[18th Anniversary] Asus Black Pearl - P5k-Premium Testing Report

[sesdave]

everyone, i need some help with this system.

What ports have you connected all the drives to and what is your CPU and other BIOS settings ? Best not to use the JMICRON controller by the way - tends to be slower. If no other problems to get the best form your drives a reinstall would probably be the quickest resolution. You cant switch to AHCI or RAID unlesss you install winxp with BIOS setting for SATA preset to AHCI or RAID. You want to run your drives in one of these modes to get the best out of them. If you want to get the best possible operating speed on the drives and data resilience then set them up MATRIX RAID. e.g RAID0/1 on your 2x1000GB drives. You wont believe the speed reported when you run HD tach or Tune-lol!. Dont forget to download the ICH9 drivers for F6 on install if you do chose a reinstall so you have all options covered. See this site for detail
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848 I did this setup a long time ago and would never use anything else.!
WInxp/Vista/Win 7 on RAID0(striped) will only need 80-100 GB max e.g 2x40Gb and the rest will be for DATA on RAid 1(morrored. You can uses the 320 for system and additional data backup.

On another note I have just installed Win7 Ultimate x64 on my setup and it runs like a dream - its what Vista x64 should have been . Easy install - (no need for RAID drivers load) Its very zippy , has nice features and seems very stable. No problems with drivers although had to maunually do the RT8187driver update - used Vista x64 drivers in most case except for my old SB xfi xtreme audio. Loads the latests driver okay but can only get 2 speakers as the creative console doesn't offer usual EAX CCSS options. There is a beta WIn7 driver forSB xfi cards but not for mine! I am sure the drivers will be coming cos this system is the way to go. Pity its going to costs as it should just be SP2 for vista - lol! For those that love their existing operating ssystem you can always do a dual boot install to Win7 out. Personally I wont be going back to either Vista x64 or Winxp cos for once this microsoft product seems to work the way it should even if it is beta-lol!