nForce4 IDE Driver - data corruption

Post by **R00k** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:05 am

I'm guessing a lot of you guys have probably heard of this issue before?

I just heard of it yesterday, and I'm wondering if it isn't related to some of the problems I've been having with my system lately.

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/in ... t8171.html

Apparently when you stress the bus a lot (gaming, large data copies, etc), it will eventually lead to data corruption on the drive.
This affects SATA drives when you are using the nForce4 IDE driver. Removing the nVidia IDE driver and using the Windows driver seems to eliminate the problem.

Anybody else had any experience with this?

Post by **R00k** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 4:41 pm

Well I removed the nvidia ide driver a couple days ago, and I haven't had a blue screen or any errors so far at all.

Before - even after my recent clean XP install - I have had random blue screens in AoE3 and other games.

I'm not getting too excited, but if I go a few more days without any errors I might even start feeling confident about my system again.

Post by **shadd_** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:01 pm

gl man. sounds like pain in the ass. using the windows driver does not affect performance at all?

Post by **R00k** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:27 pm

Apparently the difference is barely perceptible in benchmarks, and you still get fairly close to the theoretical limit of the bus architecture.

I haven't run any benches on my machine, but haven't noticed any difference in performance so far.

I hope it's the solution I'm looking for.

Post by **shadd_** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:59 pm

get 3dmark2k1se. it's a little old but still the best for checking overall basic system performance. the low detail tests are cpu limited, high detail gpu limited. some depend on mem speed, some on both cpu+mem speed. you can usually pinpoint any problem by the results.

Post by **R00k** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 12:27 am

Cool, I'll do it. Do you know of any drive/data thruput testing apps?

Post by **shadd_** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 12:40 am

http://futuremark.com/download/?pcmark05.shtml

free version.

Post by **R00k** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 12:52 am

Thanks. :icon14:

Post by **YourGrandpa** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 1:05 am

R00k wrote:Thanks. :icon14:

SiSoft Sandra has bench marks tests that will allow you to compare your drive's performance to other drives.

Post by **shadd_** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 1:21 am

pcmark/3dmark can do that. thousands upon thousands of results on the ORB(online result browser)to compare. you can choose a shitload of system variables in your compare search as well.

sandra is good but futuremark is better, much better.