X38 and Areca cards

[shawn1998]

OK. I flashed to the 12/18 bios on the DFI X38 and tried it all again. It is no go in the 2nd slot, no matter what I do. So, last night, I swapped the 8800gts and 1210, with the 1210 in the 1st and the 8800gts in the 2nd slot (both floppy connectors plugged in). The system posted fine and the 1210 worked at 8X! But, the 8800gts ran at 1X. I think in my case this is a lost cause and I am just going to give up trying. I did end up benching the 1210 when it was in 8X and again compared the results with the 4X results. There was absolutely no change at all. The burst was the same, as well as cpu and avg read speeds. So, it's back to the 4X slot for the 1210. Btw, this was with a 4th 150gig Raptor in raid 0.

Imho, the newest bios made it worse for the Areca card, because on the 11/28 bios I could run it this way and the 8800gts would run at 16X as it was supposed to. This is very odd, but not unexpected, as we all kind of knew going into this that the X38 chipset had some issues with raid cards. Oh well, maybe I'll get a 780i board over the Christmas break and play around with a bit. Hmm... we'll see.

Shawn

[Ace-a-Rue]

what are you using to tell you that you are at 1x?...Cpuz?

i'm using the latest DFI bios, which has now suspiciously disappeared from DFI's website...cpuz says, i am at 16x...i suppose i could run a video bench to confirm that.

OH...BTW...8800GTS is in the 2nd PCIe slot and Areca 1210 card is in the 1st PCIe slot....ALL is well!

[shawn1998]

I used Everest Ultimate and the actual nVidia control panel. I gave up on the whole thing and returned the 1210 to the upper 4X slot, as it just wasn't worth the hassle. Like I said, I benched it in HDTach and saw absolutely no difference between 8X and 4X (when I had it working in 8X) in my setup, so I really don't lose anything. Also, I really think this has to do with the fact that I am using a pci-express 2.0 video card (8800GTS 512) and you are using a pci-express 1.1 (8800GTS 320/640). For some reason, of which I have no idea as to why, this is what is causing my issues.

Shawn

[Ace-a-Rue]

my guess would be the bios is having difficulty interpolating or setting the 2.0 specs so it is setting it to 1x speed to avoid problem(s).

[JustChill]

ive got a ARC-1220 and the Maximus Extreme and I can not get the ARC to go to bios at all. Every time I try to TAB/F6 it just reboots the system. I have tried in every PCIe X16 slot on the board. this setup is with a HD3870, I don't know if this is relevant or not.

[Ace-a-Rue]

on the DFI LT X38 T2R, my areca 1210 card works in 1st PCIe 16x slot and the 8800 GTS card is in the 2nd PCIe 16x slot...all is well for me in that configuration...if i swap the VC to the 1st PCIe 16x slot and areca in 2nd slot, the board hangs on the first screen....so...it means it is a bios problem that is causing the areca card to not function properly in that latter configuration.

[shawn1998]

Hey Ace, I just switched motherboards on Christmas Eve to the new EVGA 780i and now have the 1210 running in the 3rd (middle) 16X slot. It runs at its full 8X speed flawlessly. The great thing about this board is that the middle 16X slot is a pci-e 1.1 slot and not the newer 2.0 slot. All is well here. Too bad about the DFi X38 for me, I did really like the board, but this way I can run SLI (I now have 2 8800GT's in SLI up and running), happy holidays to me!!!

Shawn

[Ace-a-Rue]

good news!...any difference in overclock or memory clock?

[shawn1998]

There is quite a bit of vdropp with this board, something that I have never had any experience with before. It really through me off for an hour or so, with blue screens and reboots during a fresh install of Vista 64. Once I figured out that I was seriously undervolting my Q6600, all has been well.

I am running everything the same as I was with the DFI P35, then the X38, which is 9x333 (3.0) and memory at DDR2-800. I am just inching along at very consertative settings for a week or so to make sure it is 100% stable, which so far it most definately is.

[TuKo]

Areca 1210 works like a charm on my Abit IX38-QuadGT

[JustChill]

Damn, I know that Dominick ran the ARC-1220 and the 1230 on his Gigabyte X38 DQ6 for raiding his Mtrons. Wish I could figure this out. Anyone know of another good hardware raid card that will allow for over 400mb/s throughput. Just need something that will work with my Maximus Extreme.

[safan80]

areca cards will work but you'll have to use the web interface.

[Ace-a-Rue]

that is depending on what board you have...as of now, DFI's X38 and Abit's IX38 board work normally with getting into the Areca bios in DOS environment.

[Nizzen]

Areca 1210 works like a charm on my Abit IX38-QuadGT

But only in the black pci-e x16 port.

[Ace-a-Rue]

do you have the board?

[suhai]

Who works Asus P5E64 WS Pro and Areca 1210 (on Blue x16 slots secondary for x8 mode)?

[Nizzen]

do you have the board?

Yes and i have tested all ports. Only the black non 2.0 is working with pci-e x8 SAS controller

[Ace-a-Rue]

Yes and i have tested all ports. Only the black non 2.0 is working with pci-e x8 SAS controller

isn't that slot working ONLY at 4X?...i can't remember since i do not have the board any longer.

[IanB]

isn't that slot working ONLY at 4X?...i can't remember since i do not have the board any longer.

Should that matter? A PCIe x1 link allows 2Gbits/s or 250MBytes/s (in both directions simultaneously) allowing for signalling overhead. A x4 link is therefore equivalent to about 8 x 120MBytes/s which is the maximum bandwidth for the fastest current disks (thanks to Wikipedia for this link: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/...ng/page9.html). Are you hanging more than 8 disks off such a card? If not, x4 is plenty.

Under 9 disks, I'm pretty sure you'll hit the internal bandwidth limit of the card (unless it's a seriously expensive high-end one) before you hit the limit of the PCIe slot. This was shown graphically in Dominick32's recent review of Mtron SSDs.

[shawn1998]

Common Buses and their Max Bandwidth

PCI 132 MB/s
AGP 8X 2,100 MB/s
PCI Express 1x 250 [500]* MB/s
PCI Express 2x 500 [1000]* MB/s
PCI Express 4x 1000 [2000]* MB/s
PCI Express 8x 2000 [4000]* MB/s
PCI Express 16x 4000 [8000]* MB/s
PCI Express 32x 8000 [16000]* MB/s
IDE (ATA100) 100 MB/s
IDE (ATA133) 133 MB/s
SATA 150 MB/s
Gigabit Ethernet 125 MB/s
IEEE1394B [Firewire] 100 MB/s

* Note - Since PCI Express is a serial based technology, data can be sent over the bus in two directions at once. Normal PCI is Parallel, and as such all data goes in one direction around the loop. Each 1x lane in PCI Express can transmit in both directions at once. In the table the first number is the bandwidth in one direction and the second number is the combined bandwidth in both directions. Also please note that in PCI Express bandwidth is not shared the same way as in PCI, so there is less congestion on the bus.

Found this on the net. At 1X, the speed is only 250mb/s in each direction. It isn't until you get to 4X that it is 1000mb/s in each direction.

Shawn

[IanB]

Thanks for the correction, Shawn, I don't know why I had the specs so wrong from memory. Apart from being out by a factor of 2, I got badly tripped up by the difference between Gbits and MBytes.

I've double checked the PCIe and SATA bandwidth specs and there's still a valid point to be made, so I've edited the post to fix it.

[Ace-a-Rue]

Should that matter? A PCIe x1 link allows 2Gbits/s or 250MBytes/s (in both directions simultaneously) allowing for signalling overhead. A x4 link is therefore equivalent to about 8 x 120MBytes/s which is the maximum bandwidth for the fastest current disks (thanks to Wikipedia for this link: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/...ng/page9.html). Are you hanging more than 8 disks off such a card? If not, x4 is plenty.

Under 9 disks, I'm pretty sure you'll hit the internal bandwidth limit of the card (unless it's a seriously expensive high-end one) before you hit the limit of the PCIe slot. This was shown graphically in Dominick32's recent review of Mtron SSDs.

my question is not to challenge the specs; it is to find out whether it is the 4x slot....don't jump in with such fervor!

[IanB]

my question is not to challenge the specs; it is to find out whether it is the 4x slot....don't jump in with such fervor!

You were the one that capitalised "ONLY" in your post. That clearly implied concern at the mismatch between the slot limit and the card's expected bandwidth.

Remind me not to try and post useful, pertinent information in future. Obviously only the usual useless "me too" posts from people who should know better or think having X000 posts to their name means their opinion is worth a damn are wanted here.

[Ace-a-Rue]

you know that you are full of BS...go get your toys and play some other place!

[IanB]

Clearly not full of BS, as you just proved my case. Thanks!

Since I'm in the market for a hardware RAID card, and the Arecas are important contenders, but have obvious issues with current and future boards/chipsets, this is of interest to me. As should be checking the bandwidth requirements of any RAID set to ensure it doesn't max out the card/slot for those of us going this route. I think I'll stick around this thread, therefore, if your lordship doesn't mind.