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**wkulecz** · 29 January 2001, 13:21

Perhaps the problems have been solved, but nice as it sounds, until I get confirmation that the thruput problems of the highpoint IDE controller have been fixed, I'd not buy a motherboard with one on it.

Get something with an extra PCI slot and add a Promise controller is my recommendation if you need more than 4 IDE devices.

I'm using 8 IDE devices in my system having followed the advice I'm giving you now back in Feburary last year when W2K first came out.

For video editing I recommend an Athelon (T-Bird) over the Duron because of the bigger cache.

--wally.

**Fred H** · 29 January 2001, 15:46

Thanks, Wally
appreciate your comments.
Yes, you're right, an extra card is always better than built in thinks and it would be my first choice.
My question is just a first approach of the upgrade idea, and I'll appreciate ANY suggestions.
A Promise card to my present K6/2-400 card could be a temporary ("poor-man") solution to speed up my system, a little bit.
But I'll wait-and-see.

BTW, did you mean the problem with the KT133A-RAID is this, explained here?
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboar.../kt133-18.html

[This message has been edited by Fred H (edited 29 January 2001).]

**wkulecz** · 29 January 2001, 16:02

Not sure what to make of the issue in the link as its not clear what you are refering to. I'm under the impression that only KT133 motherboards with the 686B chip are worth even trying for NLE. The decrease in AGP frame rate may be related to the improvement in disk performance. Like I said Via has issues, that untill resolved, all I can say id if you try, be sure to buy from a place with a good return policy!

--wally.

**Fred H** · 29 January 2001, 23:25

quote from the link:
-------------------------------
...The new VIA-Southbridge with ATA/100 functionality leaves a stale taste. Especially when used with a single hard drive - as most computers are operated nowadays -, boards with this chip run slower than their ATA/66 pendants in the field of 3D games and OpenGL applications. The ATA/100 chip only leads to a slight improvement in system performance with classic 2D office programmes if you own a modern hard drive. It seems that VIA should revise the VT82C686B-Southbridge, otherwise the ATA/100 option as sales argument may go up in smoke....

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

Fred H

**wkulecz** · 30 January 2001, 09:40

A problem for a gamer may be a fix for a high thruput low latency application like video editing. This would not be the first time someone hogged the bus and/or CPU to look "better" on a benchmark. Matrox did this on one of the early Millenium card drivers -- you had to disble most acceleration features to solve the problems -- I don't remember the exact details.

Given all the troubles with Highpoint IDE, DMA, and VIA chipsets on the linux development lists, I tend to think there are real hardware problems there and a software fix for win9x may not work on w2k.

If ATA100 hogs the PCI bus to look good on benchmarks then it may be eyewash causing problems instead of helping with video editing. DMA is big win for reducing CPU usage on disk transfers bringing it more in line with what SCSI has delivered, but the UDMA33/66/100 is mostly marketing since once the DMA transfer rate exceeds the speed of data to/from the disk heads it only speeds dumping data that the drive has already buffered.

I've had good results so far on an 700 MHz Athelon system I'm testing but it is a "slow" ASUS KVM PC100 system using AMD750 chipset not VIA it does have the Via multi-io which is not an issue, so its not that "all VIA is bad" you just have to be very careful.

In any case I have about zero respect for "Tom's Hardware" opinions.

--wally.

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System upgrade question, please?

System upgrade question, please?

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