LED at the same time, but I think this may be the culprit.
So, anyone know what this could be and how to get around it? I tried to make sure my drive was in DMA mode but you can't get at that in WinXP, it treats the HPT372 controller as a SCSI controller and there are no DMA settings in device manager.
Any tips or advice? Lastly, if not, can I just plug the drive into the ICH IDE controller and reboot, to test if it's the HPT? Will WinXP barf on me if I suddenly switch the boot drive from ATA133RAID to Primary IDE?
Thanks.