Terry Mathews wrote:
> > The PCI performance deficiency survived many VIA chipsets.
> And VIA fixed it in their chipsets. The latest VIA 4-in-one drivers
> integrate the PCI timing latency patch, and will install on all VIA
later . . .
> chipset-based mainboards including the MVP3 which is the oldest VIA based
> PCI motherboard I can think of off the top of my head. Also, until the
> advent of Ultra160 RAID cards and Ultra133 IDE controllers, there were no
> devices capable of moving data fast enough to expose this problem. VIA did
A bus is designed for multiple devices, so the inability of any single
device to fill the bus when the real issue is what happens with a real
from a RAID array or a HBA with a bunch of 15,000 RPM drives is a red
herring.
> not know they had unintentionally hindered the performance of their
> products.
> > I don't experiment with motherboard brands. I stick with the several
> > I've used in the past. If they don't offer ALi, then I don't consider
> > ALi. No ALi chipset board I've ever had opportunity to test was anything
> > less than a dog compared to its contemporaries.
> A) ASUS offers an ALI-based mobo. A7A266.
I don't even consider them since they refuse to fix an acknowledged BIOS
bug that prevents OS/2's use of both channels of LSI chipped SCSI HBA's
in their motherboards. That leaves (due to experience) is Soyo, AOpen,
Intel and Tyan. Some popular brands I refuse to consider due to stupid
web site design that makes finding things or sharing links (frames
obstacle) too tough.
> I could've stated that better. The "patch" is a fix to the VIA 4-in-one
> drivers in Windows
And that helps owners of systems that never have had nor ever will have
windoze installed exactly how?
> that when run flips a bit in the VIA chipset that makes
> the PCI bus timing more agressive. Chipsets don't contain any writable
> storage areas. BIOSes do though. All ASUS, or any other motherboard
> manufacturer has to do is program the BIOS to flip that tiny bit in the
> chipset and all is fixed (Well, tweaked technically since nothing was broken
> to start with). I know ASUS did it, as the fix is integrated into my latest
> A7V133 firmware.
So if the motherboard maker is any good, the BIOS will overcome entirely
any potential "interrupted PCI bus transfers" performance limitation the
tecChannel article discussed? If that is true, I find it hard to believe
it was ignored in the article.
--
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that
love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose."
Romans 8:28 KJV
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.members.atlantic.net/
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