32-bit access, ON or OFF??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Brown
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Bob Brown

In BIOS there is a choice for the hard drive to enable or disable
"32-bit access".

Do I enable it or disable it? Why is there a choice also??

It's this drive "Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS"

Here is some system specs

Windows XP Home Edition [SP2] 5.1.2600
Motherboard= Asus A8S-X
Chipset SiS 756, AMD Hammer
CPU AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice S939 Step DH-E6
\

Thanks again.
 
Bob Brown said:
In BIOS there is a choice for the hard drive to enable or disable
"32-bit access".

Do I enable it or disable it? Why is there a choice also??

It's this drive "Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS"

Here is some system specs

Windows XP Home Edition [SP2] 5.1.2600
Motherboard= Asus A8S-X
Chipset SiS 756, AMD Hammer
CPU AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice S939 Step DH-E6
Click to expand...
Since modern PCs use 32-bit I/O buses such as the PCI bus, doing 16-bit
transfers is a waste of half of the potential bandwidth of the bus. Enabling
32-bit access in the BIOS (if available) causes the PCI hard disk interface
controller to bundle together two 16-bit chunks of data from the drive into
a 32-bit group, which is then transmitted to the processor or memory. This
results in a small performance increase.
 
Bob Brown said:
In BIOS there is a choice for the hard drive to enable or disable
"32-bit access".

Do I enable it or disable it? Why is there a choice also??

It's this drive "Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS"

Here is some system specs

Windows XP Home Edition [SP2] 5.1.2600
Motherboard= Asus A8S-X
Chipset SiS 756, AMD Hammer
CPU AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice S939 Step DH-E6
Click to expand...
Since modern PCs use 32-bit I/O buses such as the PCI bus, doing 16-bit
transfers is a waste of half of the potential bandwidth of the bus. Enabling
32-bit access in the BIOS (if available) causes the PCI hard disk interface
controller to bundle together two 16-bit chunks of data from the drive into
a 32-bit group, which is then transmitted to the processor or memory. This
results in a small performance increase.
Click to expand...

It's a sata drive though? no matter?
 
In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt "meerkat said:
Bob Brown said:
In BIOS there is a choice for the hard drive to enable or disable
"32-bit access".

Do I enable it or disable it? Why is there a choice also??

It's this drive "Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS"

Here is some system specs

Windows XP Home Edition [SP2] 5.1.2600
Motherboard= Asus A8S-X
Chipset SiS 756, AMD Hammer
CPU AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice S939 Step DH-E6
Click to expand...
Since modern PCs use 32-bit I/O buses such as the PCI bus, doing 16-bit
transfers is a waste of half of the potential bandwidth of the bus. Enabling
32-bit access in the BIOS (if available) causes the PCI hard disk interface
controller to bundle together two 16-bit chunks of data from the drive into
a 32-bit group, which is then transmitted to the processor or memory. This
results in a small performance increase.
Click to expand...
You need to be using the *good* cables though.
 
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