Firewire networking and CPU util

[Pradeep]

Well I finally hooked up the POS 1.6GHz P4 laptop to the dual Athlon 1.47s, using Firewire. I'm getting about 10MB/sec. Bigger problem is that the cpu util on the laptop is around 90%, with the System process sucking up a good 70-80%. On the duallie, it's at about 30% (explorer process says it's taking 5% but there's a phantom process which I can't see that's using up the rest).

So my question is, is this kind of CPU util normal when using FW networking? There's no way my 100BaseT was sucking up this much grunt.

TIA.

 

[blakerwry]

depends completely on the chipset and drivers.

It seems like VIA firewire sucks.. intel is decent, adaptec is the best.

what chipset does your firewire use?

 

[Pradeep]

TI on an OrangeMicro FW+USB2 controller card on the duallie, and a TI chipset on the Dell i8200.

I thought Adaptec used TI?

 

[Pradeep]

To give you a reference when I burn DVDs at 4x (~5.2MB/sec) using a FW external box, CPU util never exceeds 3%.

I'm thinking it's the Windows CPU tax at work.