GA-770TA-UD3: Slow(er) USB2 and LAN

[zeroo]

Hello!

Yesterday I built a new configuration using this motherboard. I have also:
Phenom II X4 955 BE C3
DDR3 2x2GB 1600Mhz Mushkin Silverline Stiletto (runs at 1333MHz)
640GB WD WD6400AAKS and Samsung F2 5400 1.5TB EcoGreen
DVD-RW Pioneer DVR-112D and CDRW Lite-On
NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT (will be replaced soon)
Chieftec CFT-650-14CS

I have an USB HDD Transcend StoreJet 250GB. When I copy to it, the speed is constantly 26-27MB/s. Before this I had an Athlon X2 configuration. The transfer rate was 31-32MB/s. I have downloaded and installed all the drivers from the site. Also tried to plug in to different USB2 hubs, but everything was the same.

I'm experiencing slowness with my network connection, too. I have a PCI Lan card D-Link DFE-528TX, it is connected directly to another computer. When I copy files to it the transfer starts with ~9MB/s, but the speed drops slowly, and it ends with ~2MB/s. During the transfer I haven't noticed CPU or any additonal HDD activity that can cause the slow transfer rate. The LAN driver is the latest.
With the same card in the old computer I haven't had issue like this.

I hope somebody can help me to solve theese problems.

Also, windows startup is a bit slower. And the installation took 30 minutes. But after I read the another threads I guess it is normal for Gigabyte motherboards. The floppy is turned off in the BIOS.

Regards.

[Dark Mantis]

I am not the expert on the AMD systems and I expect absic our resident guru will be able to help more when he logs in. However I think it is down to the fact that the bus bandwidth is shared by the USB and the Marvell 9128 storage controller for the SATA3  and again the same bus bandwidth is shared by the LAN,  SATA2 storage controllers and any other PCIe cards.

[absic]

Hi there,

When you installed your OS did you use the SATA3 Ports for your HDD?
Did you install your system in IDE, AHCI or RAID mode?
Which of your 2 hard drives did you install the OS onto?

The transfer speeds via USB match those that I get on my GA790XTA-UD4 so I think this must be pretty normal. I have tried to improve them but have not been able to do so, unless I remove a couple of HDD's and USB devices so that I am using less of the available bandwidth. As Dark Mantis has said, there are a lot of bits trying to talk through the SB710 chip (look at the block diagram in your manual) and it can get quite congested at times.

[zeroo]

Hello,
thanks for yot answers.

Both of my HDDs are atached to the SATA2 port. Should I switch to SATA3? Are they compatible? The OS is installed onto the faster WD6400AAKS from DVR-112D, which is an IDE(ATA) drive. The SATA Type is set to Native IDE by default.
Copying from Samsung F2 to WD6400AAKS goes with 90MB/s, and in opposite direction it is 70MB/s. I think it's normal.
On the USB ports I have attached mouse, webcam and game controller. I unpluged them (except mouse) and in BIOS I disabled the ESATA, SATA3, 1394 and USB3, but that didn't help.

Ok, I can live somehow with the current USB speed but the network transfer rate is just unacceptable.

[absic]

Hi,
from what you are saying I think your USB speeds aren't going to improve too much. As I said in my previous post, on my GA-790XTA-UD4 with an X6 1090T CPU my transfer speeds via USB are about the same as yours and I haven't been able to improve them.

You have set your PC up pretty much as I would have done and I can't see a problem there. I don't think there will be any improvement by switching to the SATA3 ports and your HDD Read/Write speeds are again, very similar to mine in IDE mode.

Not sure as to why you are having issues with network transfer speeds and the only things that I can suggest would be:
1.  Uninstall the drivers and see if reloading them improves the situation.
2. Try putting the network card into a different PCI slot. ( I have a sound card that is rather particular about which PCI slot it goes into for some reason.)
3. In BIOS, if you are not using the on-board LAN, disable that feature and if you are not using them, also disable the Serial Port and Parallel Ports.

[Dark Mantis]

I can't see what benefit you are getting from using the dedicated LAN card. Have you tried the onboard option? Maybe you will get better speeds with this.

[zeroo]

Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention that my cable modem is connected to the onboard LAN.

But tried with the onboard one, and that didn't change anything.
The Internet works well with both LAN, although it is only a 8mbps connection.

But here is something new.
I tried to copy a 4.3GB file to the remote drive from my secondary disk (Samsung F2). It took 25 minutes to get until 85%, the speed was at 1.8MB/s, then I got the message:
Error, cannot read E:\folder\...\filename ...  skip, retry, abort.
When I hit the retry I got the same message. Then, few minutes later the drive letters for both partition of the disk disappeared in My Computer. After restart they were back.
So I tried to copy from the primary drive, and experienced the slow transfer rate, as well. Few minutes later I interrupted the transfer.
After that I started to copy 25GB from secondary to primary drive. The speed was ok, but when it reached the 83% it stoped. Then again the same message that cannot read the file and the drive letters of the second disk disappeared.

Both serial and parallel ports were already disabled in bios.

[Dark Mantis]

Well that at least makes sense now. I take it you have tried changing leads on the LAN as a good quality cable can make quite a difference. Have you checked your disks for errors? Do you have disk cacheing turned on?

[absic]

Reading back through the thread I am at a bit of a loss as to why your system is performing so poorly. From your hardware specs there really shouldn't be a problem and the only thing that I can think of, that could be causing the problems, is if Windows didn't install properly.

I think if I was faced with this situation I would bite the bullet and re-install the OS and the drivers just to make sure that everything had installed correctly. I would remove the Samsung Drive during the re-install and get the OS working properly before reintroducing it to the rig.

I do have doubts about your choice of hard drives but, apart from testing with different models it isn't really possible to say that they are the cause of your issues. However, Green and Energy Saving HDD's do have features that cause them to throttle back if they think they are not being used and I wonder if this is why you are getting the cannot read error when transferring files. Why they should be dropped from the system is another mystery but it is similar to the problems I encountered with my WD Caviar Black HDD's when I was trying to use them in a RAID Array.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I agree absic. I was wondering about those green hard drives. They have caused problems more than once before. I would say it is worth trying it without it first.

[zeroo]

After couple of restarts there is no issue again when I copy the files between the 2 disks, but the slow network speed remains.
I have two network cable, tried with both but everything is the same. Checked the disks, no errors. Did a memtest for half an hour, everything is fine.
I'm going to reinstall windows now without the Samsung drive. I will measure the time, and get back to you with the results.

By the way, I noticed a faster Windows startup after I disabled all the those usb3, sata3, etc... stuff.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes definitely worth disabling anything that you don't use.

[zeroo]

Here I am with the new windows. The setup took 26 minutes and startup lasts ~35 seconds. I noticed during the setup that the DVD led is mostly on, it barely blinks, but in the meantime there are periods when there are no HDD activity even for few minutes.

Now it takes ages to connect to the shared drive, and when I try to enter to a directory it just hangs. But finaly after 5 I could start the copy process and it went well, mostly 8.8MB/s.

Should I try with the BIOS update? I see there is a beta release which says:
2.Fix C1E and LAN compatibility issue

I have the F2.

[Dark Mantis]

I would say yes especially as one of the things listed is one of your problem areas. It sounds like we are slowly getting there

[absic]

Yes, I agree with DM a BIOS update in your case would most probably help.

Could you also post details of the OS you are using too?