I have set up two Corsair P64 SSDs in RAID 0 (connected to the two purple GSATA contacts of this MB). Then installed W7 Ultimate SP1. However, I am not at all impressed by the performance of this RAID setup and have therefore run a number of different HD benchmark tests such as ATTO, HD Tune Pro and CrystalDiskMark. All of these report an average read performance around 150-160MB/s, which is far below the performance that other users report utilizing identical SSDs:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=370&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=6http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=917&page=7http://blog.corsair.com/?p=2409In fact - the combined performance of this RAID setup is significantly below the read/write performance of a single P64 SSD as announced by Corsair (220MB read / 180MB write)!
http://www.corsair.com/products/ssd_performance/default.aspxMy question is then: Can the poor performance related to bottlenecks on the MB (Gigabyte controller), or should I expect better figures from this configuration? If the poor performance is due to limitations within the Gigabyte controller I might just as well use the second SSD on another PC and only connect a single SSD to the EP45-UD3 to hold the OS...
Note:
I have done two separate installations of W7 on this RAID setup to spot any significant performance differences between them. Prior to the second installation I ran the secure erase by use of GParted Secure Erase for the SSDs to appear as new & "fresh" drives (as suggested by Corsair on their support forum). Both times, I let W7 do the formatting of the drives in connection with the installation process. However, I did not experience any significant increase in performance the second time.
I am using the last published BIOS version and RAID controller driver version as published by Gigabyte on their support pages.