BLJ Posted February 28, 2005 Posted February 28, 2005 HiHo all. First question is about the PCIe Slots. Has anybody tried the second one yet? Does it work as good as with the first (upper) one?... i would be glad if i could use the second, so the NB watercooler would fit =) (the noisy 7k rpm NB fan is a payne in the ***) Second question: How well do your SATA HDDs perform in Raid 0; compared with older NF3 chipsets? (benches @ HDTach; because i've tested the old ones with this only...) My old System was an MSI K8N Neo Plat. with 4IBM Hitachi 160GB @ Raid 0 and later then 4 Matrox DiamondMax10 200GB @ Raid 0. With Hitachis @ NF3 i've got ~425MB/s Burstrate and 195MB/s avg. sequential read. With the Matroxs @ NF3 i've got ~450MB/s Burstrate and 220MB/s avg. sequential read. (16kb Stripe Size) Now the thingie which's driving me crazy: on the NF4 Ultra-D i get with the same Matrox HDDs and same Stripesize etc. only about 230MB/s Burstrate and 200MB/s avg. sequential read! that's weird^^... and really bad, because i want to use this machine as LAN-Fileserver (for bigger Files)... i've seen, that angry_games runs 2 Hitachis with SATA2 & NCQ Support (80GB drives) on his Ultra-D, he get's about 230MB/s Burstrate, too. Even for only 2 HDDs it is quite little... (one single should be about 130-150MB/s, 2 in Raid0 ~250MB/s).... has anybody got Burstrate > 230MB/s ? anyway, if you have HD-Tach screens pls. link them here... thank you! BLJ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLJ Posted February 28, 2005 Posted February 28, 2005 so now some benchmark screens. Will upload/add NF4 Benchmark screens this evening. Note: HD-Tach Burstrate values do vary a little. (about +/-20MBytes). For 2 HDDs 230MB/s was ~ the lowest and 260MB/s the highest. Benchmarks @ NF3 250GB: (Forceware 5.x chipset driver) 2x Hitachi 3x Hitachi 4x Hitachi 4x Maxtor DM10 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poisonsnak Posted March 1, 2005 Posted March 1, 2005 NB watercooler? Do tell... The second slot on an ultra-d is an x2 slot but if you move the jumpers to SLI mode (even though it's an Ultra-D) the slots go from being x16 and x2 to x8 and x8. And there's no way a vid card will fill up an x8 slot. http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic...ight=dxg+jumper Macman on that forum is doing a similar thing to you but he's going passive entirely. And if it makes you feel any better your scores are stomping on my LP-B's SiI controller, avg read and read burst are both limited to 100MB/sec with two drives. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLJ Posted March 1, 2005 Posted March 1, 2005 NB watercooler? Do tell... The second slot on an ultra-d is an x2 slot but if you move the jumpers to SLI mode (even though it's an Ultra-D) the slots go from being x16 and x2 to x8 and x8. And there's no way a vid card will fill up an x8 slot. http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic...ight=dxg+jumper Macman on that forum is doing a similar thing to you but he's going passive entirely. cool. Wasn't so sure about that, only recognized, that it didn't work really well with Slot 2 when i did no changes to the SLI jumpers. Any fallbacks in performance? (i do know x8 is waaaay enough; i mean the signal quality or anything like that... overclock-ability^^ etc.) And if it makes you feel any better your scores are stomping on my LP-B's SiI controller, avg read and read burst are both limited to 100MB/sec with two drives. no, sorry, doesn't make me feel any better, because it was better with my old Board^^. And the reason i bought this and the last board, is because, and only because!, of the super-fast integrated S-ATA Raid Controller. Another guy has just messaged me yesterday, he has an ASUS A8N-SLI and has got good performance with it... (4xWestern Digital SATA 200GB 7200RPM, 450MB/s burstrate, 240MB/s avg. sequential read)... so i'm looking forward to solving this problem! i really really hope i can, or i do have to sell that board. That really would drive me nuts... anyway, going to test some different chipset drivers... which tool does work with the NF4 Raid, so that i can make images? thx cya Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLJ Posted March 2, 2005 Posted March 2, 2005 yesterday, i've tested all the HDDs seperately. Each one has got about: Read Burstrate: 138MB/s Avg. sequential Read: 53.8MB/s Access Time: 16ms except one; this one has only 14ms Access Time. 2ms are pretty much. And... they do not have all the same firmware!. 2 drives with one and 2 with another version. So what should i do? Seems like the HDDs aren't phisically the same, or how would you explain the 2ms difference in access time? AAM? Gona test that with the Hitachi Drive .... tool, soon. cya Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhiridflaidd Posted March 2, 2005 Posted March 2, 2005 Sisoft sandra tells me that the pci-e vga card in my second slot is runnig at x16. I fitted it there last night to put a wateblock on my chipset.... I got 10100 in 3dmark 2003 with a setup that I cobbled together (I.e. I haven't installed the graphics card drivers propperly) My best with that setup was 10500 - and I also am messing with my sound cards- so I think the marginal drop is due to other changes. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poisonsnak Posted March 2, 2005 Posted March 2, 2005 Yeah these programs that tell you what your card is running at (CPU-Z, SANDRA, Everest) seem to be all over the place lately. But really going from x16 to x8 the guy only lost a couple of 3dmarks. 3dmark05 6600GT x16 - 3299 x8 - 3227 x2 - 2710 AAM usually results in a bigger hit in random access time I think, my maxtor 40GB went from 12ms to 17ms with AAM turned on but I like it quiet. I don't think firmware should make such a big difference in drive speed, I mean they worked great on your nF3 so I don't know why the nF4 would be sucking it up so much. Maybe we just need to wait on drivers from nVidia? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLJ Posted March 2, 2005 Posted March 2, 2005 yeah, but the difference(between the 'identical' drives) persists... even with new drivers. gona try out different ports. etc. cya Yeah these programs that tell you what your card is running at (CPU-Z, SANDRA, Everest) seem to be all over the place lately. But really going from x16 to x8 the guy only lost a couple of 3dmarks.3dmark05 6600GT x16 - 3299 x8 - 3227 x2 - 2710 AAM usually results in a bigger hit in random access time I think, my maxtor 40GB went from 12ms to 17ms with AAM turned on but I like it quiet. I don't think firmware should make such a big difference in drive speed, I mean they worked great on your nF3 so I don't know why the nF4 would be sucking it up so much. Maybe we just need to wait on drivers from nVidia? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLJ Posted March 2, 2005 Posted March 2, 2005 now i've tested it with: each 2 HDDs in Raid 0 -> Performance o.k. (~230MB/s Burst, 110MB/s avg. seq.) each 3 HDDs in Raid 0 -> Performance not Ok (~230MB/s Burst, 135MB/s avg.seq.) 4 HDDs in Raid 0 -> Performance not Ok (230MB/s Burst, 195MB/s avg.seq.) and i've tested it each time with different Stripe size and another combination etc.etc. so what am i supposed to do now? i do know of other users with other NF4 Boards (p.Ex. ASUS A8N-SLI) who do not have such problems... thx cya Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLJ Posted March 2, 2005 Posted March 2, 2005 now i even tried out with NV Driver version 6.37... nothing changed. and.. i've also tried with other Bios'! so what more could i try??? cya Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poisonsnak Posted March 3, 2005 Posted March 3, 2005 Hmm which BIOSes have you tried? 2/17 has a 'newer' SATA BIOS iirc and 2/18 goes back to an 'older' one, so maybe try one if you haven't tried the other. It's pretty clear that your Burst speed is limited to 230MB/sec much like mine is limited to 100. Do you know of users of other nF4 Ultra boards (as opposed to nF4 SLI - the chipset is different) that have good RAID results? I was sort of theorizing a while back that the nF4 ultra and nF4 SLI might provide different overclocking results. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLJ Posted March 3, 2005 Posted March 3, 2005 The original one, the newest Beta on the DFI Site, and actually i'm using 2/18. Thx for info, i will try out the 217 this evening. i do not think, that there's such a big difference between SLI and Ultra chipset - we can even Mod the Ultra to the SLI... but i could try modding mine... don't think it will improve the burstrate. The Burstrate climbs up to 245MB/s on Quad Raid0 with Stripesize of 128KByte - but then the seq. Read is around 130MB/s (not faster at the beginning of the disk... )... cya Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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