***Asus Rampage III Extreme Owners Thread***

[SkOrPn]

Awesome man, I'll try that new bios once I get this project finished.

I currently have an offer of I believe 650-700 for my chip. I'm thinking I should just ditch my 2nd 580, mobo, and cpu all together to afford an upgrade to the SB-E with quad channel of ram, RIVE and cpu. If I don't sell the gpu, then I'll be stuck with the K, but I still think it's plenty enough.

But man, my own saying of "once you go xtreme you can't go back" applies here. The e-peen factor of the "X" designation is just so powerful hahaha!

lol, not sure I will ever afford an extreme, but the cheaper of the 6 core cpu's are looking mighty nice to me now... Maybe the 970x and another 6gb of memory is the best I could do. Might even throw two more C300's into the mix, lol, or sell them and get two Force GT's. Not sure whats better 4 x C300's or 2 x Force GT's...

[Cookiesowns]

lol, not sure I will ever afford an extreme, but the cheaper of the 6 core cpu's are looking mighty nice to me now... Maybe the 970x and another 6gb of memory is the best I could do. Might even throw two more C300's into the mix, lol, or sell them and get two Force GT's. Not sure whats better 4 x C300's or 2 x Force GT's...

4xC300 in raid-0, or two sets of raid-0 or hell, even RAID-10 heh.

Unless you have a really good SATAIII controller like in the X79, the Force GT is pointless. C300's also have very good read/write when put under stress.

[SkOrPn]

4xC300 in raid-0, or two sets of raid-0 or hell, even RAID-10 heh.

Unless you have a really good SATAIII controller like in the X79, the Force GT is pointless. C300's also have very good read/write when put under stress.

Yeah I know, that's why I own two of them. But the system still feels slower than my 4x Vertex drives in raid 0. I didn't want the Force GT for its sataIII transfers, I just wanted them for its possible 85k x 2, 4k iops... plus maybe I would eventually get a raid controller again...

[Cookiesowns]

Sorry, I haven't tested for any performance improvements.

Well I did. RAID-0 OCZ Agility 2, under SATAII cable and Corsair SATAII hot-swap bay on my 800D

Note that as with ssd's there should always be fluctuations but, take this with a grain of salt.. either way the read performance loss is a bit .. eh:

Test with the previous bios:




Test with the latest bios:



( was from a fresh boot into the array, didn't exactly let it idle for 2 minutes. )

Test is 2x100MB, 0FILL

Yeah I know, that's why I own two of them. But the system still feels slower than my 4x Vertex drives in raid 0. I didn't want the Force GT for its sataIII transfers, I just wanted them for its possible 85k x 2, 4k iops... plus maybe I would eventually get a raid controller again...

I see. Well as with any SATAIII SSD, running them in SATAII mode has a bit of overhead, you'll loose a few notches on performance. What type are those Vertex drives? 2 or 3? Also, the ICH10R is incapable of going any higher than 750-800MB/s regardless of how many spindles/drives you have. That being said, if I had 4 SSD's at my disposal I would run them in raid-10 instead of 0 just for my own reasons. Less risk of data loss, as well as you may get better read performance. Though, I have this raid-10 8 spindle server, it performs like crap to even a single SSD. Though 3TB of raid protected storage is fun to play with, hahaha.

For your C300's your running on the ICH10r right?

[Cookiesowns]

Yeah I know, that's why I own two of them. But the system still feels slower than my 4x Vertex drives in raid 0. I didn't want the Force GT for its sataIII transfers, I just wanted them for its possible 85k x 2, 4k iops... plus maybe I would eventually get a raid controller again...

Yeah I know, that's why I own two of them. But the system still feels slower than my 4x Vertex drives in raid 0. I didn't want the Force GT for its sataIII transfers, I just wanted them for its possible 85k x 2, 4k iops... plus maybe I would eventually get a raid controller again...

Vertex 2 or Vertex 3? As with any SATAIII drive, theres always some overhead with a SATAIII interface when running in SATAII mode. Plus, the ICH10R is only capable of doing about 750MB/s sequential. I haven't seen any higher results on it

That being said, if I had 4 SSD's 120GB up, I would raid-10 them

[tistou77]

nobody has tested the new bios on performance, stress, voltage, etc...?

[zoson]

1502 is DESTRUCTIVE to large raid 5 arrays. I restarted, flashed the new bios, and two of my three raid 5 disks were suddenly listed as non member disks.

I used the 'plug them back into their original build ports and run testdisk' fix to get my data back. And now I'm waiting the 3 days it takes to re-initialize raid 5 parity on ich10r...

[SkOrPn]

Yeah it appears the new bios did not give any gains in performance on raid. Wish I had thought of doing a before test with as ssd. I have 2 C300's using firmware 0007, and I have 4 of the original barefoot based Vertex's on firmware 1.6 I think it is. I do not have the Vertex's connected to my main system anymore, they are for playing with on my older systems here or for transferring files. One is installed in my EEEPC, just to give it that extra bit of perf. lol

[Cookiesowns]

Yeah it appears the new bios did not give any gains in performance on raid. Wish I had thought of doing a before test with as ssd. I have 2 C300's using firmware 0007, and I have 4 of the original barefoot based Vertex's on firmware 1.6 I think it is. I do not have the Vertex's connected to my main system anymore, they are for playing with on my older systems here or for transferring files. One is installed in my EEEPC, just to give it that extra bit of perf. lol

Well, let's see how it runs in a 24/7 setup. I don't care about loss of 2-5% performance on 2 ssd's, I seriously don't care. What I care about is reliability and if the sleep issue have been fixed

[SkOrPn]

Well, let's see how it runs in a 24/7 setup. I don't care about loss of 2-5% performance on 2 ssd's, I seriously don't care. What I care about is reliability and if the sleep issue have been fixed

My computer sleeps great, I just turn it off when Im done with it. 24/7 with these C300's used to be just fine when my computer was producing bitcoins last year, but now I just use the computer for what ever, mostly IRC, browsing and flashing smartphones and also a few VM guest installs. I also game now and then, but much more rarely these days. Like you said, we need more time with the new bios to know how 24/7 will work out. Maybe I should test my sleep behavior as I've never put "this" computer to sleep before. Just curious, what sort of problems were reported regarding sleep?

[Cookiesowns]

My computer sleeps great, I just turn it off when Im done with it. 24/7 with these C300's used to be just fine when my computer was producing bitcoins last year, but now I just use the computer for what ever, mostly IRC, browsing and flashing smartphones and also a few VM guest installs. I also game now and then, but much more rarely these days. Like you said, we need more time with the new bios to know how 24/7 will work out. Maybe I should test my sleep behavior as I've never put "this" computer to sleep before. Just curious, what sort of problems were reported regarding sleep?

I've had a few different ones. The main one I've been having is when the computer goes to sleep, and you press the powerbutton or wake it up, It will show the windows login screen, but then will hang there with no disk activity, the second one is that The system sometimes won't even go to sleep, just hangs with a blank screen.

I haven't gotten waking up from sleep problem in awhile, but it still happens on occasion. It really pisses me off, since right after I reformat I always forget to disable sleep, and the computer ends up sleeping then bsoding since it doesn't wake up, thus ruining my day of a fresh install :P

[SkOrPn]

It really pisses me off, since right after I reformat I always forget to disable sleep, and the computer ends up sleeping then bsoding since it doesn't wake up, thus ruining my day of a fresh install :P

Yeah I can see how that would upset someone, I know I would not be happy. Since Im in raid I set my power settings to high performance and set the HDD to always on, never sleep. Then once a week or month or so I log out and hope GC does its thing overnight. Using the sleep button on my Keyboard just now seemed to work just fine, and then hitting the space bar woke it up without any problem, in fact I might use that more often because coming out of sleep was super fast. I wonder, in this "Sleep Mode" is there still power at the SSD's? If so, this might be even better than "Logging Out" for proper GC.

Anyway, currently busy trying to update one of my Vertex drives to 1.7 non-destructive on a EeePC 1005HA finally.

[Cookiesowns]

Yeah I can see how that would upset someone, I know I would not be happy. Since Im in raid I set my power settings to high performance and set the HDD to always on, never sleep. Then once a week or month or so I log out and hope GC does its thing overnight. Using the sleep button on my Keyboard just now seemed to work just fine, and then hitting the space bar woke it up without any problem, in fact I might use that more often because coming out of sleep was super fast. I wonder, in this "Sleep Mode" is there still power at the SSD's? If so, this might be even better than "Logging Out" for proper GC.

Anyway, currently busy trying to update one of my Vertex drives to 1.7 non-destructive on a EeePC 1005HA finally.

I see. Are you overclocked? And what bios version are you currently on?

[SkOrPn]

I see. Are you overclocked? And what bios version are you currently on?

Today NOT overclocked, but tomorrow might be a different story, lol... I just flashed bios 1502 several days ago. Hey I just noticed Alpha IRST package 11.5.0.1109 was just posted. Interesting indeed...

[SkOrPn]

Wow everyone, major good news for anyone using raid on Intel RST. I was just reading Intels release info and particularly the NOTE's section on their latest alpha release when I noticed note #2 states and let me quote below in BOLD:

Notes:

1. Known Issue is defined as a potential RST issue that has been replicated internally by the Rapid Storage Technology team but has not been root caused to be an RST defect.

2. This release will not enable the TRIM on RAID0 feature, but it will be added in the next RST 11.5 release. Contact your RST AE representative with questions.

3. This is the first release of RST that includes UEFI driver support. Note that the UEFI driver will not work with any previous releases of the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager/Rapid Storage Technology product. This means if you plan to use the RST 11.5 UEFI driver then you must use the RST 11.5 driver as well.

4. The RAID OROM version for this release is 11.5.0.1111, the driver and user interface version is 11.5.0.1109.

5. This release contains the CLI (Command Line Interface) replacement utility for RAIDCFG32. There is a 32 and 64 bit CLI utility which reside in the CLI 32 & 64 bit Utility component of this kit.

6. The Windows 8 version used during RST validation of this release is 8028.

7. When an ODD is in the Zero Power state, some ODDs may disappear when a hardware re-scan is initiated via the Windows Device Manager. A second hardware re-scan conducted before the Zero Power Idle Timeout value is reached (default is 60s) will return the drive to an OS visible state. This behavior is believed to be related to the length of time an ODD requires to become ready during power on from the zero-power state.
8. Microsoft* .NET Framework 3.0 is required to be installed on the system in order for the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology User Interface to install. Note that not all Microsoft* Operating Systems have .NET 3.0 installed by default. Refer to the Microsoft* website for details.

I almost don't want to believe it, lol...

[Cookiesowns]

Wow everyone, major good news for anyone using raid on Intel RST. I was just reading Intels release info and particularly the NOTE's section on their latest alpha release when I noticed note #2 states and let me quote below in BOLD:




I almost don't want to believe it, lol...

You still need the Intel OROM ( raid controller firmware ) installed for raid-0 TRIM to work, but that's awesome news regardless. Another good reason why I should upgrade to X79 heheheh.

With that being said,

Has anyone noticed slower transfer speeds? My 1.5TB black is only capable of reading 75MB/s now. Quite interesting. There's less stuttering, as well as boot times "may" be alittle bit faster.

[SkOrPn]

You still need the Intel OROM ( raid controller firmware ) installed for raid-0 TRIM to work, but that's awesome news regardless. Another good reason why I should upgrade to X79 heheheh.

With that being said,

Has anyone noticed slower transfer speeds? My 1.5TB black is only capable of reading 75MB/s now. Quite interesting. There's less stuttering, as well as boot times "may" be alittle bit faster.

Well crap, they did not mention that after the note, as they usually do. Normally they state "This new TRIM feature is only possible with the newer OROM version" Like they did with the UEFI note below it (then again this alpha is not enabling TRIM either, so maybe it will state that in the notes for next release). So I just assumed lol... So, I would now assume we will never see TRIM on this board because I doubt RIIIE will ever get a OROM 11.5 bios update. Yeah another reason to upgrade for sure. Quad channel, EFI Bios support, Built in BT, and now TRIM is coming for RAID0? They sure make it hard to skip generations these days...

Have not done any transfer tests, but I did notice all my SSD's are now performing benches much less than before, or so it seems. But, on a side note, everything seems to be very smooth and snappy.

[Cookiesowns]

Well crap, they did not mention that after the note, as they usually do. Normally they state "This new TRIM feature is only possible with the newer OROM version" Like they did with the UEFI note below it (then again this alpha is not enabling TRIM either, so maybe it will state that in the notes for next release). So I just assumed lol... So, I would now assume we will never see TRIM on this board because I doubt RIIIE will ever get a OROM 11.5 bios update. Yeah another reason to upgrade for sure. Quad channel, EFI Bios support, Built in BT, and now TRIM is coming for RAID0? They sure make it hard to skip generations these days...

Have not done any transfer tests, but I did notice all my SSD's are now performing benches much less than before, or so it seems. But, on a side note, everything seems to be very smooth and snappy.

Yeah everything things just as smooth or smoother, but the transfer rates sure have dropped.

Man, I really want to upgrade now, should have just sold the cpu and mobo to the guy instead of waiting.

[SkOrPn]

WARNING: This is just intended as a comparison between old alpha drivers 11.0's to 11.5's. I'n my opinion this post is worthless, but I wanted to see if this latest 11.5 alphas did in fact drop some performance, but it looks like it did NOT. At least on single small barefoot SSD's it did not. RAID could be an entirely different story...

I just did a few more tests on freshly wiped Vertex's and found nothing notably different from Alpha 11.0 to 11.5. Still wish I had done some recent b4's on Intel's official 10.6 release. I have 3 original Vertex's (all purchased the same day they were released for sale), and one brand new one (RMA replacement several months back). The wear should be similar on the old Vertex's. The new one has not been used "much" yet. This goes to show that the rma replacements, although physically look better are coming with crappier nand lol. All four tests were conducted on BIOS 1502.

Top left is the brand new Vertex (non-turbo) flashed to FW1.7 on ICH using the RST 11.0 drivers. Top right is the old original used Vertex flashed to FW1.7T, using the same Alpha 11.0 drivers. BOTH drives formatted to FAT32.

IRST 11.0



Bottom left is the same old Vertex flashed to Turbo FW1.7T on ICH using IRST 11.5's and formatted to FAT32. Bottom right is the same drive formatted to NTFS on ICH also using IRST 11.5 drivers, just for s&g. Was curious if there was a performance difference on such small SSD's, guess there is not. Since I have them attached to USB 3.0 adapters, maybe I should test them formatted to exFAT???

IRST 11.5



IRST 11.5's appear to have given me a really super-slight performance increase. NO?

[SkOrPn]

Yeah everything things just as smooth or smoother, but the transfer rates sure have dropped.

Man, I really want to upgrade now, should have just sold the cpu and mobo to the guy instead of waiting.

I have to admit, I did NOT test 11.5 before reporting my previous statement of slower benches. I had only had benches from the 11.0 alpha release (which I thought would be identical to 11.5). So, your findings with slower transfers kinda hit a bad spot with me and I wanted to make absolutely sure this was the actual case. Well after doing two more tests on the new 11.5's, I have to admit I do not see a performance decrease, at least not on these old SSD's of mine. I have NOT tested any of my storage F3's or my Raptors for that matter, but it looks to me like 11.5 is Ok in regards to single drive perf. If only I was willing to drop back to 10.6, we would know if the alphas are a step back or not in performance. Unfortunately I forgot to take a screen shot when I tested my raid array on IRST 11.0. Otherwise I would have done a comparison with it as well.

[Cookiesowns]

I have to admit, I did NOT test 11.5 before reporting my previous statement of slower benches. I had only had benches from the 11.0 alpha release (which I thought would be identical to 11.5). So, your findings with slower transfers kinda hit a bad spot with me and I wanted to make absolutely sure this was the actual case. Well after doing two more tests on the new 11.5's, I have to admit I do not see a performance decrease, at least not on these old SSD's of mine. I have NOT tested any of my storage F3's or my Raptors for that matter, but it looks to me like 11.5 is Ok in regards to single drive perf. If only I was willing to drop back to 10.6, we would know if the alphas are a step back or not in performance. Unfortunately I forgot to take a screen shot when I tested my raid array on IRST 11.0. Otherwise I would have done a comparison with it as well.

It's not the drivers that's slowing us down, it's the new OROM included in the latest Asus BIOS. I did my own tests with the same INTEL RST driver and install, look at the difference.

I have a nit picky thing of matching drivers and firmware version. Seems like my old combo gave me the best performance.

[SkOrPn]

It's not the drivers that's slowing us down, it's the new OROM included in the latest Asus BIOS. I did my own tests with the same INTEL RST driver and install, look at the difference.

I have a nit picky thing of matching drivers and firmware version. Seems like my old combo gave me the best performance.

I had a feeling that was the case, in fact I was thinking because 1502 now enables over 2.2TB drives, that maybe somehow what ever they did was the cause of the slow down. All my results I am getting with 1502 seem not as good as when I was on 1401. If it was important enough I would flash back to 1401 and do a few benches, but I don't believe it it is. lol

The only bios flash I care to do at this time is one that turns this board into a x79 R4E

[Sylver123]

I have also noticed slower SSD performance with my two Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB drives in RAID0 since installing the new RST 11.5.0.1109 Alpha.

I reverted back to RST 11.0.0.1015 Alpha I was using before and my performance is now back to normal again.

[SkOrPn]

I have also noticed slower SSD performance with my two Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB drives in RAID0 since installing the new RST 11.5.0.1109 Alpha.

I reverted back to RST 11.0.0.1015 Alpha I was using before and my performance is now back to normal again.

Hmm, very interesting. This is going to force me to do more tests, lol... Thanks for the heads up Sylver123 about your C300's...

[BSViper]

Today I have tested system on a socket 1155.
I have been pleasantly surprised by its productivity surpassing my present system.
Now I intend to sell my 1366-motherboard and processor (Rampage 3 Extreme and I7-920-D0).
Wanted to thank all participants of the given theme - your councils were it is very useful.
Good luck to you all!