IDE Disk takes much IO wait

Hi,

I own for a short time a VIA based motherboard (Asrock 4VoreDual-VSTA) with
a Core 2 Duo on it. Unfortunately Linux (gentoo) runs not really nice on
it: any disk access takes much IO wait time, the whole system gets very
slow on heavy disk usage. UDMA 5 is enabled (in BIOS and using hdparm),
disabling makes it much worse. I tried both the ATA
(CONFIG_BLK_DEV_VIA82CXXX) and the PATA (CONFIG_PATA_VIA) drivers, makes no
difference.

Here is some output which might help:

# hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
Timing buffered disk reads: 172 MB in 3.02 seconds = 57.04 MB/sec

# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT894 Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT894 Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT894 Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT890 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT894 Host Bridge
00:00.5 PIC: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT894 I/O APIC Interrupt Controller
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT894 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge
00:02.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT890 PCI to PCI Bridge
Controller
00:0b.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video
Capture (rev 11)
00:0b.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture
(rev 11)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A SATA 2-Port Controller
(rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc.
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 07)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev a0)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev a0)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev a0)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev a0)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A PCI to ISA Bridge
00:11.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8251 Ultra VLINK Controller
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev
7c)
00:13.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A Host Bridge
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600 GT]
(rev a2)
80:01.0 Audio device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA High Definition Audio
Controller (rev 10)

# cat /proc/interrupts
CPU0 CPU1
0: 13381694 0 IO-APIC-edge timer
1: 23813 0 IO-APIC-edge i8042
6: 3 0 IO-APIC-edge floppy
7: 0 0 IO-APIC-edge parport0
8: 0 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc
9: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi acpi
12: 4 0 IO-APIC-edge i8042
14: 1152535 0 IO-APIC-edge libata
15: 0 0 IO-APIC-edge libata
16: 1216973 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi nvidia
19: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi Bt87x audio
20: 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb2
21: 2746896 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi libata, ehci_hcd:usb1,
uhci_hcd:usb4
22: 809201 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb3
23: 4432260 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb5, eth0
NMI: 13381656 13381536
LOC: 13379882 13379821
ERR: 0


I have configured many other systems much in the same way (but with other
chipsets/CPUs), I never got those problems. I really don't have ideas where
to look anymore...

Cheers and thanks in advance
Martin


--
Sorry for the fake e-mail address, remove ".NO" and "SPAM." befor sending me
any mails...
.

Relevant Pages