Your just re-spining your posts to make yourself look like you know.
I doubt, i'll rephrase that: There is no way a driver can degrade a HDDs performance to the point where its running at almost half its speed, wether its 'near it or at it'. It doesnt work like that.
And basing your 'findings' on a synthetic benchmark thats results can be skewed very easyily, is daft. Use a proper benchmark. Like the time it takes to copy a file of yours across from somewhere.
Learn how a driver works and its interaction with specific hardware protocols, then make a decision, but until then, dont take rash asumptions on HW/Drivers just because your having problems.
lol. Theres no such thing as a 'rated speed'. Nothing performs the same in every system, all a raptors rated at is SATA150/10k rpm. Nothing more. Which isnt an indication of performance. At all. I could hook it up to my system and get a sustained speed of 70Mb/s Where as a mates could get 65Mb/s.
Specs are not an indication of performance. Case example: Processors.
I havnt mentioned voltages at all. But dont get cheaky.
All manufacturers make mistakes, but its no reason to condem them for it.
2.6v to some memory is fine. But for the most part, or for most memory, its not.
Thats rich.
The last 10 posts have been my first for over a year and a half. As for 'spending my life'
I'd find it hard to actually spend my life on a forum considering ive spent the last 2 years working as a techy & the last year on/off in a hospital. So unless you actually KNOW my situation, dont comment.
I dont memorise anything. Its common sence. Anyone with more than a few weeks/months of experiance in hardware, quickly learn to put 2&2 together with acronyms, seeing as theres so many of them around.
Insulting a member with no knowledge of that members job/hobbys/ect; is daft. Dont asume that im some bloke who sits in front of a computer on these forums all day. I actually spend all day fixing PCs, and rarely come on these forums anymore. For various reasons.
Maybe Abit could have added more to their manuals for, no offence, amateurs like you, but the simple fact of the matter is, that most of Abit's products are targetted at the enthusiasts market, which the AN8 series, both the QOTES & Fata1ity line are part of, who know more than the average joe user. And thats what it comes down to.
Now, you'll probably take offence to the term 'amateur' and your free to do so. But dont take it personally. You come across as the same as alot of other users i come across, both in real life, and on the net. You know some. You know the basics, and a little of the 'more than basic', but you are quick to asumptions based upon incomplete knowledge on how a computers hardware/software interact. Again, dont take it personally. These forums are here for people to learn as well. Even me.
Now you may not like the fact that their manuals, which i'll admit are a little sparse, are nothing more than a overinflated quickstart guide, but if the market they aim at is one that normally doesnt look at the manual, you'll see why they do it.
Now go and buy another tier1 manufacturers board, and you'll probably see everything in their manual explained very well. But thats becuase they cater for a different market.
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Anyway, lets not argue this all day, lets see if we can sort out your problems:
Re-install the correct drivers, as theres 3 varients of the nForce drivers, you'll be needing these drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winxp32_amd_6.66.html
When installing, DONT install the FW manager/access manager.
Once installed, goto device manager, and make sure read/write caching is on, as well as the appropriate DMA mode. Then run the drive test program thats also there.
Report back and we'll see what we can do.
We'll see if we can get one problem at a time sorted.
##EDIT##
Just thought, by any chance are you running a RC version of windows? Alot of the problems that you are having are very similar to the ones a mate of mine has had recently, changing to a proper copy of XP Pro fixed the vast majority of his problems.
Just a thought though, if your running a retail copy, just ignore this.