Joel & SS7 users: How to get HD perf. back under 98SE?

[Fat Tone]

I know this is a little off topic, but as I went from 95 to 98SE just to get the most out of my G400, I feel reasonably justified asking the experts here :-)

I have a K6-2-400 on a PC Chips M577 with latest BIOS, 128Mb SDRAM, G400 32 DH(1.5, 5.21), PCI128, Seagate 8.4Gig etc. Under Win95, Wintune98 reported 15Mb/sec uncached transfer rate - this has dropped to ~2.5 under 98SE.

Under 95, I used the VIA drivers for IRQ, busmastering etc following the routine on Joels homepage (I had a G200 then. Where's the link in your profile gone, Joel?). The last driver I installed was the PC Chips IDE driver which gave the wonderful performance.

I've tried every combo. I can think of, using the VIA 2.9, 3.0, 3.55 drivers and the specific PC Chips IDE drivers, but nothing makes much difference to the performance under a fresh install on 98SE.

Can anyone PLEASE suggest which drivers to install, and in what order (and how to ensure all my previous attempts are not having some hangover effect)?

BTW, I had lockups and BSODs when shutting down with my first attempt at getting the G400 going under 98SE, which were solved by installing the G400 first, and then the PCI128 (drivers 1204 then updating to 1207). Installing the PCI128 also causes the power management icon to appear in the tray - wierd eh? I have no IRQ sharing or any conflicts reported.


Many Thanks

Tony.

[anid]

I should thing that the 15mb/s you had before was an artifact... Winmag admits that that happens on some systems, usually ones running NT. I am willing to bet that you have the same (or better) performance now under 98 than you did before. The highest uncached I have seen that I would trust as being "representative" was close to 4 mb/s. I wouldn't really concern myself with wintune scores, though, particularly on HDD performance. Use HD Tach or SisSoft Sandra instead...

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Epox MVP3G-M, K6-3 450@504, 192MB Siemens CL2, Maxtor 4320 10GB, Mill G200 SD

[Fat Tone]

Well don't I feel silly. Over the years I've watched that number rise as I have changed harddrives - the last was a Quantum 3.2Gig that benched at around 7-8Mb/sec.

I have to admit that the o/s doesn't seem any slower than before, but I haven't tried any apps yet since the re-install. Apart from the numbers, I was very disappointed with the performance of Carmageddon 2, and put it down to HDD, considering my CPU and state-of-the-art G400. Maybe it's just a badly written game?

My friend had a simillar problem when going from 95 to 98 on his PII system. He started at ~2 and eventually got drivers for his gigabyte BX board that now report (in Wintune98) ~14Mb/sec, and he actually noticed the difference.

Thanks for the advice.

Tony.

[Joel]

I have added the link back to my profile. I am also currently using the latest 4 in 1 version updated on 9/6/99. It contains IDE Busmaster drivers 2.1.41, Via AGP drivers 3.55, IRQ Routing driver 1.3a, and the VIA Registry Patch (ACPI). I am at work at this time so I am unable to run wintune but I will when I get home, but speaking from memory the 2.5 that you are receiving sounds about right. I will let you know later.

Joel

[Himself]

WinTune is not a real benchmark, it's too fragile, a bit of wind can distort all the numbers to hell. Michael's disk benchmark was a lot better, much more consistant for driver comparisons.

My sympathies on the PC-Chips motherboard, BTW.

[SteveC]

No, the M577 is the only board PCChips EVER sold that was half decent. I think that's cos it's not theirs.

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[Joel]

Here are my Wintune 98 results as promised.

Summary
AMD K6-2 with MultiMedia Extensions
(1) 401 MHz
Windows 98 4.10.1998
Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA)
800x600@32bits/pixel
898±0.66(0.073%) MIPS (Integer operations)
477±1.4(0.29%) MFLOPS (Floating point operations)
86±0.19(0.22%) (Integer application simulation)
51±0.014(0.027%) (Floating point application simulation)
84±0.098(0.12%) (MMX application simulation)
41±1.8(4.4%) Video MPixels/s
102±1.1(1%) OpenGL MPixels/s
189±2.2(1.2%) Direct3D MPixels/s
109±1.6(1.4%) Direct3D Null driver score
59±0.2(0.33%) Direct3D Primary driver score
627±4.9(0.78%) RAM MB/s
74±4.4(5.9%) cached disk MB/s
3.5±0.036(1%) uncached disk MB/s

Joel

[Fat Tone]

Thanks Joel. I'm getting 2.6 at the moment, so maybe it's about right. Which version of Wintune are you using - you have a couple of extra lines in there to me.

Tony.

[Joel]

I have version 1.0.38

Joel

[GD]

After Win98SE did you use the FAT32 convertion utility? FAT32 is supposed to have an impact on performace, not so big like the one you are describing though...
BTW 15MB/sec is really high.. not even my 10000rpm Ultra2 Wide HD can go so high...

George