Forum Vs Naplam - Fasted real world storage solution

[squishee]

^ blah blah blah.. bravo @ getting more ridiculous/idiotic

third and forth loads brilliant!

i guess the included video clip which is the reason why first load of any level takes longer is relevant.. go cry a river somewhere else

heres another tube this time loading crysis @ 3x25e/1231

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpzAM5LzeBI

your going to like it computurd i promise you

from a standpoint of i dont care whats really faster i do see you make yourself look dumber and dumber every day

[One_Hertz]

It is all CPU limited...

You need to move on from the Q9650. I should get a new setup with an i7 860 today. It wasn't that expensive so I decided to give it a shot to see how much faster loading things would be with a faster cpu. Will take me all frigging evening to insulate everything again, get a good OC going, and make a new nlite image. Expecting 4.5+. I'll post how much faster 498 ff loads.

I'll probably hook up my Es to the ICH10R this time instead of the 9211.

ok I don't know what is wrong, but I changed my cpu, mobo, ram and all my results are much slower than my last setup.

I got a very good 860 which I can run at 4.7ghz prime stable, but all the real world numbers are 30% slower than my last 4.6ghz qx9650. 498 ff takes 38 seconds versus 30 with the old rig. L4D takes 14(WTF) versus 8 before.

Plugged my Es into ICH10 raid with 16k stripe. That may be the culprit.

[NapalmV5]

Ok, you're ALL right, now less talk and more action please

more action more arguments

[NapalmV5]

ok I don't know what is wrong, but I changed my cpu, mobo, ram and all my results are much slower than my last setup.

I got a very good 860 which I can run at 4.7ghz prime stable, but all the real world numbers are 30% slower than my last 4.6ghz qx9650. 498 ff takes 38 seconds versus 30 with the old rig. L4D takes 14(WTF) versus 8 before.

Plugged my Es into ICH10 raid with 16k stripe. That may be the culprit.

what mobo ? optimal settings ?

[GullLars]

Try a 4KB stripe on the E's, it could give you a real world boost.
Loosing some speed when removing a big cache should be expected for things that can be cached. The 100+FF test falls under this, L4D may have benefited from read-ahead, if you had that activated, since it would allow you to be cpu-bound more of the time and burst speed from cache when you're not.

[NapalmV5]

tube loading 500 ff in 24 sec @ 4x25e/1231/4.5ghz q9650

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FNkl0tWBn8

[One_Hertz]

fixed it... qpi link speed was bugging out.

4.82ghz prime stable

500ff loads in 22s, l4d is still slow at 10s.

[Anvil]

Still at 16KB stripe size One Hertz?

[One_Hertz]

Still at 16KB stripe size One Hertz?

Yea lazy to reinstall. Maybe I will try back on the 9211 soon.

[Anvil]

I've been doing some tests on 4-16KB stripe sizes using the X25-V's but it's not conclusive yet.
I have to include 32KB and 64KB to make sure that the trends are correct.

Great score for the ff 500 run, my 2R0 X25-V's did 300 in ~17 seconds. (920 D0 @4GHz)
The ff runs are mostly about OC, storage not so much imo.

[Computurd]

@gullars....the 9211 One Hertz was using has neither cache nor read ahead. also only runs 64k stripe. cant change it. it is just an uber powerful IOP.

@Napalm...you didnt reply on yer succesive game loads or modified/stripped crysis levels. nice way to avoid it. next time be careful before you say things such as:

NapalmV5
^ blah blah blah.. bravo @ getting more ridiculous/idiotic

third and forth loads brilliant!

but at least you learned something about caching on your GPU so i am happy.
the longest waits during game loads appears to be the loading of the GPU with game data....

[AceNZ]

@gullars....the 9211 One Hertz was using has neither cache nor read ahead. also only runs 64k stripe. cant change it. it is just an uber powerful IOP.

Do you know if the 9260-8i has the same limitation on stripe size?

I was thinking of getting a couple of 9211's, but if the stripe size is fixed, they don't seem like such a good option after all.

[Anvil]

AceNZ,

Stripe size for the 9260 series is selectable in the range 8KB up to 1MB.

I would wait for Areca 1880 reviews, I'm perfectly happy with the 9260 though.

[NapalmV5]

@onehertz nice but thats it? no tube nothing? so this is how its going to be.. just me posting tubes..


ill be going forward with 3x25e @ 1231.. 500 ff still @ 24 sec

heres a new l4d loading @ very high shader instead of the default low

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lTtm-M2B6I

[GullLars]

Fixed vs user definable stripe size should be unlockable with a firmware upgrade. Perhaps we should query LSI for the possibility of one? Especially with PCmark Vantage scores of lower stripe sizes with SSDs in mind. 16KB stripe seems to be a sweet-spot with Intel drives.

[Computurd]

yes however all hba's are locked to a 64 stripe size so i dont think that they will allow it. i know of about five other people who have also asked, and i have, the answer is no-go.
the thing about it is that the controller is so blazing fast at 64k .....

[GullLars]

So, is there some limitation imposed on ALL HBAs from any manufacturer that locks stripe size to 64KB, or is it something LSI has imposed on their own HBAs?
I won't argue against it being fast at 64K, just saying some SSD RAIDs like smaller stripes better, by a considerable amount (f.ex. X25-M can get up to 30-40% higher PCMV HDD scores).

[SteveRo]

acards like small stripe sizes also.

[NapalmV5]

3x25e/1231/2gb/64k stripe/101mhz pcie

[Tiltevros]

3x25e/1231/2gb/64k stripe/101mhz pcie

without any cache

[SteveRo]

Mr Napalm, excellent - very nice numbers!
Try smaller stripe 16k down to 4k stripe on the controller when you create the array.
Also try "aggressive" read ahead on the controller
Also try default cluster and also 64k cluster when creating the partition.

[SteveRo]

Mr. Napalm.
Also make sure you have sata max transfer set to 300+NCQ (this should be the best for the e's).
Are you using xp? notice the "bad" is AS SSD? - it may or may not make a difference to align your partition to a 4k boundry.
There is a procedure posted somewhere to follow to do that.

[SteveRo]

Tilt - when are you going to write up our 9211 tuning guide?

[Tiltevros]

give me some time to gather and put my notes in place

[One_Hertz]

3x25e/1231/2gb/64k stripe/101mhz pcie

Looks like you already beat up your array haha. The access times on the X25-Es rise a lot when they are degraded. 0.069 for me when fresh drives are connected to ICH and like 0.15 when they get really degraded. Need to secure erase to get it back to normal.