X58A-UD5-- 2 RAID 0 Arrays, 2 Optical Drives, and today I add an SSD

[RealTime]

I bought a Corsair Force GT 120. Installed it on Port 7. Fresh copy of Win7. The performance is less than stellar. Here is the configuration:

Gigabyte X58-AUD5 v2.0
Core i7-920 @ 3.8GHz
eVGA GTX 570
12GB G.Skill Ripjaws 1600
Soundblaster X-Fi

 2 x 500 Seagate RAID 0 (Ports 4 and 5)
 2 x 1TB WD RAID 0 (Ports 2 and 3
 2 x Lite-On DVD burners (Ports 0 and 1)
 
I have AHCI enabled. Here are my benches:




 
In addition to the less-than-stellar DiskMark scores, it takes a very long time to boot up.

Thoughts?

[Aussie Allan]

  Without going into all the messy details .... Port_7 is supported by the marvell chip ....OK for optical but not for SSD...... if you have a spare Intel port (ICH10R) ....use this for the SSD..... you should see a vast improvement.

  Aussie Allan

[Lsdmeasap]

You want your SSD / OS drive on SATAII_0, and your CD/DVD drives on SATAII_4/5

As Allan mentioned , you do not want to use the Marvel 6Gb/s port for your SSD / OS drive, it will be very unstable and BSOD often on you likely.  Intel is faster overall anyway, if you want a link to my review showing comparisons with a C300 let me know and I'll show you.

[RealTime]

Thanks Allan and lsdmeasap.

So I should be able to keep my two RAID 0 arrays where they are, and simply move the opticals to 6/7 then?

[Aussie Allan]

                   

  Aussie Allan

[RealTime]

One other little nagging detail.

By moving the SSD to the ICH side with the RAID arrays, don't I need to leave the ICH controller in RAID mode or can I switch it to AHCI without losing the arrays?

Additionally, without AHCI mode I lose TRIM, correct?

[Lsdmeasap]

Single drive's not in a RAID array will be Non-member, and will use AHCI functionality, so that is fine.

That's actually how I always run my SSD's, RAID enabled but no arrays unless I"m using a SSD array for testing or something like that.

You cannot switch to AHCI in the BIOS, you'll mess up your RAID arrays.  If you are using the Marvell drivers right now, you will need to uninstall them and reboot to get the MSAHCI driver in use on the Marvell controller, before you move the drive to the Intel ports.   If you are already using MSAHCI on the Marvell ports you're good to go, move anytime.

If you are not sure what driver you are using, run AS SSD and look on the left, if it says mv91xx or anything similar that's Marvell driver, MSAHCI will say just that.  Download is at the very bottom
http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?download_id=9

[RealTime]

Thanks for the reply.

I already moved the SSD to port 0 on the ICH, rebooted, allowed OS to recognize and install the SSD and rebooted again. I am pretty sure the Marvell driver is running on ports 6 and 7 with the opticals. Is there a way to check that, and subsequently uninstall the Marvell driver?

Single drive's not in a RAID array will be Non-member, and will use AHCI functionality, so that is fine.

That's actually how I always run my SSD's, RAID enabled but no arrays unless I"m using a SSD array for testing or something like that.

You cannot switch to AHCI in the BIOS, you'll mess up your RAID arrays.  If you are using the Marvell drivers right now, you will need to uninstall them and reboot to get the MSAHCI driver in use on the Marvell controller, before you move the drive to the Intel ports.   If you are already using MSAHCI on the Marvell ports you're good to go, move anytime.

If you are not sure what driver you are using, run AS SSD and look on the left, if it says mv91xx or anything similar that's Marvell driver, MSAHCI will say just that.  Download is at the very bottom
http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?download_id=9

EDIT:

Latest bench of SSD on SATA2_0:



Anything look unexpected? Is the ~260MB/s the max throughput of the SATA2 pipe?

[Lsdmeasap]

Nice to hear the move went smoothly!!  I'm not sure if you can check CD/DVD drivers, maybe in properties of device manager, in the details tab, the driver tab normally always says some Microsoft version, but you can check as it might show Marvell on those ports I can't remember because I've not used them too much.

To uninstall the driver you'd have to either connect a disk there and then uninstall the driver via device manager, or if you installed the web interface for the Marvell drivers if you uninstall it I believe it also uninstalls the driver too, this would be in your all programs and add/remove programs (Marvell Tray)

You'll be fine to leave them installed anyway since it's just CD/DVD, I doubt those can cause errors even with the Marvell driver.   But if you do ever get mv91xx.sys BSOD you'll know those drivers are still installed.   They shouldn't be an issue, I have them installed on a test machine that runs all the time, but no disks on the controller and I never see issues unless I put an SSD on it and try to bench it or use it heavily.

Ya, 260-280MB/s is SATA 3Gb/s limit.   What was your AS SSD score on the Marvell ports?

[RealTime]

Thanks so much for the information. Expertise abounds here and I thank you kindly for your assistance.

Sadly, I did not know about AS-SSD until you mentioned it so I never benched the Marvell controller -- just the Crystal DiskMark benches I posted earlier.

Hehe, it's ironic -- slower throughput on the ICH at SATA2 speeds, but WOW everything feels quite snappy! Now I am beginning to understand why everyone raves about SSDs. It probably goes without saying that I was quite ..... ahem, underwhelmed by SSD on the Marvell controller.

It begs the question: Why do motherboard manufacturers use the Marvell chip? Why not double down on Intel's controller?

Ya, 260-280MB/s is SATA 3Gb/s limit.   What was your AS SSD score on the Marvell ports?

[Lsdmeasap]

Thanks for your kind words!   We are always here to help when we can!

No worries, I'm just an AS SSD kinda guy so I wanted to see your previous scores so I could better see the differences on your setup.   AS SSD isn't really ideal for Sandforce drives, so if your drive is Sandforce based don't use it often, ATTO is better for Sandforce drives.

Yes, the Intel is much better, other than higher sequential speeds the Marvell isn't good for anything else.  

When you have a spare hour or two, I did a C300 review that compared several ontrollers and setups,  including the ICH10R and Marvell 9182
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=261789

I actually felt the same way about SSD's at first, and this was with a slow first gen Crucial M225 (Indiliinux controller).   I used it for a week or two and though, meh it's ok but not fast at all really, especially nothing noticeable.  Then I had to sell it because I badly needed something else to complete some testing, and so I went back to my spinning 1TB drive, and wow!!   Instantly I felt like I was on a Pre-Pentium 4 computer, slower than molasses on dial-up.   It was so bad I thought surely something was set wrong with my system, bad drivers, or something, it was terrible.   Then after a day or so of use I realized it was the SSD I was missing, and then when I got my next one it was a newer faster one anyway (C300) and as soon as I put it back in everything felt normal again.  No clicking and waiting around, open an app and it's there before I let go of the mouse button, ect.    

You just don't know how fast an SSD really is until you use one for a while, then loose it and go back to a spinning drive, it's night and day and it's hard to realize this without going through something like that.   Now anytime I work on someones computer without an SSD I dread the waiting around, I know it's coming anytime someone hands me a PC to work on even if it's a new PC with today's CPU's and boards.

I don't think they could use two Intel controllers, and SSD's were coming out with 6Gb/s interfaces, and that Marvell controller was the ONLY one around at the time, so they had to use it or nothing.

Be sure you enable write back cache too if you haven't already checked that.  If you need to know where to check let us know.

[RealTime]

Write back cache is enabled, just checked it. Windows must have done it by default.

[Lsdmeasap]

I was just making sure, nice to know it's already enabled for you!   Sometimes the Intel drivers/program enable it, but sometimes not so I wanted to mention it so you'd be sure to check to see it's enabled.

[RealTime]

Just wanted to report back on my system status.

Everything is running perfectly. The Intel ICH10R is really an amazing controller when configured properly. Running two seperate RAID 0 arrays of differing capacities and an SSD acting as the boot drive.

 I received some EXCELLENT advice from two knowledgable forum members and got my storage woes remedied in a hurry.

My hat's off to you folks, and to Gigabyte for hosting this community.

Thank you! 

[Aussie Allan]

  Pleasure .... call again ....from me ...

  Aussie Allan