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AHCI/Enhanced IDE sata mode perfomance problem

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Busker

New Member
Joined
Feb 26, 2006
Location
UK
I've just put together a new system : p4 3.6ghz on Asus P5WD2 Premium mobo, 1gig Corsair XMS2ram, GeForce 7800GT extreme, 1 Western Digital 400gig (WD4000KD) sata drive.
Im not convinced the sata drive is performing as it should.
Manged to set everything up correctly and installed XP no probs, installed latest drivers for everything etc.
First thing i did was run a few games (Fear, Battlefield 2, Farcry etc) to see how my new system held up, and 1st thing i noticed the gameplay was getting 'lagged' or choppy framerate and stutters when the diskdrive was accessing data in the games ,particularly bad and almost unplayable in multiplayer BF2 (IE only happened when the harddrive light was flickering)
Almost like its a problem with quick burst reading.
I never had this issue with any of the games on my old system (P4 2.5ghz/GeForce 5700/Seagate IDE drive)
Well I've tried every little thing i can think of; Putting graphics on low setting, Updating the motherboard bios, taking all other hardware out the computer, swapping SATA ports, Swapping memory around, tried all settings i can find in the bios to do with SATA, Messing with the swap file, Tried installing XP with default Enhanced SATA mode and reinstalling XP with AHCI mode enabled with the correct drivers on a floppy, turning acoustic management off on the drive, as well as many other things
I presume its a harddrive problem, been on the Western digital site downloaded the tools and diagnostics and they run and say everythings fine.
Run Si Soft Sandra/ HDtools and everything seems good for the drive
Just a bit annoyed now because Ive been messing with this problem for a week and got nowhere.
On the whole the drive seems to launch XP, app and games real quick, its just in game performance.BF2 is my favorate game at the mo and it played on line flawlessly on my old system.
Is it a ram problem? im using 1gig. but was also on my old system. and ive tried putting the graphics settings in the games on low and its still the same.
wondering whether i need to fork out some more money and go buy a different drive or an extra gig of ram.
the other thing I'm not sure about is whether to stick with AHCI mode or should i go back to using the default motherboard setting enhanced SATA mode? is there any benefit to using AHCI with one drive and does it give any better performance in Games etc..?

So anybody else have this problem. any help would be really appreciated :p
 
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AHCI is preferred - it gives you support for all the SATA functions like hot swapping, port multipliers, NCQ, etc.

But either mode should give adequate performance, with no stuttering at all.

In your BIOS, is the "Plug and Play OS?" set to "Yes" or "True"?

Can you download HDtach and post a screenshot? Run a long bench (32mb zones). That should at least show if it is the drive or something else in your system.
 
Plug And Play O/S in the bios only has the option 'yes' or 'no' and it was set to no.
Couple of other things im not sure about and cant find any info in the motherboard manual is when i set the SATA mode to AHCI, i get the extra option of 'ALPE and ASP' (aggressive link power management and Aggressive slumber/partial) enable or disable. dont know whether i should have it on or off?
And also Should i enable 32bit data transfer for the drive in the bios? it is set to off as default.

Cheers :)
 
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Here's my HDtach results:

hdtach8wp.jpg
 
Hmm, the graph looks OK. Access time is a bit high. I've never played with ALPE and ASP, so I'd just suggest leaving them as the defaults.

Are you using the latest intel drivers? (Available here: http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2101)

Have you disabled the ITE and Sil controllers in BIOS? (Assuming you're not using them) That would free up some system resources.

I don't play BF2 so I really couldn't tell you much memory that games uses.
 
Ok thanx for you help :) I have actually got an IDE drive in also. but i did try removing that although i didnt disable the controller in the bios. i'l give that a whirl. and i'l double check the intel site too for drivers.
cheers
 
BF2 really requires 1.5GB+ of ram to run smoothly. What you are noticing is probably swapfile being accessed. If you run BF2 on high settings, 2GB is almost a must.
 
Ok thanks. after more reading and messing around, i had a feeling it was more likely that. is it worth tweaking around with the pagefile to gain any performance for the time being? or should i just bite the bullet and get an extra gig of ram. any tips on what is a good setting for 1 gig of ram. reading around around every1 seems to say 2.5 times the size of ram is a good setting. is it worth creating a lil partition for swapfile, stuff like that
 
I would just let Windows determine the PF. Upgrading your ram would be the best option. 2GB should be enough for a while. BF2 really requires it to run well.
 
okie dokie. gonna get some ram and see what that does
thanx for your help every1
 
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