> > But everything's sharing the PCI so unless you have something like
> > HyperTransport or VIA's V-Link or something like that you won't be
> accelerating
> > PCI transfers over DMA to their fullest potential because PCI is just 33MB/sec
> > by itself.
> >
> Ok, how do i check if that's enabled or not? ( my mobo is a VIA btw )

It's just a hardware feature, either you have it or you don't. It would be listed in your manual or on the web site for your motherboard...

The DMA setting would be in your BIOS:



Gotta enable all that. Then you have to check in Windows to see if it's really enabled (should say in device manager or something). If not, here are some things to try. Also you have to be sure your devices support DMA mode but it's rare to find some that don't.

> > So if you DO have V-Link or HyperTransport then that wouldn't be the limiting
> > factor. But maybe DMA isn't enabled on your CD-R or something, you should
> check
> > for that. If you have a VIA board you gotta get the 4-in-1 drivers.
> >
> Kinda lost me there. How do i check the DMA (edit, ok, i checked, it's enabled
> as multi-word(?) DMA mode 2) and what 4 in 1 drivers are you talking about?

The highest possible mode... if multi-word is the highest possible setting than set it to that, but usually it's called DMA mode 1, DMA mode 2, DMA mode 3, etc just like the various PIO modes.

The 4-in-1 drivers are here somewhere (you used to be able to directly link to the driver download, but not now, sorry) and ensure that your hardware capabilities are used since Windows does not normally come with the most up to date chipset drivers. The 4-in-1 drivers, or "Hyperion" as they are now called, are the name of VIA's chipset drivers (instead of "driver" nVidia calls it "Detonator" or "ForceWare", ATI calls them "Catalyst", etc, it's just marketing). It used to be called 4-in-1 because you'd get an AGP Gart, IDE driver, Chipset INF files, and PCI routing driver. These are all very important to install to get top performance!

> Yeah, if i can get this speed-lock issue in check the max i'll get is 4x
> anyways. My DVDR was 8x, probably gonna get a 16x for the exchange, but I can't
> seem to find any media around here over 4x. :-\

Ohhh I see. I thought it was 2x max.