GA-Z68X-UD3P-B3 F6 bios issues - write bottleneck with Vertex 3 ssd

[ex58]

Hey guys,
anyone try yesterday released BIOS F7b?
-Improve OCZ PCIe SSD compatibility
-Fix Default C-state
-05.Sep 11

Maybe help your issue.
 

[Dark Mantis]

If I purchase goods that claim to be USB3 & SATA 3 then that is what I expect. A few yrs ago
any goods that I found were faulty they were sent back either for refund or direct replacement as would never accept
a repaired used item, as was my legal right. Kept board rather than scrap a £200.00 cpu.

Yes fairly much the same as my experience when I first bought the motherboard and several SATA3 components that wouldn't work. As you say in the end decided to keep it as apart from that was a good board.

[GTZaskarLE]

Hi ex58,

Thanks for noting this and no, I had not even seen F7B yet.
As soon as it will become available at the gigabyte website I will test it and present the results here.

(I personally choose to use genuine firmware & software only in general)

[GTZaskarLE]

Hi Tinker,

Do I understand correctly you use a OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD connected to a SATA 3 PCIe card on a GA-X58A motherboard?
If yes, which SATA 3 PCIe card do you use?

[christillis]

Hi christillis,

It looks like you have connected your SSD to a sata 2 port.
A sata 2 port can not transfer data faster than 3 Gb/s data (=approximately 300 MB/s in practice)

If this is the case then you really should connect it to a sata 3 port.

Hi GTZ, thanks for your observation...could have sworn I plugged it into Sata III! I'll shut down now and check

[Tinker]

Yes thats correct GTZaskarLE  . I purchased a Manhatten 6GB/s  150408. It was purchased before I joined Forum & the
only one that came up on google. The cheapest I could find was at North East Peripherals LTD. £46.69 but that included £6.90
P&P + VAT which was a bit over the top. The good thing about it with single drive is fast boot no drivers installed. Fastest slot
was 2nd x16 slot though only PCIex1. 2 outputs 2nd one was fastest. Most recomend the Rocket Raid Highpoint but do some
research as 620 & 640 have slow boot up times. If you want raid you need dual chip & sadly all Marvell 9128. No 9182 about
that I know about. Scan do the Rocket cards & no idea if faster than mine. Startech, Xenta are other names but no reviews.
May be faster if I used AHCI.

The really good cards are around £300.00 plus a lot more. Cheaper to change MOBO !!! Hope that helps.


Regards tinker.

[christillis]

Hello again,

Well I checked and it was indeed plugged into SATA3 (after spending all this money on SSD, I thought I would be careful!). However, the SATA cable itself was black and I suspect possibly a SATA2 cable (nothing written on it of course), so I removed it and used a Yellow cable that came with the board and that I suspect is SATA3 capable. Here are the results:

Booted back up after cable swap:


Tested again after I noticed the SATA power cable was loose:


So an improvement I think...and thanks!  

[christillis]

Here's a probably stupid question, but it seems that in most transfer instances (using ATTO), the write speed is greater than the read speed - I would have thought this would be the other way round? 

[Tinker]

That's quite an improvement christillis. My read is 425MB/s but much poorer write.  All
the 6 GB/s cables I have purchased are black.


Regards tinker.

[christillis]

All the 6 GB/s cables I have purchased are black.

Ah....bugger  I do have a stash of Sata Cables, perhaps it was a very old one I picked out the box? I wonder if there's a way of confirming whether a cable is sata 3, other than plugging it in and testing? I have a great Power tester, be nice to have a data cable tester too.

Thanks, Chris

[Aussie Allan]

  Hiya Cris....

 Just so you don't get the wrong idea.....This is an extract from the original ........ sent to JEDEC for Registration (In Bold)

   In the transition to SATA 6Gb/s, it will be important to use high-quality cabling.
Problems may be related to the use of cables made from marginal materials that
perform at the edges of SATA 3Gb/s tolerances, which could become a failure point at
the faster 6Gb/s signal rates. SATA-IO therefore recommends that only high quality
cables and connectors be utilized for SATA 6Gb/s.

  Translation..........there is no physical design difference in Sata cables or the core count with the migration from Sata II to Sata III.... more positive connectors, cable quality, superior shielding Technology and it's implamentation and tighter manufacturing tolerances has and will continue to improve data transfer rates

  So what it comes down to is.........."You Get What You Pay For"

  I resonantly went over to a newer Lead shielded sata cable with a much more positive clip.......use the best shielded cables you can afford!

 Good practices when working with any Data cables......Use the same brand/spec through out.....if you run flat data cables together....even a 1mm gap will make a difference..........

 In a given raid set use the shortest cable you can get away with but cables should be the same length on the given raid set regardless of longer tails

 Try and route Data cables away from any power cables as much as humanly possible

  All these little tricks combined can reap up to 20% better performance........ hope this helps!

 Aussie Allan

[GTZaskarLE]

Hi christillis,

Nice to see your SSD performance improvements.

I agree with Aussie Allan concerning cable quality.

Here I have some other questions for you, because I think your SSD performance could still be better.

Which firmware do you use for your SSD: v2.11 or lower?
Especially v2.09 is known to be slower.
OCZ recommends to update to v2.11 in general, for stability and for performance.
I am using v2.11.

If your SSD is your boot drive use the Linux-based firmware update method.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?89670-Bootable-Tools-for-OCZ-Vertex2-3-Agility2-3-Solid3-Revo-and-Ibis-SSD-s

What sata mode did you set in the bios for your SSD?
It should be AHCI.
Or RAID and then AHCI within the Intel RST driver for a 'RAID ready system.'
The trim function will work in both cases.

On what sata 3 port did you connect your SSD? The intel or the Marvell sata 3 port?
You should connect to the Intel sata3_0 port.
The Marvell sata 3 ports are limited at 5 Gb/s.
The Intel sata 3 ports will do 6 Gb/s and are known to be faster in gerenal for sata 3 SSD's.

[Dark Mantis]

I know Allan has already got in before me but just to reiterate there are no differences in SATA cables from the very first ones apart from when they ratified the SATA2 standard they incorporated the little metal locks to stop them falling out of the socket. Apart from that all cables are equal but some are more equal than others!  You do get what you pay for and even then have to take care in the routing of them.

[christillis]

First of all, I have to say how grateful I am to you all for your help with this - Aussie Allan, GTZaskarLE & Dark Mantis. You're all top rate people!

Thanks to Allan for confirming that SATA cable types only vary in quality, not speed. I have looked into some HQ cables such as Overclockers Akasa's, so I may well go down that route a some point...bit of a shame though, as I have dozens of SATA cables of all lengths (from client upgrade/new builds).

I also have to admit, SATA cables in my tower run tight to each other and power cables around them - haven't really sat down and thought "cable management!", yet It's a bit of a mess as I have 6 SATA cables in use, but I will have a tidy up when I stop needing the computer for earning money

GTZaskarLE - I will definitely find the answer to your questions - especially as they aid me in a speed increase! Thanks for giving me a link to a firmware upgrade where the SSD is boot, I had gone to the OCZ website briefly and only downloaded the upgrade file!

I'm fairly sure from memory the SATA mode is IDE, I did assume that the RAID mode should be used when more than one disk is being used, I also thought that AHCI serves little benefit to 'mono drive' solutions?

I'm unsure of the precise sata port...athough I'm fairly sure it's in the wrong one

Hi Dark Mantis, thanks for confirming - always nice to get double confirmation Yes I only have the metal locking version these days, although I did prefer the push in ones, handy for tight cases.

As I've not set up a RAID proper, I need not worry about cable lengths...but that is very useful to know - logically similar to tuning the length of motorcycle exhaust pipes! One thing I could do with is an outlet for super short SATA cables (100-200mm), because my motherboard (like most Gigabyte's I think) have side access SATA ports, so they point almost directly at most of my HDD's.

Thanks again everyone   - you are the most useful & friendly forum I have ever used thus far (blush).

[Dark Mantis]

Check Ebay for the very short SATA cables. Obviously you have to be careful what you are buying but I purchased some very nice ones a while ago and picked up a few once I had verified the quality.

Thanks for the kind words by the way.