Free up the CPU

Wednesday, February 06, 2002

Direct Memory Access or DMA as it is better known is a method that allows data to be sent directly from a peripheral device to the computer memory without the CPU’s interference. This leaves the CPU free to perform other critical tasks, thereby leading to increased system performance. Most motherboards come with DMA drivers, and all hard drives also support it. If you don’t have the DMA drivers for your motherboard, you can enable them in Windows. Here’s how.

Under Windows 9x/Me, right-click ‘My Computer’ and go to ‘Properties’. Click the ‘Device manager’ tab. Locate the drive for which you want to enable DMA, say your CD drive, and press ‘Properties’. Go to the ‘Settings’ tab and check the check box for DMA. A warning prompt shows up. Accept it and reboot. You will find a noticeable difference in the performance of your hard drive or CD drive.

For Windows 2000 and XP, right-click ‘My computer’ and go to ‘Properties’. Go to the ‘Hardware’ tab and press the ‘Device manager’ button. Expand ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers’. This will show you the Primary and Secondary channels on which your IDE drives would be connected. Double-click either and select the ‘Advanced settings’ tab. From the drop-down boxes for both ‘Device 0’ and ‘Device 1’, choose the transfer mode as ‘DMA if available’. A reboot and you can check whether your devices’ DMA mode is enabled.

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