News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

August 30, 2006

windows

It’s alive, DMA lives!

Posted Aug. 30, ’06, 7:33 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Windows

Boot Camp I reported yesterday about a fix to a lack of DMA support in Boot Camp. The instructions were so popular that the user’s bandwidth went over the limit. Luckily someone in the MacRumors forums had a copy.

After further review, it turns out that they aren’t so hard. Further, they look far less intimidating when you take out all the stuff that isn’t actually necessary (like all the stuff to ahem avoid Windows Genuine Advantage).

I didn’t have much to save from my current Windows installation, so I went ahead and gave it a shot. The first time out, I installed just the SATA drivers. I didn’t follow the instructions very well and included both the 32 bit and 64 bit drivers. It didn’t take. The second time, I included the chipset drivers and only the 32 bit SATA drivers.

Eureka! It worked. I went from 3.7 MB/s in PIO mode to 62.3 MB/s in DMA mode. The extra bonus is that sustained disk activity doesn’t soak up 50% of the processor power. Very cool. At any rate, if you’re interested in using a Mac Pro with Boot Camp for anything intensive, check out the link above. Another forum member has edited down the instructions to the essentials.


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