So here's the long story on the troubles I've been going through.
The manual that comes with it says the following:
The ANS-9010/9010B supports both ECC and none ECC DR SDRAM DIMM. However, it is strongly recommended to use ECC DDR SDRAM DIMM to ensure data integrity. ANS9010 supports both ECC and Non-ECC registered DDR-2 memory. Users can obtain full capacity when ECC registered memories are used.
The manual for download at the Acard website says:
The ANS-9010 supports both ECC and Non-ECC DDR2 SDRAM DIMM. It does not support Buffered nor Registered DDR2 SDRAM DIMM.
The bad English is copied from the manual. It reads like it was written in Japanese and then quickly translated to English. I can't figure out if it means to say you need registered memory from my manual or not. First it says you can't use it, then it says you can. ECC does not mean it's Registered. I called Acard about this, and the guy barely speaks English. He couldn't really tell me much of anything I didn't figure out on my own after almost 7 hours of troubleshooting this thing. Needless, don't try to call them for help. Your dog/cat can probably help out more than they can.
I was unable to get my 8 4GB sticks of ram to work. The ANS-9010 does NOT work with cheaper high density modules. Took only 7 hours of troubleshooting and 3 phone calls to finally prove that I'm screwed and I'll have to return the memory I just got in the mail. Putting the ones I bought in cause completely unexplainable results. Errors both on reads and writes, and crazy crazy memory sizes like 15.462GB when there was 32GB of RAM installed. So no, don't try the high density modules or you'll be doing a big fat return for lots of $$$ like I am doing today.
I tested both DDR2-533 and DDR2-800 memory sticks. Both performed to within 2%. I think the 2% is within the tolerance of the test. I will be buying whatever is cheaper this weekend :P.
You can populate any size stick in any slots. Choose any combination of sizes and fill whatever slots you feel like filling, it all works the same.
Before I give the results, I would like to mention that using PCMARK and h2benchw would max out one of my cores(I have a q6600) for the tests, so these may be CPU limited.
Here's the Benchmark results:
Single Port tests
----------------
HD Tach -
Random Access: 0.1ms
CPU Utilization:3%
Average Read: 167.8 MB/sec
Average Write: 140.3 MB/sec
Burst Speed: 171.9MB/sec
The graph was perfectly horizontal, as expected.
h2benchw -
Interface transfer rate w/ block size 128 sectors at 0.0% of capacity:
Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 157501 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.45 ms): 149527 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 157399 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 131372 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.54 ms): 125681 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 129962 KByte/s
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 159140.5, min 82580.7, max 166318.5 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 124803.8, min 61775.2, max 138881.6 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.07 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.07 [ms]
Zone measurements for read rates were all about 166MB/sec
Zone measurements for write rates were all about 138MB/sec
PCMark05 -
XP Startup - 124.747MB/sec
Application Loading: 109.865MB/sec
General Usage: 81.776MB/sec
Virus Scan - 102.181MB/sec
File Write - 119.448MB/sec
Next I ran benchmarks using the 2 port operation. I couldn't use RAID mode because the C drive is not RAID, so the drive would not be bootable. Software RAID0 was used to perform the tests. HD Tach cannot test software RAIDs.
First I ran benchmarks on the 2 "drives" simultaneously to see what would happen. Most people would choose to test them sequentially. When run simultaneously, each drive shows the full performance of single port mode. This would hint that when I set them up as a RAID, the performance will approximately double. That is actually not the case.
Results for RAID0 software:
PCMark05 -
XP Startup - 184.984MB/sec
Application Loading: 101.014MB/sec
General Usage: 106.912MB/sec
Virus Scan - 129.055MB/sec
File Write - 143.953MB/sec
h2benchw -
Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 157501 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.45 ms): 149527 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 157399 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 131372 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.54 ms): 125681 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 129962 KByte/s
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 159140.5, min 82580.7, max 166318.5 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 124803.8, min 61775.2, max 138881.6 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.07 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.07 [ms]
Zone measurements for read rates were all about 166MB/sec
Zone measurements for write rates were all about 138MB/sec
Next I decided to plug the ANS-9010 into my RAID controller. I used a Highpoint Technology 2320 PCI-Express card to perform the tests.
RAID0 using hardware:
HD Tach -
Random Access: 0.1ms
CPU Utilization: 3%
Average Read: 222.9MB/sec
Average Write: 183.6 MB/sec
Burst Speed: 325.5MB/sec
The graph looks like waves from an ocean. See the attachment HDTACH.jpg to see for yourself.
PCMark05 -
XP Startup - 217.013MB/sec
Application Loading: 143.856MB/sec
General Usage: 150.068MB/sec
Virus Scan - 196.521MB/sec
File Write - 170.235MB/sec
h2benchw -
Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 166471 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.42 ms): 166272 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 166620 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 138353 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.51 ms): 138472 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 138405 KByte/s
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 167238.2, min 166625.9, max 167782.4 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 138959.6, min 138269.7, max 139480.7 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.10 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.09 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.12 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.11 [ms]
Zone measurements for read rates were all about 166MB/sec
Zone measurements for write rates were all about 138MB/sec
As you can see, some benchmarks changed alot, some didn't change at all. PCMARK05 seems to have increased in all tests by using the RAID card. This makes me wonder if there is some kind of bottleneck when using my onboard controller. I'm thinking the SATA controller has a 1x PCIe lane to the southbridge, which is probably nearing saturation when I run RAID0. Strangely this doesn't show itself when I benchmarked the 2 drives independently
Overall, this thing is crazy fast. I don't care what others say, this thing is wicked fast. Most people here will admit that if you tried to copy 7000 little files totaling less than 500MB, it would take a while because of the number of files, not the actual size of data. I extracted about 7000 files totaling about 500MB from a .7z file using maximum compression to the drive in less than 10 seconds. I then duplicated the data on the drive in less than 10 seconds. I don't know anyone that has copied 7000 files in 10 seconds, let alone even 1 minute. I'm impressed!
I don't know if this box can use registered memory or not, but I am going to find out. ECC memory is cheaper online if it's also Registered, so I'm looking for the cheapest solution to fill this drive with 4GB sticks.
Also, the drive name in the BIOS will clue you in on what this drive is doing. If you look at BIOSPICT.jpg, you'll see how it works.
Each "field" is separated by an underscore.
The ANS9010 is the model.
The first 0 is the port. If you use the dual port mode, the first drive is 0, the second drive is 1.
The last one is the slots used. In my pict slots 0 and 1 were populated. The *'s indicate empty slots.
Also, for anyone playing around, here's the slot numbers for the slots from left to right when the front of the box faces you:
7,5,6,4 <Center> 0,2,1,3
I'll let everyone know how the Registered memory works and hopefully we can all find a cheap supplier for 4GB sticks.
Let me know if you have any other questions, and I'll try to answer them as best as I can.
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