Interesting note: I was browsing the storage newsgroup and found out
that some Promise controllers have dma conflicts with some Nvidia cards,
and turning off write combining sometimes fixes it.

I wonder if this is related to updating the Promise driver to their
latest one for 2003.


"Mr. Grinch" wrote in
3.159:

System details:
Dual Boot Windows ME / Server 2003
Nvidia drivers 44.03
MSI Ti42008x
Tyan Tiger 100 S1832DL dual P3-800 Motherboard, 1GB ram, SBlive sound,
Promise 133/TX ATA controller, Compaq Netelligent nic.

System has been stable in the past, far as I can tell, but the
problems started when I rebuilt the system with Server 2003 and 44.03
drivers.

2003 by default sets the video performance slider turned right down.
So I push it to full acceleration, and turn on write combining. Then
seemingly at random I get these screen crashes. The system is still
working, but the screen is total gibberish, as if I'm using the wrong
driver.

If I turn off write combining, everything works.

So it looks like I should either go back to 43.45 drivers or try the
45.20 drivers. I've been trying to download them from Guru3D but keep
getting gateway timeouts.

Anyone have details on what write combining actually does and how much
performance impact, if any, it would make?