The Register schrijft dat Intel een nieuwe ATA drivertje voor de i8x0 chipsets met ICH1 en ICH2 in elkaar geknutseld heeft. Volgens de SiSoft benchmarks van The Reg vloog de harddisk performance met een faktor 3 omhoog na het installeren van deze drivers.
We tried the new driver on our reference VC820 and were astonished to discover that performance increased by three times between the original Win98 system and the new Win2K installation on the same hardware.Initial hard disk SiSoft Sandra ratings under Win 98 were a disappointing 113.7 Mb/sec. After upgrading to Win 2K and the lovely new Ultra ATA 5.01 driver, the performance improved to an impressive 358.9 Mb/sec. How do these guys achieve this kinda improvement? [break] Dat lijken me nogal onwaarschijnlijk hoge cijfertjes. Volgens het Intel .PDFje lijken de drivers niet veel meer te doen dan het instellen van de snelste UltraDMA mode: [/break] The Intel.... Ultra ATA Storage Driver automatically enables fast Ultra ATA transfers for a variety of ATA/ATAPI mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and CD-ROMs. This driver has been developed to take advantage of the latest Intel Ultra ATA controller features to improve both storage subsystem performance and overall system performance. Driver installation is flexible and fully automated for Microsoft Windows* 98/SE, Windows NT*4.0, and Windows 2000 operating systems. Also included is the Intel Ultra ATA Companion®, a useful diagnostic tool that can be used to view technical details of the ATA subsystem.
Summary of Key Features
For each connected ATA and/or ATAPI device (e.g., hard disk drive, CD-RW, DVD-ROM) the driver enables the fastest Ultra ATA transfers by default (up to Ultra ATA/66 for ICH and Ultra ATA/100 for ICH2 on the Intel.... 800 series Chipsets), and does not rely on the system BIOS to properly configure chipset Ultra ATA controller and devices Removes the user requirement to manually enable DMA transfers for each ATA and/or ATAPI device connected to the system Allows independent device timings/transfers for each ATA channel; this effectively allows PIO-only devices and DMA-capable devices to share the same ATA controller cable (one device as master, one as slave) without restricting transfer mode to PIO-only for both devices The accompanying Intel Ultra ATA Companion application can be used to view technical details of the ATA subsystem - including device and controller details, which to this day have been widely inaccessible without the use of a special diagnostic device such as and ATA/IDE analyzer. Additionally, the application can be used to set each individual ATA and/or ATAPI device's transfer mode, a useful feature for debug and performance analysis. Drivers are optimized for the latest Intel Ultra ATA controllers, to maximize subsystem performance and enhance overall system performance The installation program is flexible and fully automated, and has been localized for 20 languages under Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows NT4.0 (any service pack), and Windows 2000 operating systems.
Thanks TgF voor de tip.