After much speculation since NVidia released the SW IDE Drivers, I set out to with the goal to answer the question: Are the SW IDE Drivers really faster then the ones included with Windows?
Test Setup: Athlon XP 1700+ Processor 2x256mb PC2100 DDR RAM Epox 8rda+ Motherboard 1x WD 120gig 7200 RPM HDD with 8mb Cache Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9600 PRO Ultimate Edition SB Audigy! Intel Pro 10/100/1000 MT Nic Liteon 52x CDRW Liteon 16x DVD Rom Enermax 431 Watt PSU
It is important to note that I disabled all background programs during this test including firewall and virusscan. Infact the network card was completely disabled for the duration of the test. These tests were also run on a fresh install of Windows XP Pro with SP1a and all updates install. The official Nforce UDP 4.24 was used for the test.
A note about the testing. Testing was done with HD Tach 3.0 in both 8mb and 32mb mode.
For those that don't know 8mb mode is more of an acurate representation of performance when opening smaller files such as mp3s, documents, pictures, or just suffering the web.
32meg mode is more of an acurate representation of what performance is like when launching software or waiting at a load screen in a game.
Test 1: Nforce SW IDE Driver 8mb TestAs you can see here the burst speed is really low, I was expecting to see near the 90 meg range as that would be realistic on a ATA 100 controller. Also you may note that the seek time is 13.3ms, which isnt impressive.
At first glance you might believe that these are horrible results but on further inspection of the results you should note that the CPU usage is at only 2%, which is quite good. Also the substained transfer rate is at 45.5 MB/s which isnt too shabby.
Test 2: Nforce SW IDE Driver 32mb TestThe results of this test almost mirrored the 8mb test in every detail except CPU usage. In the 32mb Test the cpu usage crept to 4%.
Test 3: MS Generic Dual Channel IDE Controller 8mmb TestAt a glance you will notice that the Generic Driver gets about 2mb a second better burst speed then the SW ide, but thats not what you should be concerned with. If you are like me, your eye went directly to the 7% Cpu Usage! 7% is very high and will cause a noticable decrease in system performance. The seek time is also two ms worse then before. The Substained transfer rate was marginally the same.
Test 4: MS Generic Dual Channel IDE Controller 32mb TestThe cpu usage has gone down by two percent and the seek time is nearly matching the Nvidia driver, but the SW IDE driver still bests the MS.
Conclusions:To make sure HD Tach was fairly representing the results I also ran the SW ide drivers through Nvidia's Benchmark utility and came up with nearly identical results that were actually even more in favor of the SW IDE drivers.
It is clear that the SW IDE driver bests the Generic driver in this round of tests. So with these benchmarks I standby my opinion that everyone with a nforce system should try the SW ide driver. The benchmarks support what myself and many others have reported that our systems just seem more responsive with them installed.
It is also clear that Nvidia does have some room for improvement. It seems that the ide drivers should be producing higher burst rates, but I am not sure whether this is an issue with the drivers, the bios, or the controller itself.
Nforce and Nvidia are copyright Nvidia Corporation. Do not use any of the logos, pictures, or repackage the drivers on my page with out my consent. Email me at Mwarhead@mwarhead.com
As you can see here the burst speed is really low, I was expecting to see near the 90 meg range as that would be realistic on a ATA 100 controller. Also you may note that the seek time is 13.3ms, which isnt impressive. 
The results of this test almost mirrored the 8mb test in every detail except CPU usage. In the 32mb Test the cpu usage crept to 4%.
At a glance you will notice that the Generic Driver gets about 2mb a second better burst speed then the SW ide, but thats not what you should be concerned with. If you are like me, your eye went directly to the 7% Cpu Usage! 7% is very high and will cause a noticable decrease in system performance. The seek time is also two ms worse then before. The Substained transfer rate was marginally the same.
The cpu usage has gone down by two percent and the seek time is nearly matching the Nvidia driver, but the SW IDE driver still bests the MS.