TrojanMan

I have a PE400SC with the intel 875p shipset with the ICH5 southbridge. Acording to intel the 875 does not support intels IAA (intel application accelerator) from which i have read is required to run NCQ (native command queuing) for the newer SATA HD's. The ICH6 is needed acording to intel. Does anyone have any additional information or any exprience running NCQ on the 875 chipset (ICH5)?

This came off of intels web site "Note: In order to take advantage of NCQ, you need: Intel® 915 or Intel® 925X Express Chipset (ICH6R), Intel® Application Accelerator version 4.0 or later, and a hard drive which supports NCQ."

Is it as simple as that or is there a workaround to use it on the 875?

Thanks

TrojanMan

shocky123

From my experience with SATAII (ncq)... No sort of intel application accelerator program is needed, and I havent ever heard of this type of thing actually.
This likely has to deal with those boards and chipsets that have an integrated SATA interface, this might actually need extra things to be compatible.

I'll look into it a bit later

~Kyle

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TrojanMan

My dell has an integrated SATA controller. FYI. Im looking at buying a new HD with NCQ. From the benchmarks i have read it typically does NOT increase performance drasticly but does help. Looking for people who have expirience with this same config.

shocky123

MKay, NCQ will not boost your performance unless you are running multi-tasking i/o's constantly.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4...q/index.x?pg=1
is a decent review explaining this.

As far as your chipset is concerned, you're out of luck until Intel releases a new firmware/somthing upgrade for the chipset that will allow for simultaneous threading to occur. This however will not likely happen, as SATAII and NCQ are good ways to push sales of the newer chipsets.

'You need parallel threads that are running simultaneously(which is emulated by IAA) in order to get a scenario where you can take advantage of command queing. Without these threads, there will never be a real queue.'

If you are desperate to have this 'performance gain that so many people are talking about yet nobody's seen' on your desktop, then here is how you would go about making it work...
The ICH5 isnt supported with the IAA, and therefor cannot emulate the threading process' required for queueing on your SATA drive.

(The workaround you requested): ..*and yes it is as simple as they stated*
1. You will need to purchase a PCI-RAID controller, or PCI-X Host Controller (expensive)

2. You will need a new SATA drive that supports NCQ
3. You will need to make sure the drivers exist and the card you are buying actually works with your OS. (..trust me, it sucks to have to write the drivers yourself)
4. This all adds up. Oh yeah, when installing windows on your new SATA controller, you have to rig it up so that you do NOT install the WMD version of the drivers, these I have seen do not allow the disk to be bootable.

So you're looking at a decent cost for a performance gain much less than going from a 7200RPM drive to a 10,000RPM

~Kyle Knows of This

TrojanMan

Thanks. I have read that NCQ doesnt help out alot, and in some cases actually hurts performance, but i was just wondering IF there was an easy "cheap" solution.

Thanks again