Official GIGABYTE Forum
Questions about GIGABYTE products => Motherboards with AMD processors => Topic started by: Smitty on November 26, 2010, 05:26:11 am
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I've recently bought this MB and intend to swap over everything from my ASUS board early next week. I've already received great advice here regarding updating my BIOS in case I run into issues with my 6 core 1090T. But now I'm asking for additional advice on what specific RAID drivers I'll need to download before I set up my O/S RAID 0 using a pair of 64GB Crucial SSDs. I had to jump through a few hoops to get it working on the ASUS board, so I'm anticipating the same level of frustration on this board too. I'll also RAID 1 a pair of 1TB WD drives for storage, but I'll do that using Windows later. Please let me know if you find any fault in my plans. I intend on hooking up the two SSDs in the Blue SATA 3 ports (0 and 1), the 2 WD drives in Blue ports 2 and 3, I'll reserve Blue ports 4 and 5 for later use (maybe add a 3rd and 4th WD drive in a different RAID setup--RAID 5 maybe?), and lastly, White ports 6 and 7 for my 2 Blu-Ray drives. These White ports are SATA 2 right? And on a different controller? After I successfully get the O/S RAID array built using the BIOS, I intend on formatting the drives before I reinstall Win 7 64 bit. But do I understand correctly that formatting a SSD doesn't actually clear it completely? Isn't there a utility I need to download and run to do that? How do I run it without the O/S installed first?
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Hello? Anybody there?
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Hi Smitty,
Yes somebody's here.
I have recently, just got hold of this motherboard myself and as you assume, setting up RAID was a little tricky but not as difficult as it could have been.
Once you have gone through the steps of setting up the RAID Array you will need the AMD SATA RAID driver to preinstall using F6 during Windows Set-up. I did this via a USB Stick without a problem.
Before you set-up your RAID though it would be worth checking which BIOS version you are running. My motherboard which is Rev2.1 shipped with the F4 BIOS and there is an update F5 that Supports new RAID ROM. If you are running the same revision motherboard it would be a good idea to update BIOS to this or the newer F6 BIOS.
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Thanks absic. I'm trying to get all my ducks lined up before I jump in with both feet. Setting up a RAID array hasn't proven that difficult in the past--each M/B manufacturer's BIOS is a little different--my biggest concerns at the moment are how SSDs tend to add an extra step or two. For example, how exactly do I wipe the drives before I format them? Formatting, I understand, works a little differently with SSDs. They tend to slow down over time with multiple writes and erases, and over time need to be brought back to factory specs. Although the TRIM function does this for you automatically, you lose TRIM support on SSDs as soon as they become part of a RAID array. Some of my questions regarding my current build are SSD specific, like how to update the firmware, probably would be better found on the manufacturer-specific website, since even SSDs vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. For example, I found firmware updates for my C300 series SSD on Crucial's website, but not how to determine what my current firmware is? Since they're currently in RAID, do I unplug one and update them one at a time? You see? The deeper I dig, the more questions I come up with. At least with me being the lab rat, my trials and tribulations will hopefully help somebody else down the line.
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Ah the joys of beta testing and you are also paying for the privilege of doing so.
As I do not have any SSD's I can't advise you on that so I will leave it to others with more experience to help you there.
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Taking advantage of Newegg's Black Friday sales, I couldn't pass up 16GB of DDR3 RAM for under $200! Yes I know, 16GB! But I do some heavy duty photo editing with CS4, and that's pretty memory hungry. I took advice from here and stuck with DDR3 1333 RAM because of the overclocking issues with AMDs 6-core processors. However, I hope I didn't make a mistake with this RAM since I'm still a little confused over the difference between PC3 10600, 10660, and 10666.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231311
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Not sure if it will run at 1333 or if it will downclock to 1066MHz. Check this thread started by Scjet who is also trying to run 16 Gig of RAM: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,3572.0.html
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Thanks absic. That's actually the thread that convinced me to buy 1333 RAM instead of 1800 or even 2000. Is there a thread here that explains how to "downclock" that RAM?
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The problem isn't with downclocking as it seems to do it automatically. The real problem is getting the RAM to run at its rated speed, especially if you are filling all of the RAM slots and the problems if the rated speed is above 1333MHz.
In your case you will be running 16Gig of RAM and you might have to up the voltage over its rated 1.5V to get 1333MHz and system stability.
In my situation I bought 1600MHz before I knew there was a problem (again the old paying to be a beta tester). My RAM is rated to run at 16600MHz at 1.65V but I am actually running it at 1333MHz at 1.5V.
I presently have my 1090T CPU running at 3.8GHz at stock voltage but I haven't tried pushing it to far on this board just yet. I'm still seeing how it handles and, as with all overclocking, I think it should be done slowly and each stage tested before moving forward. I am hoping to do another review later, about overclocking on this board but that won't be for another few weeks yet.
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Thanks absic. I'm trying to get all my ducks lined up before I jump in with both feet. Setting up a RAID array hasn't proven that difficult in the past--each M/B manufacturer's BIOS is a little different--my biggest concerns at the moment are how SSDs tend to add an extra step or two. For example, how exactly do I wipe the drives before I format them? Formatting, I understand, works a little differently with SSDs. They tend to slow down over time with multiple writes and erases, and over time need to be brought back to factory specs. Although the TRIM function does this for you automatically, you lose TRIM support on SSDs as soon as they become part of a RAID array. Some of my questions regarding my current build are SSD specific, like how to update the firmware, probably would be better found on the manufacturer-specific website, since even SSDs vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. For example, I found firmware updates for my C300 series SSD on Crucial's website, but not how to determine what my current firmware is? Since they're currently in RAID, do I unplug one and update them one at a time? You see? The deeper I dig, the more questions I come up with. At least with me being the lab rat, my trials and tribulations will hopefully help somebody else down the line.
Hi Smitty
I have a SSD that I run as my boot drive and I have picked up a bit of information on them as I have gone along but I in no way profess to be an expert on them.
To be perfectly frank there is a lot of conflicting advice regarding these drives as they haven't been around for long and so not a lot of experience has been gained from people running them.
As you quite rightly pointed out when you RAID them you lose the ability to run the TRIM commands. Therefore you have to rely on the Garbage Collection instead which I believe on your C300s is very good.
Lsdmeasap has just done a very nice in depth review of this drive and you can find it here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=4613246
I am sure it will give you far more information than I can here.
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I presently have my 1090T CPU running at 3.8GHz at stock voltage but I haven't tried pushing it to far on this board just yet. I'm still seeing how it handles and, as with all overclocking, I think it should be done slowly and each stage tested before moving forward. I am hoping to do another review later, about overclocking on this board but that won't be for another few weeks yet.
I have never messed with RAM timings or voltage before as this will be my first overclock attempt. As we have the same M/B and CPU, I will certainly be following your lead--and asking lost (and lots of) questions, on and off-line. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I have to build the machine first and get it running stable before I overclock. I'm currently accumulating all the drivers, etc., in anticipation for Mon/Tue build.
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Hi Smitty
I have a SSD that I run as my boot drive and I have picked up a bit of information on them as I have gone along but I in no way profess to be an expert on them.
To be perfectly frank there is a lot of conflicting advice regarding these drives as they haven't been around for long and so not a lot of experience has been gained from people running them.
As you quite rightly pointed out when you RAID them you lose the ability to run the TRIM commands. Therefore you have to rely on the Garbage Collection instead which I believe on your C300s is very good.
Lsdmeasap has just done a very nice in depth review of this drive and you can find it here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=4613246
I am sure it will give you far more information than I can here.
Thanks Dark Mantis. That link was very informative and useful. Between you and absic holding my hand, I'm feeling pretty confident right now.
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I am sure you will have no great problems and anything that does go amiss can always be rectified. ;)
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I am sure you will have no great problems and anything that does go amiss can always be rectified. ;)
That's what I like about you DM..... Always the optimist!
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In regards to Lsdmeasap's Crucial SSD writeup, if Marvell's RAID controller is so bad, what controller do I use, and how do I set up which controller(s) my SSDs use when I build my RAID 0 array? Do I use the built-in RAID controllers on the 890FXA-UD5, download AMD's controllers from their website, or what? If I can't take advantage of doubling my read/write speeds, it negates the whole purpose of putting these SSDs in RAID 0 in the first place. On a good note however, I'm very pleased by the results of Garbage Collection when I lose TRIM support. I'll ask this on the XtremeSystems Forum too--as soon as my "application" is approved!
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Hi Smitty,
Don't worry you don't have the Marvell controller on your motherboard. If you check through my build review from page 14, I go through the steps of setting up a RAID0 Array. I'm using SATA3 HDD's not SSD's but the principal is the same.