Translations:Kernel/Gentoo Kernel Configuration Guide/39/en

Unless a user is dealing with a pre-1995 system, the IDE controller will also support an alternative transfer mode, known as Direct Memory Access (DMA). DMA is much much faster, and CPU utilization is barely affected while data transfers are taking place. If the system is suffering from really poor general system performance while it is using an IDE disk, chances are that DMA is not being used and should be enabled.