BiGBrOwNPimpsta

Well as you guys know I got this new system here, pretty solid. I was reading I was supposed to install windows with the RAID driver and stuff for the WD Raptor to get NCQ working BUT if you install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager later, all should be good. Basically my issue now is that my Raptor and 250GB Seagate are stuck on SATA 1 and my one WD 250GB is on SATA II. This is the report from the Intel Matrix Storage Manager:

I'm pretty sure the DVD RW drives only support SATA 1 so I didn't care. I also ran HD Tach and these are the results for the 3 drives:





How I discoverd I may have a bottleneck was my 3D Mark Scores were in the ranges of only about 8300, when I saw 320mb 8800GTS users with over 9400+ and slightly slower specs than me. Then also I was reading this thread on the ASUS forums and was a little confused what to do get this damn thing working all on SATA II. People are saying I have to reinstall windows and load the RAID ICH8 drivers at setup which I want to kind of not to do since it takes more time and I feel lazy. In addition, look at the graph of the WD 250gb it just slightly peaks over SATA150's top speed, no where near SATA300 speeds and even outperforms my expensive Raptor! That's not right!

I fooled around with the SATA settings, unplugged the WD Raptor into the Jmicron controller, installed the Intel Matrix Manager, then put the raptor and everything back on the ICH8 controller. The program installed and worked but the reports as you guys saw are showing my Hard drives are not performing at the modes and speeds they should.

What should I do? Reformatting is the last path I want to take because I am lazy at the moment and want to enjoy gaming which I haven't been able to do in months due to having outdated hardware ahha. I will do it if I have to, but I need to know what to do correctly. Performance is great, but I want the max possibility out of the system!

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mkk

I doesn't look bad to me. According to WD info I just read that Raptor is plain SATA, and the important scores for random access and average read are fine. Having a higher burst speed would not make a practical difference. Lastly, NCQ is only beneficial for high load servers.

Judas

The Raptors are indeed plain SATA... i didn't even think they supported NCQ ...?

Either way the results seem fairly accurate to me,

However with the intel matrix controller control panel, you should RIGHT CLICK the drives listed and enable write behind cacheing for them all.

Your burst speeds should see a very healthy jump, and your read/write may see a slight improvement..

Also thier may be jumpers on the drives themselves to disable NCQ/SATA2 full support, usually removing that little tiny jump on the drive will fully enable everything.

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Judas

er.. btw, how did you get HDTach 3.0.4.0 to load under windows vista?

every time i run it, i get the error message that "HDTach requires Windows xp or windows 2000" and emediately quits.


running capability mode actually seriously hinders the performance results compared to that of hdtach 3.0.3.0

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BiGBrOwNPimpsta

run in windows xp compatability and with admin privelages. solves a lot of compatability problems on vista for now.

when i right click on the drives, it says no actions available in the matrix storage program. So the bandwidth on my hard drives is fine? Weird... I know the other 2 are SATA II for a fact.

edit: enabling more performance boost in windows device manager kinda helped....

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Judas

sorry, don't click on the drives, right click on the Volumes (each volume under volumes) and enable write back cacheing

btw.... take the results semi-with a grain of salt cosidering that running hdtach in capability mode is obviously introducing worst results then hdtach 3.0.3.0 (try and find that program and run it instead of the more current one)..

For example, with HDtach 3.0.3.0 vs 3.0.4.0

4% cpu usage with an average read of 362MB/s vs 22% cpu usage and 119MB/s (whoa wtf?)

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Judas

oh and lastly,

For you to take full advantage of SATA and NCQ (ncq isn't saposed to work while running SATA in IDE mode)

With windows vista, the Microsoft provided SATA driver will work without a hitch with all the features, so you don't have to manually load the driver from initial setup, however the bios should have been setup with the Sata controller running in pure SATA mode (ACHI mode NOT IDE)

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BiGBrOwNPimpsta

i think it was in IDE mode while in setup! But it detected all drives as S-ATA. I have no enabled ACHI today. So does this mean I should reinstall or reformat and reinstall windows??

and write back caching was enabled, then got disabled again. Also enabled advanced performance

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Judas

i haven't had experience with switching sata modes on the fly without reinstalling windows.... i would assume that you could set the sata to ACHI mode and see if windows starts and loads up fine, if it doesn't you should be able to switch it back with no ill effects, however i'd still advise to backup your critical data before playing with it.

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BiGBrOwNPimpsta

i did it already today, it works fine. but write caching cannot be modified in windows it says...

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mike2h

as above, do not use ncq unless that comp is a dedicated high use server.
fyi the raptors(s) actually lose performance with ncq enabled in non server situations.

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BiGBrOwNPimpsta

oh ok... so ncq is useless...

my bios doesn't let me change the NCQ settings or anything. and i dont get why my segate is detected as SATA I when i thought i bought a SATA II

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kris23

this may sound stupid, but did you remove the jumper that limits a hard drive to SATA150?

that could be your issue right there.

as far as i know, all seagate drives i used have a jumper shorting 2 pins that limit it to SATA150, removing this jumper increases the power to SATA300.

my 400Gb 7200.10 drive has one in it as my motherboard only used SATA150

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mike2h

could just be the mobo chipset doesnt recognise that particular hd or the hd electronics has some sata1 leftover in it.
bottom line, aside from asthetics it does not really matter as there is no hd that make use of sata1 bandwidth let alone sata2.
& as far as i know there is no magic circuitry in the sata2 standard that makes drives perform faster than in sata1.
still, i understand you wanting to know what the problem is. unfortunately i think a clean install is your only answer - unless kris got it right

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BiGBrOwNPimpsta

yea it was the jumper, and wow the seagate really outperformed the WD....

but the WD performs worse than the seagate i dont get it, and when 3d mark has both other HD's disabled, its even worse. it detects the seagate as the main drive which is weird. my scores are only above 8000 slightly, theres other people with similar setups easily pushing 9000+. This raptor feels like a ripoff of a drive...

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kris23

want to try another motherboard? i mean the 680i EVGA board seems to have decent RAID on it.... or the bad axe2. i mean you already spent so much on your system, spend a bit more just to make sure of the problem. the Raptor shouldnt be slower than the seagate so somethings wrong there.......though i never thought they were worth it ever..

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EcPercy

I am glad you got some of the issues sorted. I had a lot of people trying to tell me to go with the Raptor's, but I didn't see a point in paying the price for so much less space.

Not to mention that a long time ago (when the 13.6GB drive was new) I had some issues with a particular drive from WD dying 3 times in 6 months. They treated me like crap and so I have stayed away from their products.

I have had to RMA to seagate before, but it was my own fault as I fried the board on the drive (don't ask me how) and they repaired it without question.

At work we use 10k SCSI and 15k SAS drives and I can't see a point in needing anything like that at home. Yes, it is fast. I will give it that, but the noise factor....

I hope you get everything sorted!

BiGBrOwNPimpsta

i spoke to my friend who runs to raptor X's in raid, he says i should reformat and pop in my asus cd during windows setup to install the raid driver even though I am not running any type of raid config

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Judas

...

In all seriousness,

If performance is a concern, or installation,

Your best bet is to go to http://support.asus.com/ look up your motherboard, either under DRIVERS or UTILITIES, find the latest SATA RAID drivers for the board, there should be something called MAKEDISK.exe that you can run to copy to a floppy A: so that when you first install windows, you can load a driver manually.

BUT BEFORE you do that, SET in the bios, the sata controller to ACHI mode (or pure sata mode NOT IDE mode), to make absalutely sure all sata options are available, you could set to RAID mode, then in the raid controller bios, set all the drives to JBOD, so that they are all seperate, and make sure your primary hardrive is on the first sata port.

Install away.

And it's no surprise that a 10,000 rpm raptor vs a 750gb seagate 7200.10, and the raptor losing. 7200.10 is fully SATA2 compliant, has brand new storage technology that actually allows it to transfer faster/write faster. They are really nice drives

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BiGBrOwNPimpsta

should be possible with a usb flashdrive.... it technically is a floppy nowadays.

im just pissed off its not performing at full speed, and when running benchmarks without my seagate enabled (like 3dmark) its much lower. something might be messed here, or the video card since my 3dmark score was pretty low

edit - so i should put the raptor on the jmicron controller? install vista? is that what you are saying. and asus has drivers but xp, but not for vista for the ICH8 raid. im really confused

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Judas

just looking... there is NO Vista 3dmark06 Nvidiia 8800 series results with futuremark approved WHQL certified drivers

However i did find one listing of a E6400 8800GTS stock user, they scored 8760 3dmarks....

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