IAA and quiet WD 120GB Special Edition?

MGP · Post by **MGP** » Tue Dec 24, 2002 8:02 pm

hey everyone,

recently, i began to fiddle around with the Intel Application Accelerator program. my system includes a wd 120GB SE HD w/ 8mb cache and i noticed that IAA allows users to set the drive in three different acoustic modes from normal to least acoustical output (and lower performance). Had anyone dealt with this?

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 6:54 am

Yes, it's a normal feature of IAA. I've used it with Maxtor D740Xs and Seagate Barracuda IVs.

I personally don't use IAA on my rigs. I've never been able to see any improvement in speeds. You can always set the Acoustical Management from one of the drive manufacturers FDD-based utilities.

MGP · Post by **MGP** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 10:57 am

then what do you think IAA is for? some of my friends also have not noticed any significant performance improvements.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 6:26 am

I think it's kind of Intel's verison of Via's busmaster drivers. It's supposed to optimize them. The thing is that WinXP (and to a lesser extent Win2000) has pretty darn good IDE driver support built in to the OS. That's why you don't see the advantages that you would with Win9x.

Back in the day, when I was using AMD hardware, I stopped installing the Via "4-in-1's" when Win2000 came out. It had good driver support built in so I didn't have to do the seemimgly endless 4-in-1 upgrades any more.