Poll....... Intel Application Accelerator yes/no?

[dave8311]

Do you use the Intel Application Accelerator ?

Why, or why not?

Thanks.

 

[The Green Bean]

dun use it....wht des it do nyways?

 

[Canterwood]

I've used it in the past, and it made things a little quicker in Win2K, but when I tried using my old cd-writer it wouldn't burn CD's until I unistalled IAA and went back to the generic IDE drivers.

 

[RVN]

I have traditionally used it ...until I read a thread on multiple CDC errors that cause PIO mode and won't go back to DMA, that was undocumented in WinXP ...when I couldn't tell whether or not DMA was enabled or not (no advanced tab under properties in the device mgr) ...I decided not to use it anymore. I didn't like the inability to tell whether or not DMA was enabled or not. Since, I quit using it, I can't tell any difference. Also, I couldn't find enough documentation to support using it or needing it for that matter.

 

[AndyHui]

If you are using Win2K, you should install them for a good boost in speed. Most of the CDRW problems should be ironed out by now.

If you are using WinXP, you should probably stick to the default MS IDE drivers, unless you want to use the RAID functions on the ICH5R. In order to take full advantage of the ICH5R, you will need to use the IAA.

 

[Goi]

Hi Andy...why the difference between Win2K and WinXP users? Care to explain? I'm interested to know, I'm on Win2K btw and I used to have it installed but I uninstalled it and haven't noticed much of a difference.

 

[AndyHui]

The WinXP MS IDE drivers are written much more aggressively and do a lot more prefetching than the Win2K drivers. Essentially, the IAA leveraged the same thing, so there wasn't as much performance gain in WinXP as opposed to Win2K.

 

[Goi]

OK, so I guess its recommended for Win2K users to install IAA?

 

[AndyHui]

I generally recommend it. However, some people still do seem to get screwy results with CDRWs (even after all this time), so if you do experience problems, remove them.

 

[Goi]

 

[Goi]

Well, actually, both my HDDs are on a standalone PCI ATA133 Controller...my onboard controllers are used for my DVD-ROM and CD-RW drive only. With such a setup, I assume I wouldn't reap the benefits of aggressive prefetching?

 

[AndyHui]

Not really, no.

 

[dave8311]

Thanks for responding.

I thought I might get a few more opinions, but it looks like this topic is dead.

 

[Wiktor]

It caused my HDD to spind down every other reboot (not always, after a longer Windows session), and on shut down it would preform an emergency lock (like if I unpowered the HDD suddenly). I never found an answer what exactly was going on.

I know IAA was the problem. Now I use Ultra ATA Storage Driver (which is an old version of IAA). I don't know if it replaces MS IDE drivers, I think it does. My system if Intel D850MV mobo and IBM GXP60 drive.

On newer systems I don't think there would be any problems, so I'd use it. It has some nice control options such as optimizing your drive for minimum noise, it does show what mode it is running in and you can change it. Plus a lot of info like your HDD firmware version.

 

[Tseng]

My desktop computer has been AMD for a long time. But my previous personal laptop and current laptop are Intel.

Because both laptops equip old chipset, the most updated IAA I can use is 2.2.2.

The good feature of IAA is the detail control of the HD. Most of the 2.5" laptop HD has an option that allow user to control power consumption. Since I don't really bring my laptop around, I choose Maximum Performance which does provide faster speed. And I have never had any problem with PIO and DMA. The IAA clearly shows the state of the transfer mode which is always DMA.