DMA revisited

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers Plextor Writer
#1

I have recently been experiencing the oft-reported buffer problems with my 708a f/w 1.04. When I checked the IDE settings in windows (and plextools) the drive was reportedly running in ultra DMA mode 2. However, when I tried deleting the secondary controller and rebooting – as suggested in the FAQs - I could burn a CD with no problems and windows again said the drive was running in ultra DMA mode 2. The problem is that when I restarted again and tried burning a disk I got the same buffer fluctuations as before :frowning:

The various workarounds posted deal with changing the drive mode from PIO to DMA mode but as the drive is reportedly already in DMA mode these don’t seem to offer a solution. Any thoughts?

Thanks

p.s. motherboard is Asus A7V8X which is KT400 so I don’t expect to see the problems seen with nforce2 boards and the problems have appeared without any hardware changes

#2

Via Chipsets have known issues with DMA. via has released a utility “VIA DMA Tool” you can download it from viaarena

#3

My motherboard has the same VIA KT400 chipset and I have no problems whatsoever with DMA. Have you tried installing the latest VIA Hyperion drivers for your system? Have you checked if there are any processes running in the background that cause a high CPU load? Please report back!

#4

Thanks for the help. I downloaded the latest hyperion drivers from viaarena - mostly because I couldn’t find the Via DMA tool, I must have been having a bad day of something - and I’m pleased to report that the problems have gone - as quickly as they appeared.

I had Asus drivers installed before but via’s drivers are newer and have solved the problem so I was wondering if it is better to use manufacturer’s drivers where possible like nvidia and detonator?

#5

I general I would say yes. I have an Asus GeForce 3 card in my computer but I don’t use the Asus drives, but the nVidia ones. Overall these drivers are updated more often and more stable. This is of course not always the case! It’s best to experiment a little to find out what works best for you.