P4C800-E Deluxe & NCQ

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Guardian

Does the above boards promise controller support Native Command Queuing
(NCQ) or would I need to purchase a separate controller to have that
feature?

Thanks,
Scott
 
"Guardian" said:
Does the above boards promise controller support Native Command Queuing
(NCQ) or would I need to purchase a separate controller to have that
feature?

Thanks,
Scott
Click to expand...

This paper explains that NCQ uses a couple of new SATA commands.

http://www.seagate.com/content/docs/pdf/whitepaper/D2c_tech_paper_intc-stx_sata_ncq.pdf

This thread documents the hunt for command queueing:

http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=15638

"There are only 2 controllers right now that I am sure that
supports NCQ, being the ICH6 on the new Intel chipset boards,
and the Silicon Image 3124. I work in firmware at Maxtor,
and the only controllers that we can run our NCQ tests on are
the ICH6 and 3124. Now, the Highpoint 1829X I believe supports
it as well, but we don't have drivers in our testing environment
quite yet that support it"

AHCI and NCQ are mentioned in the ICH6 datasheet, but not ICH5.

There is so little info on 20378, there is no way to be sure
what feature set it has got. I don't think Promise have web
pages for their OEM chips. The chip also has a Marvell logo,
but they are even more tight lipped about their products.

I would _guess_ based on the age of the 20378, the answer would
be no.

Paul
 
Guardian said:
Does the above boards promise controller support Native Command Queuing
(NCQ) or would I need to purchase a separate controller to have that
feature?

Thanks,
Scott
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity -- what OS do you run, and what kind of workload do you
have that you think will benefit from NCQ? What kind of throughput gain
do you expect from NCQ? How many SATA HDs are on/in this box?
 
Bob Willard said:
Out of curiosity -- what OS do you run, and what kind of workload do you
have that you think will benefit from NCQ? What kind of throughput gain
do you expect from NCQ? How many SATA HDs are on/in this box?
Click to expand...

I run WinXP Pro....very minimal workload as this is my home
pc...spreadsheets, word documents, a little playing around with
photos.....very little gaming, etc. As of now, I have no SATA HD's, but I
believe one of two of my HD's is going south so I figure I'll be buying
another soon.......figured I'd go with a SATA so as of now, I have no
experience at all with SATA or anything related to it. I can get a 160 to
200mb Seagate SATA for a good price and I've read positive reviews on the
drives. While reading the reviews I've seen mention of NCQ having a
performance advantage which is why I ended up asking the question. Maybe you
have some advice? Thanks

Scott
 
Paul said:
This paper explains that NCQ uses a couple of new SATA commands.

http://www.seagate.com/content/docs/pdf/whitepaper/D2c_tech_paper_intc-stx_s
ata_ncq.pdf

This thread documents the hunt for command queueing:

http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=15638

"There are only 2 controllers right now that I am sure that
supports NCQ, being the ICH6 on the new Intel chipset boards,
and the Silicon Image 3124. I work in firmware at Maxtor,
and the only controllers that we can run our NCQ tests on are
the ICH6 and 3124. Now, the Highpoint 1829X I believe supports
it as well, but we don't have drivers in our testing environment
quite yet that support it"

AHCI and NCQ are mentioned in the ICH6 datasheet, but not ICH5.

There is so little info on 20378, there is no way to be sure
what feature set it has got. I don't think Promise have web
pages for their OEM chips. The chip also has a Marvell logo,
but they are even more tight lipped about their products.

I would _guess_ based on the age of the 20378, the answer would
be no.

Paul
Click to expand...

Thanks Paul for the research you did and the links you provided, I believe
your guess is correct.

Scott
 
Guardian said:
I run WinXP Pro....very minimal workload as this is my home
pc...spreadsheets, word documents, a little playing around with
photos.....very little gaming, etc. As of now, I have no SATA HD's, but I
believe one of two of my HD's is going south so I figure I'll be buying
another soon.......figured I'd go with a SATA so as of now, I have no
experience at all with SATA or anything related to it. I can get a 160 to
200mb Seagate SATA for a good price and I've read positive reviews on the
drives. While reading the reviews I've seen mention of NCQ having a
performance advantage which is why I ended up asking the question. Maybe you
have some advice? Thanks

Scott
Click to expand...

I don't think you'll see any gain from NCQ. The primary advantage
of command queueing is the ability to reorder multiple outstanding
commands to minimize seek distances. Unless you have an OS that
supports asynchronous I/O, and a workload that commonly issues lots
of concurrent disk commands, you won't see much increase in
throughput due to NCQ. NCQ is really aimed at database servers
and the like, not at single-user PCs.

For better HD performance, buy a better HD. The WD740GD, at 10K RPM,
is still the king of the SATA HDs. Also, two HDs is better than one;
using one HD for the OS and one for the pagefile does help, and you
can experiment a bit to find the best placement of your frequently-used
data and apps.
 
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