GA-890GPA-UD3H Sata3 drive seen as Sata2 and video acts like a screen saver

[tazman_75]

In bios I have it set to AHCI and is all set to Sata.
In HD Tune it says Sata2 but the hard drive is Sata3, drive is a seagate ST31000524AS 1 Terabyte
Bios is FF
OS is windows7 ultimate 64bit

As for the video, if I sit and watch tv and not touch anything the screen goes out (blank) and since I have it set to HDMI the monitor will go into standby and if I move the mouse it comes back like a screen saver which is turned off.

Any ideas?

[Vezina]

Have you also read my thread ? -> http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,6057.0.html
I think we have discovered something here regarding the SATA controller.
The SB 850 controller , a SATA 3 controller , seems to behave like a SATA 1 controller with a SATA 2 and like a SATA 2 controller when used with a SATA 3 HDD.

I would use a discrete video card ,as the performance of the onboard video is disappointing.

[absic]

Hi there,

There seems to be a problem with HD Tune, especially the free version. If you look at this image:



You can see that a Western Digital SATA3 HDD is reported properly in the Pro version but as a SATA2 in the free one.

With regard to your monitor turning off I would double check your Power Saving options in Windows7 and also in Catalyst Control Centre as these can sometimes override the settings that you may have made.

[tazman_75]

Thanks for the help,

 When I rebuilt this I forgot about the power saving, was set to turn vid off in 20 mins, all good now.

So the sata3 speed is this way for most boards or mainly gigabyte?

Seems a waste of money to get sata3 setup just to get sata1 speeds, 149.4 burst using the HD pro, I could live with 300.0 burst.

Any way of getting the burst up? or is it limited to this drive.

The AHCI driver was installed after installing the OS as I found out it would be faster in AHCI.

Thanks

[Vezina]

tazman_75 ,try the J Micron (GSATA) ports as well.

Switch on AHCI for them and try , then look for the way the HDD bahaves.Although the drivers from J Micron are not perfect you should try.The performance may be more consistent.For J Micron 363 use latest drivers on their FTP website.

For the AMD AHCI  try the Catalyst 11.6 AHCI driver ,you find it on the AMD website along the video drivers.The Gigabyte driver stuff is old and weak ,the Gigabyte AMD AHCI driver is from 2009 .

[tazman_75]

Hi,

The gsata worked better, 292.0 burst which is better than the 149.0 with the sata3 controler, so almost doubled it.
Has anyone used a sata3 SSD drive on this board?

After going into power settings and setting it to never and in CCC the screen whent blank again so I checked power savings and sure enough it was back to 20 mins and CCC was never, anything else to check?

Thanks

[Vezina]

Hi,

The gsata worked better, 292.0 burst which is better than the 149.0 with the sata3 controler, so almost doubled it.
Has anyone used a sata3 SSD drive on this board?

Thanks

Definetely the SSD will work better,but due to better transfer rates ,as burst speed is only a part of the story ,essential for normal HDD -s though.

But the fact that with both ,WD and Seagate SATA 3 drives ,the controller limits the burst shows an issue.

The SATA 3 SB 850 is able to run at SATA 2 burst speeds ,but in your case it seems to go down to SATA 1 (150 megs per second).At least in my case the SATA 3 drive has 300 megs per second -SATA2 burst speeds.

Anyway the G-SATA/J-micron is not bad.

There seems to be a problem between the HDD-s firmwares and the SB 850 controller.

It s not only the HDD Tune scores ,it s also the behavior while you use the PC ,you practically feel the PC slower when the burst is slower.

[tazman_75]

Hi,

 Still having problems with power settings going back to default of turning off video after 20 mins after a reboot.

Settings in CCC are fine, anything else causing this?

Thanks

[absic]

The most obvious cause of the monitor switching off after 20 minutes is a software power saving option, somewhere, that is over-riding the changes you have already tried to make as this is most likely to be a software issue rather than hardware.

Have you installed any of the Gigabyte Utility Software?

Without knowing what software programmes you have installed the only advice I can offer is to check through them all again.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I would agree with absic it must be a software setting. Check the Windows power saving modes and the BIOS power saving settings for a start.

[tazman_75]

Hi,

I guess I over looked one thing, when the computer sleeps, set that to never and all is good.

Thanks for all the help.

[Dark Mantis]

To be honest it is one of the easiest things to get caught on. There are so many instances of the sleep mode and power down and power savings that it is very easy just to miss one somewhere.

[absic]

Pleased you managed to find the culprit!

The big problem these days is that every software producer seems to be adding Power Saving features to their software. I got caught out by ATI Catalyst Control Centre when they introduced these options and I found that they actually over-rode the Windows 7 settings. 

[Vezina]

Hi,

I guess I over looked one thing, when the computer sleeps, set that to never and all is good.

Thanks for all the help.

Do you happen to change W 7 themes often ?!
With every new theme you switch to the power saving settings might go back to default.
After you switch to a new one just go and check power saving settings and readjust them.