More Gigabyte DS3 IDE/SATA wackiness

ok previously i reported how when using the onboard jmicron/gigabyte raid your CD/DVD drives were forced into PIO mode.
THIS WILL DAMAGE dvd drives and makes burning impossible.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=108095

I also reported that the board and the pi$$ poor bios development has forced nearly all your major hardware onto 2 irq's 16 and 19.
this again is BAD..

NOW i am here to report more SATA RAID wackiness.

i need more people to run Sandra and Everest or whatever other motherboard/ide detection programs you have.

See if your hardware, when running raid is running in MWDMA 2 that is Multi-Word DMA Mode 2.
this is slower than UDMA5 or 6 these drives are Mode 6 drives and should be running in mode 6 but rarely have i seen a sata or raid controller use anything but UDMA5 this is fine. whatever. mode 5 ok.
but NEVER have i seen a RAID/IDE/SATA controller use MWDMA 2

ive seen a few people around the net saying sandra is reporting it wrong, but i dont think so,, not after the PIO mode issue and the irq issues.

i dont know of another program that can read the dma mode of a raid setup or other drives for that matter..
if you know of one let me know and i'll try it out.

did u report that issue to gigabyte itself ?

the problem that occur to me is the DVD burner,
damn I don't know WHY my DVD burner become slower and slower,
I tried to remove it and put it into another PC and works fine. meaning that the hardware is not the problem.

I think the problem lies in the motherboard driver....

Now you hate Asus, Gigabyte.. you will have to get an Abit or ECS next...

the PIO problem is very strange indeed. And raid that work in DMA2 ? look bad.

and team and tankguys and...

no i dont hate gigabyte i think its just a programming flaw in the bios.

Juunishinshou if your running raid then yes your dvd burner is running in PIO mode.
do not do any burning anymore you will hurt your drive.

i have not contacted gigabyte yet since i work from sunup til sundown and i dont have time during the day. but i will.

i believe this is a mix of the SATA controller, the fact that Intel removed ATAPI support from the ICH7 and 8 chipsets. and also the programming of the bios.

and Vric its not DMA2 its Multi-Word DMA 2.
its different its not as slow as DMA2 but its slower than UDMA 5 or 6 like the drives should be running in.

technically right now i would strongly advice against running raid.

move your SATA drives to the Orange slots . Set the SATA legacy controller to enabled or disabled, i havent seen a difference.
and change the Sata RAid option to IDE AHCI will not work either. it must be IDE.

your drives will then move to DMA... whatever they should be...

hey guys

i just have ordered DS3 and i am getting F worried... does the problem occur only when using RAID?

I am not planning to use RAID for now but in future ... and what is the problem exactly?

thx very much

So is that only running gigabyte raid? What about ich8 raid?
I just got this board, I will test my raptors :)

there is no ICH RAID on the DS3 only the Jmicron Gigabyte Raid.

Yes this only happens when you run raid.

and oddly enough only the purple slots are RAID the orange slots are not.

speed tests on the raid controller show 100mb/sec which i guess is fine but i would think it should be running alot faster,, but thats just me.

i will have to research MWDAM2 to see what the speed spcifications are.

I think this is just Sandra being weird. I am running 3 x 250GB raid on ICH7R and it shows something different everytime I open that window. I assume you are looking under Hardware/Physical Disks - Trasfer Modes Active, in Sandra 2007. Like right now it says MWDMA-5 , the first time I opened that window it said UDMA-3 ... I don't even think SATA uses a "DMA mode" since its not a UDMA bus..

yeah, i can see your point about sandra.

and yes SATA still uses UDMA modes. and why do you say its "not" a dma bus ? its not a false positive.

hhmm wonder what tool is out there that can accurately read the drives/chipset.

the IRQ and PIO modes are still the stickler here though.

All mine are in ultra dma mode 5.

Everything I've read about SATA always compares it to UDMA bus so I just figured that was the new name. The last UDMA mode I ever remember is UDMA6 133MB/s . I just think all SATA drives would communicate at the bus speed either 150MB or 300MB, why would new SATA drives support older UDMA modes.

Besides you say you get 100MB/s transfer from raid 0 is about right. I get 140MB/s with 3 drives raid 0. I dont know if sandra shows this, I use hdtach, but burst speed should be at or very near interface speed. I think i even get over 300MB/s burst.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kiwi

So is that only running gigabyte raid? What about ich8 raid?
I just got this board, I will test my raptors :)

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Please let us know. I bought 2 new 74GB 16MB cache Raptors to RAID0 on this board and will be hella pissed if it doesn't work right. Argh.

And I have no way to test them 'cause I have no dang E6600. :mad:

I am a noobie. I bought the DS3 and have a PD 820 OC'd to 3.4 and a WD 2500KS SATA hardrive. Had trouble getting the HDD to work in SATA. I don't think I ever did manage it. I ran the HDTACH and got 55.5 MS search and 169 MB/s read whether I was at IDE in the BIOS or ACHI. Could someone tell me all the BIOS settings to use on the Peripherl page of the bios starting at the top in order to have SATA functional? Thanks

sata is an interface which appears to be working :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RIPIT

I am a noobie. I bought the DS3 and have a PD 820 OC'd to 3.4 and a WD 2500KS SATA hardrive. Had trouble getting the HDD to work in SATA. I don't think I ever did manage it. I ran the HDTACH and got 55.5 MS search and 169 MB/s read whether I was at IDE in the BIOS or ACHI. Could someone tell me all the BIOS settings to use on the Peripherl page of the bios starting at the top in order to have SATA functional? Thanks

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Yes I know it's an interface between the controller and the hdd. can someone do screen shot or list the correct settings in the bios. should the bios be set to ACHI or IDE, etc

Lestat have u tried contacting gigabyte and telling them with the problem? maybe its a bios software issue...

Give it a try (raid0) with hdtach

if you guys are adament (sp) about running raid then do yourself a favor until gigabyte & jmicro can fix this.

go to your local pc shop or egay or where ever and pick up a PCI IDE controller card, i dont know if a RAID Card will work but i have a Promice TX2 U133 and if i slap the cdroms on there its fine.

something to think about.....

you could alternately just buy a SATA RAID card, those will always yield better results than onboard SATA or SATA RAID. even though both types are software raid. the pci version has always been better.

i took off early so im getting ready to call Gigabyte,, i'll let ya'll know.

thx lestat yes keep us informed. So you solved the problems by the controller cards ?

Any PCI raid card sucks just because it is limited by PCI bus with theoretical bandwith of 133MB/s. This is not enough for raptors. I was very pissed when I saw performance decrease in comparioson to pci-x nvraid, for example. You can try PCI-X raid card though. Another option is sata DVD :)

I still don't have time to test raid, hope this weekend

yeahhhh i get to fill out the web form pfpfpf. lol
Leo took the call and was nice and polite. hope all their tech's are like that, this is the first gigabyte board i've ever owned.

but alas, i got the usual. they havent heard anything about these issues.

and i have to fill out the web based tech form and wait to hear back from them.

so.. off i go to type up a novel.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kiwi

Any PCI raid card sucks just because it is limited by PCI bus with theoretical bandwith of 133MB/s. This is not enough for raptors. I was very pissed when I saw performance decrease in comparioson to pci-x nvraid, for example. You can try PCI-X raid card though. Another option is sata DVD :)

I still don't have time to test raid, hope this weekend

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thats not true the 75 and 36gig raptors dont run that fast. 100meg or there abouts is the most you'll get in realtime data transfers and everyday usage.

even the newest ones wont run at 133meg/sec all the time maybe burst mode but for all your everyday standard usage.. the pci bus card is just fine and dandy.

ohwell im not planning on running raid so i should be fine with this board?

yes you'll be fine just make sure the SATA/RAID option in the bios is set to IDE not RAID and NOT AHCI

also if you decide to install the gigabyte SATA drivers the DVD-Roms will now become SCSI devices. and you can not see their DMA mode. i cant tell as of yet but i believe they are running slower than they should properly.
i will burn something here in a little bit and report back if i have any issues.

thanks keep us updated
EDIT: Do you think a bios fix will fix the problem

yeah its all surrounding the bios and the crappy jmicron sata controller.

jmicron was a cheaper alternative for these boards than the Intel SATA controller which is significantly more expensive.
i sure wish they had chosen Promise or Silicon Image...

the IRQ issue is the way the bios is handing out IRQ's so a bios update could easily fix that.

Maybe I should've gon with the DQ6....

Lestat:

I am running 2x74 and believe me I have gone through this. Every bench I run show way lower scores including PCmark, Atto and hdtach. I have tested it on several platforms.

For example,
Atto runs 130-140 vs 100-110
pcmark hdd xp startup difference 2-3 points (which is quite a lot)
hdtach same 130 vs 110 (110 was using trick with PCI latency tool)

Ofcourse for general use it might be enough but since I am a bencher I think it is stupid to waste full potential

I compared NVraid and Intel raid vs slicion and promise PCI raid cards

I have allways run 2xr80Gb raid 0 about the same speed you are reporting. About 100 Mb/s in the benches. I used to have a Ultras-D and Expert and both had the same speed. If you having this speed I dont see any trouble at all

OK, I can confirm the same PIO issue but raid itself is actually pretty good :)

This is with 2x74GB raptors:

http://xs204.xs.to/xs204/06304/gbraidatto.JPG

http://xs204.xs.to/xs204/06304/gbRhdtach.JPG

Dang! Sweet HDTach scores!

So, isn't there an IDE to SATA converter I can use for my DVD-RW?

I thought there were adapters available for this.

There is, saw them on ebay for like $3