Need Help w/ VT6x4 bios

[SteveI]

I have 2 problems. My Memory bench sucks on this board..... I tried updating to the new bios, and my bench DROPPED IN half to under 200 (in sandra2001). I tried tweaking and nothing helps, so I gave up and went back to the original BIOS. My benchmark went back to just being terrible (about 290). When I went back I noticed on boot up, my HDD is read as ATA33. It is WD20 7200/66. My other PC has same board and HDD. It boots up as ATA66 like it should.

Anyone have an obvious answer to why I am booting to ATA33??? (I looked in BIOS, the best I could do was set it to PIO4, it didn't help so I went back to Auto..like my other PC.)

The tougher question is how the F do I up my memory performance? I really need help here since I messed with interleave and everything else(on new bios). I must have rebooted 50 times in the last 3 days. I also used 3rd party sw in the past and that didn't help.

I know my board sucks when in comes to memory performance but I have heard others have had some success. All the help I could get would be appreciated.

 

[Yoda_Blues]

I used to have VT6X4 until it just stopped booting one day. I know a little trick in windows to up your ram performance, at least where games are concerned. In your system.ini, after the [386Enh] heading, but before the [NonWindowsApp] heading, add this line;

ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1

This forces windows to use all available physical ram before it switches to the swap file. As for the ATA/33 thing, I'm not sure what could be causing that as the BIOS on the VT6X4 should auto detect the ATA speed. Is your cdrom or another HD on the same channel as the HD? That would slow it down if they dont support ATA/33.

 

[SteveI]

Thanks for the trick, but if I understand correctly, it will not improve RAM performance.

The HDD is on its own, my CDRW & DVD share the other controller.

I'm tempted to re-flash but I don't see the merit.
(I'm hoping to replace on of my boards, but either way, I will have one in the house, so I better figure this out.)

 

[Yoda_Blues]

How man DIMMS do you have? I know that sometimes if you have 2 DIMMS of different brands, they might not get along very well. Also, are you sure you have an 40-pin 80-conductor IDE ribbon? If you only have a 40-conductor, you'll only be able top attain ATA/33. Are you using the cable that came with HD? It should be an 80-conductor. Other than that, I'm not sure why you can't get ATA/66.

 

[SteveI]

I have 2. Micron 128cas 3@133 and retail (CompUSA)generic 64cas3@133,( hey, it was free).
But the problem is consistent with out the second stick. Sorry I didn't include the details of pulling and testing each stick....my posts are too long to begin with.

HDD connector is 80, identical system to my 2nd pc. (Only difference is video card) That is why I'm so frustrated at the ATA33 reading on PC#1.

Has anyone successfully tweaked a VT6x4 memory? If yes, what are your scores, and How did you do it?

 

[SteveI]

bump.

 

[Nomis]

SteveI (Apr 11, 2001 05:02 p.m.):
bump.

If you want the highest memory bandwidth, you will have to set DMCLOCK setting to HLKPCI33+ and also set the DIMM speed to Turbo and CAS2. Also use VIA 4.29 driver, it has 4X agp enabled w/o register tweak yourself. The only problem is your ram, It will probably not be able to run at Cas2. Use Cas 3, Turbo and HLKPCI33+ and compare with Host CLK, Cas2, Turbo.