What's DMA mode!? 2

[Guest_imported]

Can anyone tell me what enabling DMA mode on my hard drive will do!? I'm running an Athlon 1Ghz, Abit KT7A Motherboard, 128Meg RAM, and a Seagate Ultra ATA 66 15Gb Hard drive. I have the option of checking the box for DMA mode, but I was wondering if it would make any difference to the speed of my drive. Thanks in advance if you can help!

 

[dxd]

Yes you should enable it and yes it should provide a significant performance boost.

Here is a brief description:

Direct Memory Access (DMA): A method of ATA transfer that makes use of DMA
controller to bypass the CPU. Also supports bursting and bus-mastering to
achieve higher transfer rates. There are 3 overall standards that are further
divided: Single Word (mode 0 - mode 2) supporting speeds from 1.04 Mbps to
4.14 Mbps, Multiple Word (mode 0 - mode 2) supporting speeds from 4.17 Mbps
to 16.7 Mbps, and Synchronous DMA (mode 0 - mode 4) supporting speeds from
16.6 Mbps to 66.6 Mbps.

Doug
dxd_2000@yahoo.com

 

[estesflyer]

first of all, where do you go to check that option?

sounds like it cou8ld help out w/ a slow loading program issues

 

[Karl Blessing]

it's basically whats needed on the motherboard, in order to take control of Ultra DMA ATA/33 ATA/66 and ATA/100 , having direct memory access allows it to reach the speeds that were intended, it doesnt make much sense to shell out about 100$ extra , for a faster drive, if you dont take DMA into consideration Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[xscape]

Cheers for the help. I'll try it out. And for "estesflyer", in Win 98 you go to Control Panel > System > Device Manager tab > and under the Disk Drives choose your Hard Disk > hit the Properties button and choose the Settings tab. You should have a checkbox with DMA next to it.

 

[Guest_imported]

i am running an amd athlon 1 ghz on a gigabyte ga-71xe4 motherboard with a radeon 64 mb ddr vivo card. I downloaded the newest chipset drivers and now can't seem to enable dma on my hard drives. I've gone into device manager, and there is no dma box to check...There is also no way to set it on the motherboard BIOS. Please help me!! Thank you.