New Shuttle Motherboard for SONAR - Multiple IRQs

Hey everyone, I just learned some great lessons about upgrading...and I'm glad I did.

Some of you may recall I was unable to get my new Western Digital 120GB drive to read/write fast enough. After mucho tweaking, I eventually came to realize that the Amptron motherboard I was using was limiting all hard drives to Ultra DMA Mode 2.

I had originally thought that I was getting great read/write times under Ultra DMA Mode 2. WRONG!!! When I first setup this new system WinXP got all the hard drives operating in DMA Mode 5, and my read/write times increased drastically.

Well, I did what research I could online and went with a Shuttle AN35N Ultra Motherboard since it would support my currrent Athlon 2000+ CPU, but would also allow me to upgrade the CPU later to at least a 3000+ CPU.

On a tech note: once I installed the nVIDIA IDE drivers for this Shuttle motherboard, the systems hardware properties under the Device Manager no longer shows which DMA mode you are running in. Instead, it simply reads:

NVIDIA nForce(TM) IDE Controller

In other words, when clicking on the Properties for this nVIDIA IDE Controller, it does not show you anything about IDE DMA Modes.

However, here's some numbers for you:

On my previous Ultra DMA Mode 2 motherboard:

Average DISK WRITE Transfer Rate: 13,000 KBytes/Sec
Average DISK READ Transfer Rate: 22,000 KBytes/Sec

With this new Shuttle Motherboard using nVIDIA IDE Drivers:

Average DISK WRITE Transfer Rate: 80,000 KBytes/Sec
Average DISK READ Transfer Rate: 46,000 KBytes/Sec

I had no idea that hard drives could actually read/write as fast as they can.

And since I also recently started experimenting with home video/dvd production on this system, I no longer have problems with streaming video off the hard drives. No more choppiness.

Now I haven't fully put SONAR 3.1b SE through all it's paces, but so far it seems to be far more solid in operation than previously. So here's the lesson I learned. I didn't want to spend the extra money to upgrade to more modern hardware because I had just recently purchased 1GB of 164-pin memory, hard drive, a USB 2.0 card, etc...trying to update the older motherboard.

Since all the newer motherboard support 184-pin memory, I quickly realized I needed to go ahead and jump on the more modern bandwagon. But I'm glad I did spend my money now because of the final overall results.

Sometimes it's hard to teach an old dog new "computer" tricks...but it's out with the older and in with the newer.

On another tech note worth mentioning, there seems to be more/multiple IRQs now with this new motherboard, check it out below. I always thought IRQs were limited in number (perhaps I'm wrong), but I guess that's changed as well too.

IRQ 0 System timer
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2)
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM1)
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock
IRQ 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System
IRQ 10 MPU-401 Compatible MIDI Device
IRQ 12 NVIDIA nForce PCI System Management
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor
IRQ 16 Aark 20/20
IRQ 19 Best Data GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X
IRQ 20 Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller
IRQ 20 NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio Codec Interface
IRQ 21 Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller
IRQ 21 NVIDIA® nForce(TM) IDE Controller
IRQ 22 Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller
IRQ 22 NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Controller