A7N8X-EDel Unified Drivers - Performance Hit?

D

Dave G

Hi Group...

I've just upgraded to this board (for details see my earlier threads
this / last week) and have just updated to the 3.13 nforce unified
drivers...

I seem to be experiencing noticeably slower CD ripping using my normal
ripping soft/hardware which is EAC / Lame / Plextor PX-W5224A...

My old A7A266 board with 1400 athlon and same plextor device was twice
as fast as my current configuration 3000 Athlon, 1gb PC3200 DDR
(arranged dual channel style). Extraction seems to slow down
dramatically when Lame is encoding... which it didn't do before.

Could this be something to do with the new nforce 2 ATA drivers...?

Anyone else experiencing any problems like this?

Any suggestions welcome and thanks in advance...

Dave G
 
D

Dave G

I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see what Dave
G wrote in alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus and:
Could this be something to do with the new nforce 2 ATA drivers...?
Click to expand...

Just a thought... is there anything to stop me changing the NForce 2
SPP/IGP ATA Controller to a standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller...?

How will this effect the rest of the unified package?
 
B

Ben Pope

Dave said:
Hi Group...

I've just upgraded to this board (for details see my earlier threads
this / last week) and have just updated to the 3.13 nforce unified
drivers...

I seem to be experiencing noticeably slower CD ripping using my normal
ripping soft/hardware which is EAC / Lame / Plextor PX-W5224A...

My old A7A266 board with 1400 athlon and same plextor device was twice
as fast as my current configuration 3000 Athlon, 1gb PC3200 DDR
(arranged dual channel style). Extraction seems to slow down
dramatically when Lame is encoding... which it didn't do before.

Could this be something to do with the new nforce 2 ATA drivers...?
Yep.

Anyone else experiencing any problems like this?
Click to expand...

Yep (not me)
Any suggestions welcome and thanks in advance...
Click to expand...

Reinstall the 3.13s and say no to the SW IDE drivers, the standard MS ones
will install and you will have the best of all worlds :)

Ben
 
D

Dr Teeth

Reinstall the 3.13s and say no to the SW IDE drivers, the standard MS ones
will install and you will have the best of all worlds :)
Click to expand...

It is the standard Nvidia drivers that will install. They are modified
MS standard ones, modified to support ATA 133.


Cheers,

Guy

My best moments are when I am asleep.
The nightmare starts when I awake.
 
B

Ben Pope

Dr said:
It is the standard Nvidia drivers that will install. They are modified
MS standard ones, modified to support ATA 133.
Click to expand...

Really? That requires a modification? (well, I guess you need to change 4
to 5 :p) Oh well, whatever! Cheers.

Either way, do what I said do! It should work nicely.

Ben
 
D

Dave G

I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see what
Ben Pope wrote in alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus and:
Reinstall the 3.13s and say no to the SW IDE drivers, the standard MS
Click to expand...

Okay then.. I've done a bit of research myself... but what is the "most
recognised as being correct and/or successful" method of
re-installing those drivers...?

Do I uninstall them first (deleting the nvide.nvu file) before choosing
to remove the NVidia nForce Drivers in add/remove programs... then re-
installing and choosing no at the "do you want to install drivers that
slow down your system?"

Do I just run the 3.13 exe over the top of my existing 3.13 drivers...

Do I just "update" the specific ata driver in system props and choose
the standard microsoft ide driver ...

The choice is endless...

Any thoughts much appreciated... and nice site Ben...
 
D

Dr Teeth

Do I just run the 3.13 exe over the top of my existing 3.13 drivers...

Do I just "update" the specific ata driver in system props and choose
the standard microsoft ide driver ...
Click to expand...

Do not use the MSoft drivers if you need ATA 133, they don't support
it.

What I did here was to install the 3.13 drivers twice over themselves,
first declining to install the SW drivers and second accepting to
install them. That will leave both drivers on your system so you
change them easily via device manager; select the IDE controller,
double click it to open the properties, select driver tab and click on
update driver button. click on the advanced option, then the don't
search button, and you should be presented with all your available
NForce drivers.

Makes it easier to chop and change them for testing. BTW, I cannot
burn anything using the SW drivers on either of my Win XP partitions.

Cheers,

Guy

** I may not be perfect, but I'm
** English, and that's the next best thing!
 
D

Dr Teeth

New IDE drivers have just been released on www.nvidia.com.

Problem is that the info provided is contradictary:-
"Installation Notes

<This is a stand-alone beta package> containing IDE drivers only. This
package should be installed over an existing successful install of the
Unified Driver Package (UDP) containing all nForce driver components.
Release Notes

<This is a release package> of nForce IDE drivers for 32-bit Windows
2000 and XP systems."

Is it a release driver or a beta?


Cheers,

Guy

** I may not be perfect, but I'm
** English, and that's the next best thing!
 
B

Ben Pope

Dave said:
I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see what
Ben Pope wrote in alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus and:


Okay then.. I've done a bit of research myself... but what is the "most
recognised as being correct and/or successful" method of
re-installing those drivers...?
Click to expand...

Double clicking the .exe
Do I uninstall them first (deleting the nvide.nvu file) before choosing
to remove the NVidia nForce Drivers in add/remove programs... then re-
installing and choosing no at the "do you want to install drivers that
slow down your system?"
Click to expand...

Err... select no, yeah.
Do I just run the 3.13 exe over the top of my existing 3.13 drivers...
Yep!

Do I just "update" the specific ata driver in system props and choose
the standard microsoft ide driver ...
Click to expand...

You could do, but I'm not sure exactly which driver it is.

Ben
 
B

Ben Pope

Dr said:
New IDE drivers have just been released on www.nvidia.com.
Click to expand...

Well spotted - looks like the Audio drivers have been reworked too.
Problem is that the info provided is contradictory:-
"Installation Notes

<This is a stand-alone beta package> containing IDE drivers only. This
package should be installed over an existing successful install of the
Unified Driver Package (UDP) containing all nForce driver components.
Release Notes

<This is a release package> of nForce IDE drivers for 32-bit Windows
2000 and XP systems."

Is it a release driver or a beta?
Click to expand...

I would strongly suspect that's it's beta - it looks like these new drivers
support the nForce3 250 and other new features that won't affect us much on
the nForce2, but a big reworking of the drivers is likely an advantage, and
of course the usual game fixes etc are useful.

Ben
 
D

Dave G

I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see what
everyone wrote in alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus and:


Thanks for your help and suggestions everyone...

I rolled back the ata driver to the MS one and noticed no significant
improvement... Oddly, however, my CD drives weren't specifically recognised
and named in device manager but seemed to work okay.

Anyway... Continuing to follow the thread I downloaded and installed the
"new" Nvidia ATA drivers and things seem to be a bit better now...

Although... The experience of installing the mobo without re-formatting the
drive was a worthwhile one, I've decided to perform a full clean install on
new Samsung spinpoint drive anyway... or should I go SATA... or would that
just be opening another can of worms??

Regards and thanks once again

Dave G
 
B

Ben Pope

Dave said:
I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see what
everyone wrote in alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus and:


Thanks for your help and suggestions everyone...

I rolled back the ata driver to the MS one and noticed no significant
improvement... Oddly, however, my CD drives weren't specifically
recognised and named in device manager but seemed to work okay.

Anyway... Continuing to follow the thread I downloaded and installed the
"new" Nvidia ATA drivers and things seem to be a bit better now...

Although... The experience of installing the mobo without re-formatting
the drive was a worthwhile one, I've decided to perform a full clean
install on new Samsung spinpoint drive anyway... or should I go SATA...
or would that just be opening another can of worms??
Click to expand...

I installed Windows an a Raptor and have since installed a WDC2500JD - no
problems whatsoever.

If you want to go with SATA I'd recommend a late BIOS (1005+) and the latest
SATA drivers.

Ben
 
D

Dave G

I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see what
Ben Pope wrote in alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus and:
If you want to go with SATA I'd recommend a late BIOS (1005+) and the
latest SATA drivers.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that info Ben...

and nice site btw... lean and to the point

Regards

Dave G
 
B

Ben Pope

Dave said:
I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see what
Ben Pope wrote in alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus and:


Thanks for that info Ben...

and nice site btw... lean and to the point
Click to expand...

Thank you.

It's lean 'cos I don't get much time to maintain it :) But yeah, I do tend
to be concise.

I can't stand all this flash and stuff on websites, I hand coded it so that
I knew what was gonna be there, it's all XHTML and CSS, I'm fairly proud of
it. I think it works in just about any modern browser out there (if not,
please let me know!!).

The menu is CSS, not a table, so older style browsers that have difficulty
supporting CSS (which has been around what, 8 years?) won't cope, but it's
time to move on... :p

Ben
 
D

Dr Teeth

I would strongly suspect that's it's beta - it looks like these new drivers
support the nForce3 250 and other new features that won't affect us much on
the nForce2, but a big reworking of the drivers is likely an advantage, and
of course the usual game fixes etc are useful.
Click to expand...

These drivers could be proper releases, the readme says:

"This nForce Win2K/XP driver package contains the below components:

Installer version 4.31
Win2K IDE 2.5 driver version 4.15 (WHQL) + updated nvuide.exe and
txtsetup.oem
WinXP IDE 2.5 driver version 4.12 (WHQL) + updated nvuide.exe and
txtsetup.oem"

AFAIAA, beta drivers are not WHQL certified. They fix my CD/DVD
burning problems anyway.


Cheers,

Guy

** I may not be perfect, but I'm
** English, and that's the next best thing!
 
B

Ben Pope

Dr said:
These drivers could be proper releases, the readme says:

"This nForce Win2K/XP driver package contains the below components:

Installer version 4.31
Win2K IDE 2.5 driver version 4.15 (WHQL) + updated nvuide.exe and
txtsetup.oem
WinXP IDE 2.5 driver version 4.12 (WHQL) + updated nvuide.exe and
txtsetup.oem"

AFAIAA, beta drivers are not WHQL certified. They fix my CD/DVD
burning problems anyway.
Click to expand...

Thats a pretty good point. I'm with you - unlikely to be beta.

Ben
 
D

dogbowl

I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see what Dave
G wrote in alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus and:
Anyway... Continuing to follow the thread I downloaded and installed the
"new" Nvidia ATA drivers and things seem to be a bit better now...
Click to expand...

Aaaaaargh... spoke too soon... I can't burn anything with either the 3.13
or the newer ide drivers so I've had to return to the MS standard ones

Ho hum... hope Nvidia get this sorted soon

regards to all
 
B

Ben Pope

dogbowl said:
I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to see what
Dave G wrote in alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus and:


Aaaaaargh... spoke too soon... I can't burn anything with either the 3.13
or the newer ide drivers so I've had to return to the MS standard ones

Ho hum... hope Nvidia get this sorted soon
Click to expand...


You tried these?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_ide_4.15_win2KXP.html

If not, then don;t worry. The MS ones are fine. In my experience, using
the nVidia SW IDE drivers over the MS ones for a given drive has the same
CPU useage, the same bandwidth and seek times and therefore the same
performance. Stability of the MS ones is fine.

There si no reason not to use the MS ones, and few reasons to want the
nVidia ones in preference (I like the layout, but thats hardly a big deal)

Ben
 
P

Peter A. Stavrakoglou

Ben Pope said:
You tried these?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_ide_4.15_win2KXP.html

If not, then don;t worry. The MS ones are fine. In my experience, using
the nVidia SW IDE drivers over the MS ones for a given drive has the same
CPU useage, the same bandwidth and seek times and therefore the same
performance. Stability of the MS ones is fine.

There si no reason not to use the MS ones, and few reasons to want the
nVidia ones in preference (I like the layout, but thats hardly a big deal)

Ben
Click to expand...

I have experiences faster perofmrnace, at least in benchmarks, using
the nVidia drivers. Maybe the real-world performance is unnoticable.
However, with the nVidia IDE drivers, NTI CD-Maker cannot see my DVD
or CD writer. Nero can but not NTI. I prefer NTI over Nero so I
solved the problem by creating a second hardware profile which uses
the MS drivers.
 
B

Ben Pope

Peter said:
I have experiences faster perofmrnace, at least in benchmarks, using
the nVidia drivers. Maybe the real-world performance is unnoticable.
Click to expand...

My benchmark was HDTach 2.70 read only.
However, with the nVidia IDE drivers, NTI CD-Maker cannot see my DVD
or CD writer. Nero can but not NTI. I prefer NTI over Nero so I
solved the problem by creating a second hardware profile which uses
the MS drivers.
Click to expand...

Is the performance increase that significant?

Rebooting just to burn a CD, sounds like hassle to me.

Ben
 
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