Bloodrage pci-e Ports (sli)

[juampii]

Hi guys.

I have a doubt, maybe I buy another video card (gtx480) to make an sli with the current one.

But, i have, here is a pic



Can i put the another gtx480 where the 280 is now?

GTX480 Slot


GTX280 Slot


or maybe i can remove the raid card, im using it with 4 velociraptors in raid 0, for games and temporal storage.


thanks in advance.

[PiLsY]

Yes but if you use that slot its 8x pcie max. Personally i'd ditch the raid card, set up your raid on the ICH10R and use the gfx cards in the red slots to give 16x16.

[juampii]

hi, thanks,

im using the ich10r in ahci mode with the ssd, and (i think) i cannot create a raid 0 and have the ahci ssd at the same time.
it is posible?

thx

[juampii]

if i enable raid, create the arraid with the 4 velociraptors and leave the ssd alone in the ich10r is working in ahci mode right?
TRIM works or it takes the disk like a raid?

[PiLsY]

In all honesty I dont know for certain. I believe the only difference is that you run ahci through the raid driver rather than the sata driver. I've only ever used optical drives alongside the raid array.

Main thing with the ssd is turn off background disk defrag and get the swap file onto another disk of disabled altogether. Early ssd's dont support trim, I havent flashed my firmware to support it yet and still going strong 18 months later. I have done every OS side tweak possible though - SSD Tweaker is a good start incase you havent seen it already .

[Telo]

Does your RAID card require an x16 connection? If it can get by with an x8, then just move it to the vacant x8 slot between the GTX480 and the sound card.

[PiLsY]

Yeah but that would drop the top pcie slot to 8x from 16x and would give you the problem of the dual slot 480 and the soundcard overlapping.

[dengyong]

Dump the sound card. the one that comes with bloodrage works great.

[juampii]

telo, dengyong; the first gfx card covers that "black" slot, no point of removing the sound card, is not blocking anything, and i thinks its sound a lot better.
Pilsy; I remove the raid card, create an array in the ich10r, and the ssd also plugged there, install windows, and i check and trim its enabled and yes, so its works.
I check the ssd tweaker utility, nice app, i have all deselected anyway, but i find it very useful for future installations, thanks you.
Now i only need the money for the gtx480 :p

[PiLsY]

DengYong - I use an Asus Xonar D2 pci - believe me it blows away the bloodrage card. Compared to other onboard audio solutions though the BR is very good I agree .

juampii - I suspected it did, but great to have confirmation. How is the performance compared to the previous card (and what was it?)? I've found the ICH10R to have comparable performance to most mainstream raid cards even if it does use a little more cpu.

Where are you from? There's some really cheap GTX480's here in the UK at the moment. A mate of mine got one on a one day special for £194.99 on Thursday! Thats GTX470 money...

[juampii]

the performance is the same, i see no differences for the use, store, rar/unrar, open some steam games. the cpu use maybe is higher but i don't think im going to notice it.
I live in argentina, here a 480 cost 620 U$S (dolars) new, 500 u$s used.

[juampii]

another question, for example, if i put the another 480, and i wish to add the gtx280 for physx, if i put it in any pci-e port its downgrade any red pci-e to x8?
(For do this i need to add wc to the 480's or wait a new motherboard with different layout.)

how can i do to have 2 x16 2.0 slots (the red ones) and someone of the blacks one operating at x4 maybe, and not x8.
Today i test 3 cards, and when i put one in any black port, the up red port downgrade to x8.

[koc]

Can i put the another gtx480 where the 280 is now?

Yes you can, but your both cards will run at x8-x8 , but don't worry you will not loss any performance unless you use +2560x1600 res.

[juampii]

2560 x 1440?
i ended up with 2 gtx480 in the red slots, the sound card in the pci and thats all.
in a few hours i get the another 480

[saaya]

you have a full blown BR and not gti right?
then why dont you use the intel sb for the ssd and the marvell SAS controller for raid?
that way you can ditch the raid controller and have it all working smoothly...

[PiLsY]

I always thought marvell controllers were generally cack saaya? Must admit I've not tested the BR one - its been disabled since I bought the board . I can see the point in it for SAS support, but as a sata raid controller I didnt think they were up to much? Happy to be corrected of course if i'm wrong .

[Mescalamba]

It works like SAS good. At least with my drive, if I dont mind sound, its pretty much fast as SSD. SATA works ok on that. RAID should be possible, but no clue.. If Im correct, someone tried to do RAID on that, but never figured how to configure that.

But as simply SATA port, its fine.. Otherwise, I think I saw SSD with SAS connection. SAS is quite fast..

[saaya]

i raided two seagate and then two samsung sas drives on it in our lab back then to make sure its all working fine, and it did...
except for one of the samsung drives dieing after a few hours
those were early es drives with pcb reworks and wires on the pcb and all... no idea why samsung didnt send us proper samples...

anyways, im not sure i ran windows on them, but i definitiely ran them in raid and it worked fine... didnt check performance, but i remember reading that it was about the same as intel sb? which i thought was a dissapointment for a 25$ raid controller, but at least its not slower...

the only problems people had with it were running multi vgas with raid, or running raid on the intel sb AND the marvell iirc...
the former should be fixed.. idk, its worth a try i guess as it means barely any changes to the config...
EDIT: unless theres something on the raided drives already, then backing it up and creating a new raid array will be annoying...

[therager]

RAID should be possible, but no clue.. If Im correct, someone tried to do RAID on that, but never figured how to configure that.

With stock v3.1.0.16 firmware it's not easy to use, but you can fix it:

I did some tests recently with my new raid setup - 2xWD6000HLHX. With stock Marvell SAS firmware v3.1.0.16 it was complete failure. You cannot save created raid volume in bios interface of SAS controller and if you create it from within Marvell software in Windows - after restarting there is no raid volume at all! In this thread I found your negative results with firmware v3.1.0.24. So I searched and found on the Asus forum one different firmware - v3.1.0.23. After quick boot in MS-DOS and easy flash from command line ("mvf 0827.bin") now I have a fully functional SAS with a couple of WD6000HLHX. During the flashing process it says "6440", but it's not correct - the chip is exactly 6320.

PS. Attached v3.1.0.23 SAS firmware.

But the speed with 2xWD6000HLHX in raid 0 on Marvell SAS is somewhat dissapointing, compared to ICH10R.

[saaya]

it is? hmmmm
ok, nevermind then... wow that marvell controller was a massive let down then... we never should have used it : /
25$ for all that...

[Telo]

the performance is the same, i see no differences for the use, store, rar/unrar, open some steam games. the cpu use maybe is higher but i don't think im going to notice it.
I live in argentina, here a 480 cost 620 U$S (dolars) new, 500 u$s used.

Man that is a rip off! You should talk to any friends you may have in the states and have them send it to you bro. Over here [USA] it is going for $399 and up.

[homefry]

i would get rid of the sound card, use the 2 black pcie ports for the video cards, move the raid card to the first red pcie slot... and buy a pciex1 sound card and put that in the first pciex1 slot.