Poor PXI IO performance on Latitude E6410 with ExpressCard 8360

[Wade Oram]

Hello,

I have a Dell Latitude E6410 with a Core-i5 M520 which is giving me very poor io performance when using an ExpressCard 8360 card to connect to a PXI Rack.

The sustained IO rate that I can get appears to be about 1/3 of that that I can get using the same ExpressCard on a Dell Latitude E6400 (with a Core2Duo processor).

I am using the A05 bios (latest at time of writing) on the E6410.

Wade.

[Andy.G]

Hey Wade,

What operating system are you using, and how much RAM are you running on each device?

[Wade Oram]

I am running Windows XP (32 bit) sp3 in both cases.

The E6410 has 4GByte of memory fitted.

The E6400 has 2GByte of memory fitted.

I have also use the same ExpressCard 8360 via a PXIe to ExpressCard Adaptor in a Desktop machine with similar performance figures to the E6400 - i.e. much better than the E6410.

The Desktop Machine is an HP Compaq D7900 with 4GByte of memory, Core2Duo E8500 also running Windows XP sp3 (32 bit).

Also, on the Desktop, I am running NI PXI Platform Services 2.3.2 and NI-Visa runtime version 4.3.

On the E6410, I am running NI PXI Platform Services 2.5.2 and NI-Visa runtime version 4.6.

I no longer have access to the E6400 so I am not sure what sofware versions were installed. However, they are unlikely to be new than the versions installed on the E6410.

Wade.

[Andy.G]

Hey Wade,

This slowing of the system could be due to a number of reasons. It could be the background processes on the new PC that are slowing the Processing of the card, It also could be due to the redundancy of the new drivers that are slowing the transfers. However I am unable to give you a definitive answer regarding as to why the transfer rate has slowed down, although I strongly suspect it is due to your operating system.

[pangcm]

Hi, can you confirm whether the Dell Latitude E6420 is able to work with the ExpressCard 8360 ?

[waynew0]

I'm experiencing the same slow performance issue with my Latitude E6520. On a much older Lenovo Laptop, I'm seeing about a 3X performance increace. I'm also experiencing DMA transfer errors on the E6520 which causes the system to lock up and I have to reboot the laptop to recover. Has anyone else experienced the DMA transfer issues?

[Robert__R]

One thing to try if you're running Vista or 7:

Go to the advanced power options (search for "power options" in the start menu, edit the current plan, click "Change advanced power settings").  In the list, find "PCI Express" -> "Link State Power Management" and select "Off".  The changes would be noticeable once you click "okay".

- Robert

[waynew0]

Thanks for the suggestion Robert. I checked my power options and they were already set to what you suggested. I called NI Tech Support and they suggested that I download and install the MXI-Express BIOS Compatibility Software. Once I installed the compatibility software it fixed both the IO performance issue as well as the DMA errors.

[Wade Oram]

I have tried the MXI-Express BIOS Compatibility Software on my Dell Latitude E6410 and it fixes the problem with MXI-express performance. However, with this software installed, my nvidia 3100M video driver will not install and maximum display resolution and colour depth available becomes 800x600 with 4bit colour. Consequently, this is unacceptable and I have had to uninstall the MXI-Express BIOS Compatibility Software.

I am currently running Win XP SP3.

The BIOS of the machine is at revision A11.