Does P35/ICH9 Northbridge make SATA's slow?

[ziniphrix]

Well, to get straight to the point, when it comes to loading almost anything, my computer is relatively slow. My mobo is an Asus P5KC with the p35/ich9 northbridge, which i've heard has given people problems when they tried to use a Western Digital sata hdd. I'm not using a Western Digital, though, I'm using a Seagate Barracuda 3.0/gb 7200rpm sata drive.

Just to explain the slow load up (i'm using windows xp btw), during the main windows load screen, when you see that green bar travel back and forth across the bottom of the screen, it repeats itself about 11 times. But when I use my old hard drive, a non-sata seagate, also with 7200 rpms, loads windows with only 4-5 repeats of that green bar. Also, when trying to load games (diablo 2 for example) theres a 2-3 second lag when trying to make/join a game in addition to the normal load up screen, which also takes about 2-3 seconds, for a total of 4-6 seconds of load time. My older, non-sata drive only has the actual load screen, for a total load time of 2-3 seconds.

My chipset and bios and all drivers are up-to-date, my computer is overclocked, i've manually set my cas latency, and I can't figure out why my comp is slow like this. Is it the sata drive or my mobo?


Windows XP 32-bit
2gb Kingston DDR2 4-4-4-12
Intel dualcore e6750 OC'd to 3.0ghz
Nvidia 8600gt 256mb
Sound Blaster X-Fi 256mb
Asus P5KC
Seagate Barracuda 320gb 3gb/s 7200rpm

 

[heister]

could be several things... is the drive sata 300 or sata 150 and same with the mobo.. while a sata 300 capable drive is back compatible i have heard of ppl getting slower results because of hte mis match

 

[ziniphrix]

the sata is 300, and matches with the mobo.

 

[heister]

idk what to tell you man.... it could be a whole number of things... something wrong with the sata cable, the connetion on the drive or mobo, a patchy spot on the internal mobo connections, a bad sodder job from the factory... ect...

 

[ThirdLeft152]

its not slowing down. i've noticed the same thing when i switched to sata, loading takes longer. don't know why, but go run a HDD benchmark and you'll see a huge improvement in speeds. almost triple the speed. i think your worrying a bit to much what is 2-3 seconds extra?