Promise TX4 only 8.32 MB/s in Digiutils

[dolonescu]

just a quick update in between

hi,
finally i added the mylex acceleraid 170 and ....... yes, you guessed it right, the damn thing won't even boot anymore. after lot's of shuffling and pulling cards in and out I found out, that the TX4 changes something in the BIOS, that makes the mylex crash. after restoring the BIOS to factory settings and putting in only the mylex alone, everything is ok again. just what is that something, that the tx4 changes in the BIOS???
probably some IRQ and PnP stuff.

any ideas on that one?

raphael

[Dr Mordrid]

The TX4 doesn't change anything functional in the BIOS. All it does is put link in the boot sequence to its BIOS menu/drive detection screen. That and it uses 2 IRQ's.

It's using 2 IRQ's isn't typically problematic unless maybe it's sharing one with a device whose drivers don't share well. Mine shares with 2 other devices on my RT-2000 system without problems, but if the Digisuite drivers (or some portion of them) are not written to share properly that could cause a huge problem.

In a case like that Win2K could exascerbate the problem because of its ACPI hardware abstraction layers method of interrupt routing. This puts most cards on a single IRQ. Because of problems I've had on editing systems with this my Win2K systems are set up with ACPI disabled in the BIOS and Win2K installed using the "StandardPC" option, which uses a different hardware abstraction layer.

This makes Win2K route interrupts like Win9x does and allows you some control over what shares with what both in the BIOS and by slot-swapping. You install using this option by pressing F5 when the SCSI configuration menu comes up during installation.

Dr. Mordrid

[dolonescu]

what matrox says

hi just for interest, it looks bad for transfer-speeds between digisuite and anything running in a 66/64 pci slot.

does all that make sense to you?

from the matrox-forum

check out the thread at:

http://forum.matrox.com/digiforum/Forum3/HTML/000302.html

------------------------------

ello!
I installed DigiSuiteSDI on DELL Precision530 Workstation.
The result of writing test on Digisuite is only
5.8MByte/Sec, but I get 40MByte/Sec result on other HD test tools.
So I want to increase the speed of writing on Digisuite,
please give me any information about this.

I installed only SDI card on 64bit PCI, the others on 32bit PCI,
of course changed 64bit PCI to 32bit.

The forrowing is specs:
E Chipset Intel 860
E CPU Xeon 2Ghz(Single)
E MEM 1024MB
E HD UltraWide3 SCSI 36GB x 3 (used software disk striping with 2 disks)
E OS Windows2000 Professional

Sorry for teribble English, could anybody help me.

Thanks,

Kuma (from Japan)


-------------------------------
Hi
that is exactly the kind of problem I'm having with the Promise TX4 66mhz/64bit ide raid. i have posted it under storage some time ago. maybe you can comment on that problem as well. main questions: does digisuite support irq sharing, can it comunicate well with a device that is running on 66/64 in a different bus-system?
-------- posted 30.3.2002

Hi there,
I just installed a Fasttrack TX4 on my brandnew Tyan Tiger MPX. When testing it with NERO and other benchmarks it shows a transfer-rate of 85 - 95 MB/sec, which is absolutely great!!! But when I have a look at it in the Digisuite LE settings under storage I only get 8.32 MB/sec single write, which is absolutely pathetic! Any ideas?
Help is greatly appreciated.
Raphael

---------

TIGER MPX S2466N mainboard

BIOS v. 1.01
Win 2000 SP2

4x 512 mb registered DDR-RAM
2x Athlon MP 1800+
1x IBM 60GXP as system drive
1x Teac 40x CD-ROM
1x Plextor 40x CD-Writer

PCI
AGP: Matrox G550
Slot1 (66/64): Promise TX4 (66MHz) with 4x IBM 120GXP in Raid 0
Slot2 (66/64): empty
Slot3 (33/32): Matrox Digisuite LE, Video-Editing Board
Slot 4 (33/32): empty
Slot 5 (33/32): empty
Slot 6 (33/32): Tekram Firewire Card


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

The answer to your question is no. Since any card that is in a 64 bit, 66 Mhz slot will have to double buffer any information when speaking with a card in a 32 bit, 33 Mhz slot. Therefore the transfer speeds will suffer.

Regards,
John

----------------------

what do you think?

any comments?

raphael

[Dr Mordrid]

That would explain some of it, but I don't think an ~8x reduction in speed would come from just double-buffering.

One thing that would be very interesting would be if you had a free PCI/33 slot you could plug that TX4 into, if only for a test. If that cures the problem then the slot contention issue sounds more viable.

Dr. Mordrid

[dolonescu]

good idea, i've just finished doing that. the TX4 now sits in a 33/32 slot and digisuite of course as well. here are the results:

Digisuite LE says:

single write 22,18
single read 66,59
dual write 11,17
dual read 22,18

Sandra:

Buffered read 56
sequ. read 54
buffered write 16
sequ. write 16
random 16


looks better for digisuite, but pathetic for HD-recording!

Right now I am waiting for a reply from tyan about the IRQ issue. If there's no solution to that there will be only one option:

Putting the Digisuite in another dual PIII I have together with the Mylex and use the Tyan with Promise TX4 only for HD-Stuff. Real bummer!!!

Or do you have any other ideas?

raphael

[dolonescu]

tyans reply

this is what tyan tech-support wrote back. not really encouraging:

------------------
------------------------> question:

Dear Tyan Tech-Support-Team:
I have boot-trouble with the following system:

TIGER MPX S2466N mainboard

BIOS v. 1.01
Win 2000 SP2

4x 512 mb registered DDR-RAM
2x Athlon MP 1800+
1x IBM 60GXP as system drive
1x Teac 40x CD-ROM
1x Plextor 40x CD-Writer

PCI
AGP: Matrox G550
Slot1: Promise TX4 (66MHz) with 4x IBM 120GXP in Raid 0
Slot2: empty
Slot3: Matrox Digisuite LE, Video-Editing Board
Slot 4: empty
Slot 5: Mylex Acceleraid 170 with 4 IBM 75GB U2W drives in Raid 5
Slot 6: Tekram Firewire Card

PROBLEM:

The system won't boot, if both the Promise IDE-RAID and the Mylex SCSI-Raid PCI-cards are inserted in any combination (I tested the Promise in any 66Mhz Slot in combination with Mylex in any 33MHZ Slot). The Promise boots first and is fine, the Mylex boots second and crashes when starting it's own BIOS (but also when I disable BIOS startup in the Mylex-Options). ----

After the Promise is removed and the TYAN BIOS is reset with F9 to factory defaults, the Mylex will start with no problem.

Where are PCI-PnP-Settings or the options for reserving IRQs for one or the other in the TIGER MPX-BIOS v.1.01?
They are listed in the Handbook, but I cannot find them in the Setup-menu.

Both, Promise and Mylex, recommend changing PCI-PnP-Settings or reserving IRQs for one or the other, but this option has been disabled in your BIOS.

Can you please provide me with a BIOS, where this option has NOT been disabled?

------------------------------------> reply:

I would recommend that you contact Promise. They are currently working on
beta firmware. But it is likely at least 2 weeks before it passes EVT.

------------------------> question:

Hi, I contacted Promise and am waiting for a reply. But nevertheless, why is there a PCI IRQ PnP option listed in the handbook but not available in the actual BIOS? Any information you could give me on that one would help finding a solution tremendously.


------------------------------------> reply:

The base information in the manual is just text documents straight from AMI,
AWARD or Phoenix. The actual bios is not always going to be exactly as what
is stated in the manual. We do place disclaimers in the manual that the
bios will differ from print depending on what features we impliment or not
or if the core bios changes from when the board was originally designed.

------------------------> question:

that's fine enough, I understand. but is there a chance to fiddle around with the IRQs. it would be very essential to me. otherwise I can just dump a 480GB IDE-RAID.


------------------------------------> reply:


The thing you need to understand is that you're never going to be able to
control the resource assignments or IRQ's. With
the advent of the 2.1 PCI compliant bus that ablility was taken away from
the user some time ago. This is an industry
standard and is not unique to just us its present in every motherboard
across the world. If devices are not trully 2.1 compliant
they will give you the same song and dance about devices need to have their
own resources. If these manufacturers
followed the standard they would realize that each IRQ is capable of
handling 4 devices at once. There is absolutely nothing we
are going to be able to do about letting you handle IRQ assignment or
anything along those lines.

----------

as they have at least the possibility of reserving IRQs for certain PCi-slots in their handbook, but not in their actual BIOS, I have the impression that something severe went wrong on the motherboard and they just cannot allow anybody to fiddle with IRQs because otherwise the whole thing would crash.

what do you think??

and what does PROMISE say? any news?

raphael

[Brian Ellis]

Raphael

I'm beginning to suspect that Sandra ain't such a sweet gal as I thought! See http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32217

As for IRQ/PCI allocation, I'm suffering from the same problem as the above thread also indicates. However, I have now zero IRQ conflicts and the situation has not improved. With Fasttrak striping two new fast Maxtor drives, I'm getting more drops than I did on a single slower drive, which does not make sense.

[dolonescu]

hi brian,
well, hard to say. as listed above, the sandra results for the tx4 in a 33/32 pci slot are lower than for the single drive, but the digisuite reports about the rate i expected (22mb/s). when in th 66/64 pci slot, the thing relly gets fast, especially when reading data. however 54 mb/s write ain't bad either. the reason why digisuite is slower is partly communication between 64 and 32 bit slots and!!!! digisuite uses it's own RAM onboard to buffer (quote "John" from the Matrox support forum) and SANDRA uses the system RAM and Processor to do that. obviously, 2x 1800+ Athlons MP and 2GB RAM are far better to buffer than a digisuite that's 3 years old!

However, Promise is hopefully coming up with a new BIOS for their Fasttracks soon and that might solve some of the problems.

all the best

raphael