AMD SB850/890GX with SSD RAID-0 first look

Thanks to all for the answers! :)

Finally I bought another 2 SSDs and made a four drives raid 0.

The problem comes with ATTO Disk Benchmark:


http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9846/atto.png

As you can see, performance falls near to 0 in big files. Problem persists using the drivers recommended by Oliverda:

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/9846/atto.png

I don't know if its a problem given by the program, or a real performance problem. I tryed 1 gb total lenght and i obtain a more than 100000 result, but problem remains. ¿does it mean that is not a program problem but a real one?

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/4069/longitud1gb.png

The only way to avoid this problem is disabling NQC.


The results on the other tests are amazing:

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/1315/asssd.png

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/6...aldiskmark.png

But as you can suppose, I don't know if I should disable NQC, and then I get this (obviously worse result, and much worse on "AS SSD" and "CrystalDiskMark":

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/3528/nqcdisabled.png

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/3...qcdisabled.png

Or ignoring ATTO and leaving NQC Enabled....

I've just perform an probably stupid test xD

I've enabled NQC on 2 drives, and disable on another 2.

I think that if it would be a real performance problem given by NQC, in this scenario (2 drives enabled and 2 disabled) the dramatic performance fall should remain, shouldn't it? Or at least I would get lower performance compared to 4-disable.

In the other hand, if the problem is a program problem, that can't handle those speeds, we would get a result similar to the "4-nqc disable" test.

This is the result:

http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/8...2andenable.png

So i think that is not a real performance problem, but a ATTO problem handling those high speeds. If the NQC would really produce que performance disaster, having 2 enabled and 2 disabled should still persist....

Any opinion?



EDIT: I answer myself.

Problem solved, It was due to que ATTO program, just downloading latest version (2.46) makes the deal:

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/6672/nuevoatto.png

Hi all!

ATTO is the only bench which doesn't give wildly different results with NCQ on, although they are still different enough - especially with smaller files. I'll be leaving it OFF.

Left is with NCQ off, right is with NCQ on

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r...101/ncqoff.pnghttp://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r...0101/ncqon.png

OJ101, Enabling NCQ is a common practice for SSD's only on SBXXX Controllers. True, on normal HDD's it will not help on Raid performance,it will even give worse results for small files.

Hey man, I was replying to the guy complaining about NCQ being off by default ;)

:D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [XC] Oj101

Hey man, I was replying to the guy complaining about NCQ being off by default ;)

:D

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Hey, no prob mate :)

:up:

Guys, is there an AMD chipset driver that passes TRIM yet?

If not what are the options to TRIM with the Intel Toolbox? Do you need to be in IDE mode for the toolbox to be able to see the SSD?

What is the best configuration (driver/ settings) for a single SSD on Win 7?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ao1

Guys, is there an AMD chipset driver that passes TRIM yet?

If not what are the options to TRIM with the Intel Toolbox? Do you need to be in IDE mode for the toolbox to be able to see the SSD?

What is the best configuration (driver/ settings) for a single SSD on Win 7?

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Just installed mine today
(bios SATA 6GB/s "Enable" - Amd AHCI rom "Disable"):
Crucial C300 128Gb
Asrock 890GX Extreme3 (SB850)
Win7 64 (SSD tweak + write caching ENABLE)
AMD all in 1 driver ver: 8.70_WHQL
Catalyst 10.9

http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/...10_2010_SO.JPG

Crystaldiskinfo set Trim su ENABLE but there is another tool to check if Trim is real Enable?

EDIT: Just checked
fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify report "0"
HDTune Pro 4.60 report NCQ and Trim Enable

Hey i am new to the forum. umm is it possible for the thread starter to post out his steps of raiding the pair of hdd here? as in what to do to raid although this thread is to discuss the performance of the ssd i really hope you would kindly do so i'v been trying for 2 months trying to raid my 2x2tb WS 2tb caviar black to no avail and that means not using my pc for that long. I sincerely appreciate anyone that could lend a helping hand been going through tutorial online for a really long time with no result.

here is what i do to start my raid. i follow exactly according to my mobo manual by defining the raid array 0 in bios after that boot into my windows 7 x64 using the dvd and loading the driver at the screen since raid hdd cannot be detected and this where i got stuck because every driver i got has error to them i'v tried vista x64 win 7 x64 but its the same even the driver chipset from gigabyte btw i m using the same mobo as the thread starter my board is the 1.0 revision 890gpa-ud3h so i m getting really hopeless right now. thx for any help ^_^

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lolitsme

Hey i am new to the forum. umm is it possible for the thread starter to post out his steps of raiding the pair of hdd here? as in what to do to raid although this thread is to discuss the performance of the ssd i really hope you would kindly do so i'v been trying for 2 months trying to raid my 2x2tb WS 2tb caviar black to no avail and that means not using my pc for that long. I sincerely appreciate anyone that could lend a helping hand been going through tutorial online for a really long time with no result.

here is what i do to start my raid. i follow exactly according to my mobo manual by defining the raid array 0 in bios after that boot into my windows 7 x64 using the dvd and loading the driver at the screen since raid hdd cannot be detected and this where i got stuck because every driver i got has error to them i'v tried vista x64 win 7 x64 but its the same even the driver chipset from gigabyte btw i m using the same mobo as the thread starter my board is the 1.0 revision 890gpa-ud3h so i m getting really hopeless right now. thx for any help ^_^

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Hey, sorry I've been away for two weeks and didn't monitor the thread. Seems that you need to DL RAID floppy/USB driver that is needed for Win7 to recognize and install on the array.

Win7 64bit http://ee.giga-byte.com/products/mb/...tml?os=win7_64

For RAID download the "AMD AMD SATA RAID Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)"

Good luck.

@ TassadarDavid
Hey mate, those are very nice scores with CDM and AS SSD. Don't worry about ATTO - it does not work accurately with SSDs. I'm happy to see 1000MBs bandwidth for onboard budget controller. Great job. As far as why your intermediate scores were low... As someone accurately suggested you should have reset drives using HDDErase between the benchies and OS should run on the different drive. I have Hitachi 2TB hdd with Win7 for running benchmarks. After major change to the array (NCQ, stripe, RAID ROM, RAID drivers) I perform HDDErase and run new set of benchies. That's the magic sauce.

@ [XC] Oj101
That might be true regarding HDD performance degradation with HDD. I've noticed that SSDs benefit from it at least on ICH10R and SB850.

Cheers!

P.S. There is F8 BIOS out for rev 1.0 of the board that has new RAID ROM. Will test it out shortly. Cheers.

Got F8 BIOS installed, but RAID option ROM version reads 3.2.1020.39.
The latest one for SB850 I thought was 3.2.1540.31. Can someone confirm please?
I've contacted Gigabyte support for clarification.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by F@32

Got F8 BIOS installed, but RAID option ROM version reads 3.2.1020.39.
The latest one for SB850 I thought was 3.2.1540.31. Can someone confirm please?
I've contacted Gigabyte support for clarification.

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According to this thread, as far as I can tell at least, there were issues with SSDs on 3.2.1540.31 and it was reverted back to 3.2.1020.39 (on the 880GA-UD3H at least):

http://bbs.gigabyte.cn/showtopic-18018.aspx

--Matt

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mattkosem

According to this thread, as far as I can tell at least, there were issues with SSDs on 3.2.1540.31 and it was reverted back to 3.2.1020.39 (on the 880GA-UD3H at least):

http://bbs.gigabyte.cn/showtopic-18018.aspx

--Matt

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That's odd. Why didn't they keep 3.2.1540.15, and provided F8 BIOS description that it has a new RAID option ROM lol?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by F@32

Hey, sorry I've been away for two weeks and didn't monitor the thread. Seems that you need to DL RAID floppy/USB driver that is needed for Win7 to recognize and install on the array.

Win7 64bit http://ee.giga-byte.com/products/mb/...tml?os=win7_64

For RAID download the "AMD AMD SATA RAID Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)"

Good luck.

@ TassadarDavid
Hey mate, those are very nice scores with CDM and AS SSD. Don't worry about ATTO - it does not work accurately with SSDs. I'm happy to see 1000MBs bandwidth for onboard budget controller. Great job. As far as why your intermediate scores were low... As someone accurately suggested you should have reset drives using HDDErase between the benchies and OS should run on the different drive. I have Hitachi 2TB hdd with Win7 for running benchmarks. After major change to the array (NCQ, stripe, RAID ROM, RAID drivers) I perform HDDErase and run new set of benchies. That's the magic sauce.

@ [XC] Oj101
That might be true regarding HDD performance degradation with HDD. I've noticed that SSDs benefit from it at least on ICH10R and SB850.

Cheers!

P.S. There is F8 BIOS out for rev 1.0 of the board that has new RAID ROM. Will test it out shortly. Cheers.

---

Thx for the reply unfortunately gave it a try already the same even got desperate enough to try the ahci driver despite being a whole different thing went online and google a bit more then i found this thread, details of how this guy does his radi on his asus mobo and the problem that plague others in raid 0 lol so here is the link if u pls give it some time reading it and thx again wont stop till i get the raid sucessfully raidED ^_^ http://forums.amd.com/game/messagevi...hreadid=121333
. This is just one of the many example people are facing problem as mention by the person with asus board all he did was putting in the bios from asus site onto the thumbdrive and voila everything works but there is just some of us guys that do accordingly to the instruction and somewhere still went wrong therefore i ask for a detail explanation but pls do it on ur free time triple thx ^_^

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lolitsme

Thx for the reply unfortunately gave it a try already the same even got desperate enough to try the ahci driver despite being a whole different thing went online and google a bit more then i found this thread, details of how this guy does his radi on his asus mobo and the problem that plague others in raid 0 lol so here is the link if u pls give it some time reading it and thx again wont stop till i get the raid sucessfully raidED ^_^ http://forums.amd.com/game/messagevi...hreadid=121333
. This is just one of the many example people are facing problem as mention by the person with asus board all he did was putting in the bios from asus site onto the thumbdrive and voila everything works but there is just some of us guys that do accordingly to the instruction and somewhere still went wrong therefore i ask for a detail explanation but pls do it on ur free time triple thx ^_^

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There is a post in that thread by francisw19 that is as good instructions as they get. Don't think I would lay it out any better.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by F@32

There is a post in that thread by francisw19 that is as good instructions as they get. Don't think I would lay it out any better.

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Thx for the advice lol currently looking up to it i should be able to get on to raiding in a few more days when i have free time from college ^_^ hopefully soon enough i will be posting results instead of question the next time u see my reply :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lolitsme

Thx for the advice lol currently looking up to it i should be able to get on to raiding in a few more days when i have free time from college ^_^ hopefully soon enough i will be posting results instead of question the next time u see my reply :)

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No problem, that's what these forums are for :up:

Alright, here are the refreshed results with the latest version of benchmarks comparing 3.2.1540.15 vs 3.2.1020.29 RAID option ROMs. As you can see there is no difference.

Drives: 2 Intel X-18M Gen1 80Gb
RAID-0 set-up: Stripe 128Kb, 4K NTFS allocation unit, write-back caching enabled
SB Driver: AHCI/RAID 8.71
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H
CPU: Phenom II 965, TRUE-120 default clocks
RAM: 2x2Gb DDR3 G-Skill Ripjaws F3-12800cl9d
Video: Asus HD5850, Cat 10.6
Sound: M-Audio Audiophile 2496, Win7_64bit_Delta_6_0_2_5_10_0_5074
NIC: Intel Gigabit CT PCIe
PSU: Antec Quattro 850Wt
Case: Antec 1200
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Benchmarks/tools used:
- AS SSD Benchmark 1.5.3784.37609
- Crystal Disk Mark 3.0h x64
- atto 2.46

Quote:

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RAID OPTION ROM - 3.2.1540.15
BIOS - F6
RAID Driver - 3.2.1540.35

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...SSSDMBview.png http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...SDIOPSview.png

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...4015CDM30h.png http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...015ATTO246.png

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Quote:

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RAID OPTION ROM - 3.2.1020.29
BIOS - F8
RAID Driver - 3.2.1540.75

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...SSSDMBview.png http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...SDIOPSview.png

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...2039CDM30h.png http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...039ATTO246.png

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For those who follow Gigabyte BIOS RAID ROM development. Apparently 3.2.1020.39 is actually mislabeled 3.2.1540.39 which is customized Gigabyte's version from 3.2.1540.31. It does however bring back small delay when scanning devices. Source

Quote:

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AMD SATA RAID rom V3.2.1020.39 special edition for the Gigabyte motherboard SATA RAID ROM, and modify from V3.2.1540.39, their version than AMD SATA RAID rom V3.2.1540. 31. New.

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November 5, 2010 update: Gigabyte reverted newer BIOS versions to older RAID option ROMs. (Thanks to mattkosem for the heads up )Apparently 3.2.1540.xx have some issues with SSDs. F8 BIOS for GA-890GPA-UD3H rev 1.0 is using 3.2.1020.39. Did extensive tests and there is no performance hit from older RAID option ROM. See for more info Gigabyte's Chinese support forum

Quote:

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Gigabyte Technology Consulting in Taipei based on our side, indeed the future of the BIOS version F5 replacement back to the old, more mature version of SATA RAID ROM 3.2.1020.39, as verified by detecting the discovery of new SATA RAID ROM 3.2.1540.15 version of the brand with some SSD Solid State Drive SATA RAID set up there will be some problems, including the Intel SSD, SSD, etc. Kingston, so the version of the motherboard BIOS F5 for the more mature we modify the SATA RAID ROM 3.2.1020.39 version.
如果用户没有使用相关SSD固态硬盘组建SATA RAID 的话，建议可使用主板F4版本的BIOS。 If you do not use the relevant SSD Solid State Drive SATA RAID set, then, suggests using the F4 version motherboard BIOS.

The latest AMD SB850 RAID ROM version is 3.2.1540.31 The version currently in test validation process, in the principle of responsibility to consumers in the new version of a similar RAID ROM update, we need to complete a comprehensive validation testing, sure no problem until the introduction of the new version of the BIOS, updated, of course, the verification time may be rather long, please understand.

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Some 3, 4, 5 SSD action :D Not sure I like high latency of SF1222 controller. Intel for example shows 0.065ms.

3R0 SF1222 64Gb
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...03R0SF1222.png

3R0 2xX18M and 1xSF1222
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...X18MSF1222.png

4R0 2xX18M and 2xSF1222
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...X18MSF1222.png

5R0 2xX18M and 3xSF1222
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...X18MSF1222.png

Merry Christmas!

guys..i have problem with this,

trying to raıd 0 with 4 x samsung but i already get same results with 2xsamsung raıd0..

so i try different board..

i try different harddısk,all same,

so there is a limit on 300mb..raıd cant go over 300mb..so why?is this a amd problem?amd systems doesnt use 4 hdd on raıd0?pls help me..

i am getting 250mb avarage with 2xsamsung (max 280 around)
and
i am gettting 270mb avarage with 4 samsung (max 325 around)

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4 samsung f3 500gb

gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 board

I'm doing pretty well on the latest driver/bios combo for my rev 2.0 890GPA-UD3H and 4R0 C300 64GBs.

--Matt

Yeah, very nice! :up:
What about garbage collection? Do drives recover performance well?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zalbard

Yeah, very nice! :up:
What about garbage collection? Do drives recover performance well?

---

Added CDM on too. Yeah, they do seem to keep themselves squeaky clean. It's better now with the latest bios too.

--Matt

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by calebkan

guys..i have problem with this,

trying to raıd 0 with 4 x samsung but i already get same results with 2xsamsung raıd0..

so i try different board..

i try different harddısk,all same,

so there is a limit on 300mb..raıd cant go over 300mb..so why?is this a amd problem?amd systems doesnt use 4 hdd on raıd0?pls help me..

i am getting 250mb avarage with 2xsamsung (max 280 around)
and
i am gettting 270mb avarage with 4 samsung (max 325 around)

----------

4 samsung f3 500gb

gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 board

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i am betting you still only have 2 drives in the raid 0 for some reason.
i had this happen to me long time ago with nvraid and 4 sata2 drives in a raid 0 (non-ssd)

system specs are below.
raid bios: 3.2.1540.6
64KB stripe
amd driver: 3.3.1540.17

followed the directions from first post (and my settings are exactly like posted)

here is atto:
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/551/attoi.th.jpg

as you can see i am getting 800 read/write in alot of tests...

now here is my problem (when i had my x25-m 80GB as my main OS drive) i then added the 2 OCZ drives in windows disk management as a raid-0 set
in other words in my bios for sata i had it set as AHCI and not RAID

i was getting almost 1100MB`s with ATTO when drives were in RAID-0 in a WINDOWS RAID-0
that is way faster then my bios raid....
what is going on????