Hyperthreading issue, S-ATA drive settings in BIOS

[trimi]

Hello guys,
I have purchassed a PC with the following specs:
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 531 3.00GHz, Type: 0
Family: F, Model: 4, Stepping: 1, Revision: 12, L1 Trace Cache: 12 Kµops
L1 Data Cache: 16 KB, L2 Cache: 1 MB, Packaging: LGA775, Platform Compatibility Guide: 04A
MB: P5GD2-X, Rev 1.xx, BIOS vendor American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS revision 1002.002, BIOS release date 06/16/2005, Chipset Intel i915 rev. 4, Southbridge Intel 82801 (ICH6) rev. 3, Sensor chip Winbond A1
Memory Module: 1X DDR2-SDRAM PC4300 - 512 MBytes
Graphics: Radeon X300 Extreme AX300SE 128MB
HDD: S-ATA Maxtor 160GB 8MB cache
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

1. When I enable HT I experience general system slowdown /eg. browsing folders, etc/, I found the system faster when disabling HT???
2. I cannot find S-ATA configuration in BIOS. I see my maxtor to be configured as Third IDE Master /why I don't see Primary SATA master???/

note: Hyperthreading was enabled in BIOS before installing the OS.

Your participation in this is matter is highly appreciated.

 

[Liquidlen]

welcome to Techspot
I just loaded a system using a Intel Mb ,SATA drive.
There are two software files (Chipset & HDD accelerator)at Intel that deal directly with Sata drives and RAID arrays.
Because I have a different board you are going to have to do some investigating there yourself.Read carefully.
You go by the chipset model on your MB
Remember Bios do not see SATA as IDE primaries etc. They are treated like SCSI
As for Hyperthreading , I have read that in fact if you do not use alot of multi tasking especially with software that use Floating point processing Your CPU will be slower, than if you just disable the Hyperthreading.
Just what I read !!!!

 

[trimi]

Thank you Liquidlen for your reply, there is an issue with HDD as well. I think Asus did not address this problem wery well with ICH6 Southbridge. My drive is treated as IDE and I don't see any SCSI option in Bios. It performs as IDE100 and not utilizing SATA 150 transfer rates. As far as I know, there is no SATA controller driver for ICH6. I have motherboard disk, and I see nothing like SATA driver for ICH6.

 

[Liquidlen]

The only thing that is important initially is that your Bios can in fact see the disk.Then depending upon whether your O/S is installed or not will depend how you install the correct Intel drivers for all controllers. This you must learn from your Mb web or Intel.
As for the bios I would investigate the bios version you are running .There may be an update that corrects how Setup sees your drive.
On my P4P800x the only setting in Bios is under "IDE configuration -(default= Enhanced, and below, PATA+SATA)
It sounds like you have windows installed so read the different installation files at Intel for the Chipset drivers and Sata/raid drivers

 

[trimi]

This is what I found:
"Sata interface transfer rates are independent of UDMA mode settings. Sata interface transfer rates will operate at the bus's maximum speed, regardles of the UDMA mode reported by SATA device or system BIOS".