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View Full Version : Irregular Throughput in benchmarks

mikeblas
04-10-2005, 12:56 AM
What causes this kind of irregular throughput (http://www.blaszczak.com/spikes.jpg)? How do I fix it?
DougLite
04-10-2005, 01:28 AM
Host most likely, probably a driver issue. I know Samsung drives do have a 'sawtooth' look to their STR graph, but not that extreme.

Can you test the same drive on a different host and/or a different mass storage driver?

Also, what OS/Service Pack?

Results like that convince me that is either a firmware bug/errata that nerf STR performance for a gain somewhere else, or a driver problem.
mikeblas
04-10-2005, 10:39 AM
It's a Tyan S2460 board. It's getting old, but it is still quite fast enough for my application.

Unfortunately, I can't find any drivers on the Tyan website for it; I think they're starting to drop support for this line of boards. And so I'm using the Windows in-box drivers.

Windows XP Professional SP 2. I can't conveniently test the drive in another machine, no.

Later: I pried the drivers loose from the Tyan website. Performance got worse (http://www.blaszczak.com/spikes2.jpg) and the spikes didn't go away.
ambit
04-10-2005, 01:58 PM
Drivers for that board: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_756_759^871^2336,00.html

And I think this is the Tyan IDE driver: ftp://ftp.tyan.com/chipset_AMD/K7CPU/766_768/IDE_Bus_Master/1.43S/
mikeblas
04-10-2005, 02:14 PM
And I think this is the Tyan IDE driver: ftp://ftp.tyan.com/chipset_AMD/K7CPU/766_768/IDE_Bus_Master/1.43S/

Yeah, that's the one I ended up using. When I first downloaded it, it errored-out and said it hadn't detected any AMD hardware. When I ran it again, it worked and installed.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Windows XP in-box driver gives slightly better performance (even though both drivers cause the spikes).
ambit
04-10-2005, 02:34 PM
I got rid of my 3 TigerMP's, too many problems.
Watchout for the melting (http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=13703) ATX connector (http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=28746)
mikeblas
04-10-2005, 03:08 PM
Yeah, I've heard of that ... though I don't think it is related to the irregular IDE throughput.