Is ther a problem with sata raid on the CF's?

[-fe.lep-]

I have tried all the settings for running SATA RAID 0 with my new board, including 4 formats this weekend using SATA connections 1 and 2 and 5 and 6, both chipsets in other words and all the bios settings correct. The speeds that windows boots is still equal to a 7200 IDE. I have tested transfer speeds and they are showing 110 meg but my interest is more in the bootup.

 

When windows begins to start there is the small coloured bar that goes across the screen. When Raid 0 on raptors is working correctly on a fresh install you will see that little bar appear and it will get to go one third across its path and then it moves on. With a slow hard drive on fresh install I would see it go across 4/5 times. At the minute with my raptors on Raid 0 im seeing it 4/5 times and up to 7/8 times. This is not a very technical way of judging performance, unless you have raptors yourself and know what I mean. But is is definitely an indicator of a problem with the setup.

 

Another thing I have noticed is very slow map loading times in battlefield 2 etc. Just wondering had anyone else had the same problems with raptors and this board.

 

The disk that I was supplied with for the raid with the motherboard was faulty and im using the version from the main dfi website.

[Quadrifoglio]

Hi,

 

Looking at the Windows startup bar is not really the best way to judge drive performance. The speed of Windows startup is determined in particular by drivers and applications, not so much by technical drive speed.

 

Anyway, slow drive performance could be caused by lots of things. The first thing to do is determine how far you are off the average performance for your drives. For instance, try ATTO and measure the performance of your RAID 0 array. A RAID 0 array of 74 GB Raptors should measure around 100-110 MB/sec read/write.

 

For comparison:

My single WD 74 GB Raptor

[-fe.lep-]

http://www.fe-lep.com/SATA

 

Thats the timings. As ya can see they are running slow.

[-fe.lep-]

The settings im using for the raid in bios are:

 

In genie bios:

 

Pci Device control

 

Onboard Sata Controller set to Sata 1/2 Controller

Onboard Sata Controller set to Raid controller

 

and

 

sil3114 S-ATA Raid Controller set to Disabled

 

When I do the install, I am using the drivers from HERE when I reach the part about adding third party drivers.

 

The thing is when the install is done, I goto device manager and there is no raid/scsi controller listed with drivers etc but there is an unknown raid controller that does not requie drivers according to windows.

 

Any one have any ideas what im doing wrong, Or where I can get a full set of the drivers that will be compatable with the SB450 chipset?

[alcsmith]

Are you using your drives on 1-2?

[-fe.lep-]

Are you using your drives on 1-2?

 

Yeah, I am. I think the drivers on the website are wrong. They are the drivers for the controller on ports 5-8. I dunno where to get the drivers for the 3112 (SB450Chipset)

[Quadrifoglio]

You can get the 6.2 version Southbridge driver from ATI, but they don't allow deeplinking. Get it here (SB450 driver, not Silicon Image)...

 

Those ATTO transfer rates are from your 74 GB Raptors in RAID 0 :eek2: ? If so, they are way too low indeed.

[alcsmith]

Yeah, I am. I think the drivers on the website are wrong. They are the drivers for the controller on ports 5-8. I dunno where to get the drivers for the 3112 (SB450Chipset)

 

 

I thought the RDX200 had si3114 onboard. I might be looking at the wrong banks but I was pretty sure of that.

[-fe.lep-]

I thought the RDX200 had si3114 onboard. I might be looking at the wrong banks but I was pretty sure of that.

 

 

Yeah it does, but thats on the ports 5 - 8, To run ports 1-4 it uses the sb450 and thats on 3112.

 

Its actually has

 

Four Serial ATA ports supported by the ATI SB450 chip - SATA speed up to 1.5Gb/s - RAID 0 and RAID 1 (This is 1-4)

 

Four Serial ATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil 3114 chip - SATA speed up to 1.5Gb/s - RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5 (This is 5-8)

 

The sil3114 is slower than the sb450 in a host of reviews, although I have tried both setups. Neither with any great deal of success. Max Read write never crossed 70 on the 3114 and the bootup in windows is so slow as to be untrue, map loading times in BF2 etc had also seriously increased. So im trying to get teh SB450 to work to see if I can get higher performance than the 3114 as experienced by multiple reviewers.

[Quadrifoglio]

@-fe.lep-:

Do you use the latest official BIOS release (2005/12/23)? Fixes:

1. Fix memory Set 2-1-1-1-1 and 4-1-1 mode wrong.

2. Set Cool'n'Quiet default disable.

3. Change the description of DQDRV.

4. Fix Read Preamble Table Error.

5. Shorten the delay time during clock programming loop.

6. Add over clocks step by step.

7. Fix fill 3114 SVID&SSID under Cross fire mode.

8. Fix soft-reset hang on POST code F2h if enable USB mouse support.

9. Change CMOS used to fix some control item can’t save.

10. Add support K8 FX60 CPU.

11. Update SiI3112 Raid ROM.

12. Fix some SATA(DiamondMax 10 (6B160M0) HDD ) HDD detect fail at first time cool boot.

 

It might make a difference, give it a try if you haven't already...

[-fe.lep-]

@-fe.lep-:

Do you use the latest official BIOS release (2005/12/23)? Fixes:

 

 

It might make a difference, give it a try if you haven't already...

 

Yeah, I had a look at it but because I have just purchased the board from a store with a 7day cooling off period I didnt want to flash the bios incase it effects my ability to return it. I may goto the nf4 version instead.

 

Thanks for the help mate, I may well give it a go as a last resort. I will let ya know here how it all goes.

[Quadrifoglio]

All chipsets have issues. Changing to nForce4 will probably solve your drive performance problem, but possibly it will introduce other problems (some SATA II incompatibility, sound card trouble using a X-Fi, effectively having only 2 DIMMs instead of 4 on this board, etc.).

 

My advice: find a workaround using this board, there almost always is one. For example, try running your Raptors in JBOD configuration and feel out the real life performance. RAID 0 gives about 1,5 times the throughput of a single drive, but measured in I/O's the performance gain for desktop users is barely noticable. Using RAID 0, an increasing part of the throughput/sec is used for secondary drive operations, like moving the heads. A decreasing part of the throughput/sec is used for actual read/write operations.

 

Example:

two Raptors, single user desktop system; single drive average is 60 MB/sec with 18% actual reading/writing, RAID 0 average is 100 MB/sec with 11% reading/writing. Performance difference (estimates, just to give an idea):

*100 MB/sec x 11% = 11 MB/sec data to be read/written

*60 MB/sec x 18% = 10.8 MB/sec data to be read/written

*performance gain by using RAID 0 = 0.2 MB/sec

 

Could well be your particular system will be faster without RAID 0, because the RAID 0 trouble is holding back performance.

 

If you do want to use RAID 0, consider getting a PCI SATA controller. Doesn't have to be that expensive...