New Version of Via Patch 1.04 for all Raid Cards.

[sptw]

According to VIA, the new version of their patch will increase performance with RAID cards from ACARD, Adaptec and Highpoint and not only with Promise-cards anymore.This time, the results are more satisfying. The increase in burst transfer rates is between 20 to 30 MBytes/s with all cards. This brings VIAs PCI-Bus to the level of performance found with Intels chipset.In addition to this, VIAs patch 1.04 now works with older chipsets not featuring the V-Link-Bus as well.As of Friday, February 01, 2002, VIA has not posted the patch to either VIA ARENA or VIAtech.com. So, for the time being, tecCHANNEL.DE will be hosting the patch.
Read about the entire article and take the patch <a href="http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/817/11.html">here</a>

[mdzcpa]

Well, I tested it, and the patch seems to work as far as maximum burst speed is concerned. I've gained about 20-22 MByte/s in maximum burst speed with the patch...not bad at all. So far no other side effects noticed.

Overall this is pleasing. My KR7A RAID 0 is still not as fast as the KG7, but now it is very close (KG7 still about 10-15 MByte/s faster).

One downside is that as FSB increases, the effect of the patch decreases. By a FSB of 168 or so, the patch no longer has an effect. I'm not sure why yet.

Someone with some serious video editing routines will need to verify that this increase in burst speed improves real time RAID performance by measuring dropped frames and such. Only time will tell if we have a real improvement in day to day RAID performance. But so far it looks promising.

[LaughingClam]

so this patch only addresses raid issues? nothing in it for those that dont use arrays?

[sptw]

This patch will only install if it sees a RAID card and a VIA north & south chipset.

[EnerB]

And if you got Seagate Barracuda IV's in raid, your'e still out of luck :(

[GITster]

would this help my raid setup on my VP6? (look below for spec)

[sptw]

Sorry Gitster, i'm later here.I can't believe that it help you on your VP6.For two reasons:

- As i can see in your sig, you are on Raid1.Raid1 is for security and raid0 is for performance.The problem related with PCI Latency is with Raid0 and Read Burst Transfer.Unless you are working most of your time with audio and video editon, probably you can't see a difference.It doesn't matter for most of the people.
- for me it is still a beta patch.Via is lost in space with this problem related with PCI Latency.I could see a lot of people that gave it a try and fix one bug and get more bugs :D (sound Blaster)

This patch change 3 registers, 0D, 75 and 4B.If you are thinking to give it a try, I'd ask you to try WPCRSET instead of this patch. Register 75 is normally set to a value of 81, but I'll ask you to use WPCRSET to try setting it to 80, 83, or 87.Via put in this patch a change on this 75 registers as 224CLKs, i think it is so high.And in 0D register it is so weird too.They put it as 0D=F0 or 08.I got a better results on my KT7A-Raid with 0D=00 and 75=83.It gave me a 102mb/s on read burst tranfers.

I hope this help you.

[GITster]

Thanks for the info - just curious :)

[rostron1]

"... if you got Seagate Barracuda IV's in raid, your'e still out of luck"

So this patch isn't effective with Seagate Barracuda IV's?

"This patch will only install if it sees a RAID card ..."

So you've got to have a PCI RAID card?

I can't decide between the KG7 and the KR7 for video editting ... this patch business is slowly turning me towards the KG7 (even though it is an older MoBo)!

[sptw]

Hi rostron1.

Yes, this patch is not effective with Seagate Barracuda IV's.The problem with Seagate Barracuda IV is not related with PCI latency.


"This patch will only install if it sees a RAID card ..."

Sorry this is my fault.It mean "This patch will only install if it sees a Raid Card or a Raid on board controller......"

[mdzcpa]

VIA's patch is designed to improve RAID and SCSI burst speed only. It is NOT designed to improve general third party IDE performance that rides on the PCI bus. The patch will load if you use either an add-on RAID/SCSI card or on-board RAID. The patch looks for any SCSI/RAID device installed. So, no, there is no help for Barracuda users per se as the Seagate problems relate to other issues besides the PCI bus, as sptw stated above)..

To be honest, I had a better improvement in my RAID burst speed uisng George Breese's "unofficial VIA latency patch" version 0.19. The difference is that George was able to make a few registry changes that VIA could not. You see, VIA has their hands somewhat tied on what changes they can make and still be WHQL certified by Microsoft. George's patch is aggressive and would never fly with MS (it does not comply with all that wonderful energy saving BS that Microsft loves so much).

But, even so, VIA's patch does ok and has not been reported to hose users' systems.

I'll tell ya what though, with or without the patch I cannot honestly tell the difference. I think VIA developed the patch for the somewhat anal benchmark crowd (no offence to anyone, I'm in that crowd too:)) But burst speed is only one part of overall HD performance. Sustained throughput is what really matters, and what effects seat of the pants performance. And no one has been ctriticizing the KT266A on sustained throughput. It was only surmized that RAID and SCSI performance would be hindered because maximum burst speed was limited. that is why 99% of day to day users are not effected.

Again, how serious of a video edit machine will this be? Is this for your work or profession? Or are you just doing amateur level "for fun" stuff.

If my job, or my livelihood depended on it...and video edit speed and quality (less dropped frames) were paramount, I would still approach the KT266A mobos with caution. But if you are planning on doing general video edit for pleasure and fun, the KT266A with the VIA patch will do just fine. You must decide.

Every mobo (and chipset) has it's pors and cons. The PCI limitation with 3rd party controllers is probably the KT266A's only real con. Other than that, it is a superb chipset. It is otherwise the fastest chipset out there, and is very stable (probably VIA's best chipset ever to date). You must weigh whether that weak point will matter to you.

You can always try the KR7A with the patch. If it works great...your fine. If it does really effect you, you can always RMA it and get the KG7. All the components will swap righ over without much hassle.

[EnerB]

The patch installs and runs with no problem on my setup, there is just no gain in speed because the Barracuda IV drives are NOT as advertized by Seagate, and I quote:

------
"Barracuda ATA IV is the fastest ATA drive to date, which makes a solid all-around solution for performance PCs and entry-level RAID and server applications. Its early launch could help Seagate gain a stronger position than ever in this market."
-------
They are slower than my single IBM GXP75 30Gb disc.

The rest of this http://ninjamicros.com/vbulletin/images/smilies/bs.gif can be found here (http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/newsroom/releases/article/0,,1156,00.html)...

One thing I am very pleased with tho' is the noiselevel, I simply can't hear them... :)

[rostron1]

In reply to mdzcpa:

Regarding my choice of either a KG7 or a KR7 for a video editing machine - I will, hopefully, be making a living from this system, once built. Most of my video equipment is 'pro' quality and I wanted to build the most capable PC video editing system possible for a budget of around £2500 - £3000. Once built, I will be upgrading it as it pays for itself.

At the moment though it's looking likely that I will probably start off with the KG7!

It seems that manufacturers are becoming more aware of the ever increasing 'home' motion graphics market - more dual-headed graphics cards (Matrox, Elsa), more dual Athlon MoBos (Tyan, Asus, Epox), cheaper RAID/SCSI devices (Promise, Adaptec). And I'll bet it was this part of the market that helped bring to light the 'problem' with the KR7!

Things are getting faster and cheaper! It wasn't that long ago when you were talking £20,000 to get you started with some decent (linear) editing kit. When you look at it like that, I can't loose!

:xbthumb:

I'll keep this board posted ...

[mdzcpa]

Originally posted by rostron1
Regarding my choice of either a KG7 or a KR7 for a video editing machine - I will, hopefully, be making a living from this system, once built. Most of my video equipment is 'pro' quality and I wanted to build the most capable PC video editing system possible

At the moment though it's looking likely that I will probably start off with the KG7!



This is a wise choice then. I too would not gamble on such matters and base something like earnings potential on whether or not you feel lucky.

The KG7 s a fine mobo and you will likely be quite pleased. The stability of the AMD 761 is truly sweet and it shows that AMD developed the northbridge to work with it's own CPU. Remember that there are some manual BIOS settings for the KG7 which really improve memory bandwidth and actually improve stability. There are a number of folks here who can point you in the right direction when the time comes.

Kepp us posted.:)