UDMA 66.

[Tn]

I heard somewhere that motherboards supporting it will not be out until late fall, is this correct? I know about the card adapters but I'd rather have it on the motherboard.

Thanks,
Thien

[Chris H]

The ABit BE6 and BP6 have UDMA/33 and UDMA/66 on board.

I have a BE6 and it works just fine.

Celeron (Socket 370) budget boards with the Intel i810 chipset also have UDMA/66.

[Helevitia]

Tn,

I'm not sure about the mobo issue but buy the drive anyway because they are so fast I was overly joyed. I popped in a new Quantum Fireball UDMA/66 a couple of weeks ago and I get a massive 18MBps average! I've tested this with HD Tach and Wintune 98 and they are very similar in results. Also, I CAN tell the differnece with all of my programs.

Dave

[Jammrock]

Tn,

Abit has UDMA 66 boards (BE6 and BP6) that use the 440BX chipset and then they added a 3rd party UDMA 66 controller to the board. The only Intel mobo chipset that supports UDMA 66 is the Intel 810 series. The Intel 820 chipset (i.e. Camino) will have native UDMA 66 built into the I/O too.

VIA also has a UDMA chipset out, or will soon at least.

Jammrock

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PIII 540 (120 MHz x 4.5 - 540), 256 MB PC133 SDRAM, ASUS P3B-F, Winblows 98 SuckyEdition, 18 GB WD Expert HDD, Encore 6x DVD w/ Dxr3 decoder, (TEMPORARY!!!) Voodoo 3 2000 @ 175 MHz which will be replaced by a Matrox G400 MAX, Sound Blaster Live! full retail, MAG DX715T 17

[MACKJ]

I also use the ABIT BE6 (third ABIT for me).
I have two ATA66 drives, Quantum KA18.2,and CR13.3, and both are recognized fine by the ATA66 controller(Highpoint). There is one warning about the BE6 worth mentioning if you plan on overclocking. The first runs of BE6 would not retain the VCORE settings within softmenu after reboot. The bios still reported things as you had set them, but the proc voltage returned to 2V. The only options were to return you board to ABIT for repair or remove for yourself a resistor(R59 0 ohm) by the ATX power socket. I chose the latter course of action and now all works fine.The exact same repair is performed at ABIT. Newer boards will not have this problem, but then I only got mine 3 weeks ago!

[IvanE]

Quick questions!

1) Do you have a DMA checkbox in the device manager properties of the fireball

2) If yes, how exactly did you install this drive?

I have an ABIT BE6 and am using the UDMA 66 cable, however, this performance is very poor. I have installed the latest HPT366 drivers along with Highpoints V1.20 software.

3) Is there some specific bios setting that I might be missing?

Regards

Ivan

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Abit BE6, PIII 450@600(133,1/4*4.5), Mil G400 Max PD5.30 ,128 Megs PC100 CAS3, SBlive 2.1,Quantum Fireball 13Gig, Acerview 78ie,40xPioneer CDROM, 56k Modem

[paul]

Ivan, what are your hd Tach numbers?

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k6-3 450 @500 - tyan 1590s bios 1.16 - wdac310100 - g200 mill sgram w/8mb upgrade & bios 2.6-20 PD 5.25 - AGP1x - 128MB 10ns sdram - sblive value 2.1 - 3com 3c905b-tx - cable access (28.8k for emergencies) - win98 service pack 1 + 2
dx7

[IvanE]

Paul,

Sorry for the late reply. I used HD Tach 2.6 last night and got the following results.

Average access time: 13.9 ms
Read Burst: 59 mb/sec
data transfer rate average 14.9 k/sec

Burst seems fine, but the rest I am not sure. I am still confused why I do not have a DMA check box available when looking at the properties section of the drive. Is this normal?

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Abit BE6, PIII 450@600(133,1/4*4.5), Mil G400 Max PD5.30 ,128 Megs PC100 CAS3, SBlive 2.1,Quantum Fireball 13Gig, Acerview 78ie,40xPioneer CDROM, 56k Modem

[Jammrock]

I have an Abit Hot Rod UDMA 66 controller card in my computer. It works just fine. Of course if you do not have a PCI slot open it could cause some troubles. The controller card works like a SCSI card in that you set up your BIOS to boot to a SCSI device and then the UDMA controller installs a SCSI BIOS into memory with the drive information. I then disabled both IDE ports in the BIOS to free up IRQ's 14 and 15, then stuck the controller on 14. Works like a charm, and fast as hell. THat and I get to use my ASUS board still.

BTW, all the BX Abit boards that have UDMA 66 use the same chipset as the Hot Rod 66, but it's built on to the motherboard. Installs the SCSI BIOS the same and everything.

Jammrock

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PIII 450@something higher, 256 MB RAM, 35 GB on 2 WD Expert drives, Abit Hot Rod UDMA 66 controller, CL 6x DVD, G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, LinkSys Etherfast 10/100, DSI 56k modem, Addtronics 6896A Case w/ a crap load of fans and Dynmat noise dampening in it, MAG DX715T monitor.

Hi, my name is Jammrock. I'm a computer phreak and an EverSmack addict.

[Alfie]

IvanE,
Did you set the hard drive to cable select?

[Thundrchez]

My Asus K7M Athlon mobo has UDMA/66 integrated into it. And it isn't a messy, headachey integration like the Abit boards. I have an Abit BP6 mobo as well. It has the 440BX integrated dma/33 as well as an integrated card with udma/66s. This leads to more headaches with IRQs, etc.

[LAMFDTK]

Asus makes the P3B-F with UDMA-66 that is the board that I wish I had...

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PIII-450@504, 128 HDSRAM, Asus P3BF, G400/32, SBLive!,Brand stinkin' new Sony G400 19", (no Dual head) Nokia 447Xi 17",AOPEN DVD-1040 10x slot, and some fish,

[RAB]

IvanE,
This sounds like its wrong advice, but try it. You can always switch it back. It worked for me.

Put both your Hard Drive and DVD-Rom on the primary IDE cable with the HD as Master and the DVD as Slave. Then unplug the secondary cable from the motherboard. The HD goes on the end of the cable and the DVD in the middle. This upped my HD Tach scores from about 14 average to 19 average.

I don't know why this works, but I'm guessing that having two IDE channels active makes the CPU work harder to keep track of them both. All on one channel makes it easier for the CPU to find things and it lets the IDE controller concentrate on just one channel.

RAB

[birdy]

you won't get a dma checkbox because the pc thinks the drive is a scsi. Scsi drives don't have the check box.

[RAB]

No you don't get a DMA check box, but if you have a VIA chipset and you install VIADMATOOL you can select the DMA mode for hard drives and CD\DVD ROM drives. Does Highpoint offer something similar?

RAB