2 840pro SSD RAID 0 slow speed?

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Xenozx

2[H]4U
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Jun 16, 2004
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OK, so i am upgrading my 2 vertex LE's that were in raid 0 on sata II (benchmarked in atto at 550 / 500) to 2 Samsung 840 pro's. They say they are 500/360 each. I have an asus x58 motherboard with SATA III ports. I hooked these drives up, and built them into a raid 0 config. It says on the bios raid screen 6.0 gbps.

ANyway, when I run atto, or even the samsung performance benchmark, i get about 450 read and 300 write, and IO's show 20,000. My Vertex 1's raided scored 550/500 and 60,000 IO's....

Anyone know what would cause this?

WIndows 7 X64 SP1.

also is there any point to raiding 2 drives like this together, should I be able to see 1000/600 ish speeds available to me, and IO's double the 80,000+ quoted on the back of a single drives box?

Or would I have been better off just getting 1 big SSD?
 
I wasnt going to upgrade my CPU / mobo for another year or 2. am I better off just returning these drives, and picking up a top of the line SATA II drive?

Can I add a PCI E raid card? I think i Have an x1 or x 4 slot open?
 
Xenozx said:
I wasnt going to upgrade my CPU / mobo for another year or 2. am I better off just returning these drives, and picking up a top of the line SATA II drive?
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First, don't buy any "top of the line" Sata II drives. They're going to cost the same if not more, and you still get benefits from the Sata III drives like 4k read/write speeds and latency times.

I'd use AS SSD & Crystal Disk Mark for comparison instead of Atto. Atto uses compressible data, so I'm not surprised the sandforce equipped Vertex LEs faired better and that's not even taking the huge potential inconsistency of the Marvell ports into account. Not everything, but most of what you're probably doing in a Windows environment is incompressible.
Are you doing tons of large file transfers? Are you doing heavy i/o workloads? Either way I'd personally keep them, as the 840 Pro random 4k read/write speeds are probably much better along with latency times. If you use your computer for a lot of heavy compressible data related operations or you were happy with the Vertex LEs and want to hold off until you upgrade to a platform with native Sata III, then go ahead. Outside of this, I see no reason to wait.
That being said, not using the Marvell ports on X58 boards is kind of "common knowledge" around here and has been for the past 2-3 years.

Xenozx said:
Can I add a PCI E raid card? I think i Have an x1 or x 4 slot open?
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From what I've seen posted in this section, you can, but a lot of the cheaper x1 cards will give you and even slower throughput, whereas the better solutions (x4) cards are so expensive, that you'd probably be better off upgrading to Sandy or Ivy. I don't know what cards are recommended or which to get, but I'm sure others will chime in on this.

Edit: What do you use your computer for? Light things like browsing, gaming, etc., or other things that involve very high i/o workloads like video editing, tons of VMs, etc?
 
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It seems odd that you feel such a need for fast storage that you want to spend $300 and RAID two 128GB SSDs together instead of just buying a single 256GB SSD, and yet you will not also upgrade your motherboard in order to get Intel SATA 6Gbps ports that are necessary for the highest performance with SATA 6Gbps SSDs.

If it were me, I'd upgrade to a P67 or Z77 motherboard and run a single 256GB Samsung 840 Pro. That would be faster for most workloads than a RAID of two 128GB SSDs on Marvell SATA ports.
 
x58 is probably your problem, I'm running an x67 board and get around 1k read speeds with my HyperX 3k's.
 
It still amazes me, to this day, people are still doing the Marvell deer in the headlights thing.
This has been a known issue for almost THREE YEARS. THREE YEARS and people still post on here that something's wrong with their 6G SSD(s). I mean I was chomping at the bit for the P67 boards to come out specifically for intel SATA3 support. And it's like a thread a week on this - STILL! On this site, OCZ forums, Anand. Everywhere. Ugh.
 
I primarily use my pc for gaming and I just bought a new power supply 2 670 gtx's and upgraded my ssds because I needed more space and figured I could get some more speed while I was at it. Fps wise in videogames my i7 920 is still on par with the top end cpus on the market now. Because of this I decided not to upgrade my cpu and motherboard.

I guess I am probably just going to buy 2-3 vertex 3's since I can probably find them cheap and get about 380gb of storage out of them and 700+ mb read and write speeds and run them off the sata 2 controller and run my 3tb mechanical drive on the motherboards marvell port and remove my single x1 raid card
 
Why not just get a $200 controller and run them at FULL speed :rolleyes:
You can use the controller on new/future mobos....
 
3 vertex 3's? No, no and no.

Get a single 256GB drive now, a new one that's future proof and comes with frshest GC, fimware, controller and cell tech. If you're concerned about performance go Samsung 840 Pro. At least that way you're ready for a Haswell upgrade. By then prices on 840Pro will have dropped and you can get another forn RAID0 and TRIM will be supported.

Getting 2-3 older drives and Raid0 doesn't necessarily translate into faster game load times just because sequential synthetic benchmark increases. The magic metric in Windows and apps "feeling more responsive" is in 4k writes. And you're sacrificing 4k performance and increasing latency by striping 2-3 disks with motherboard fakeraid.

Bottom line, the diff between a few previous gen SSD's in Raid0 and a single 256GB current gen will be mostly psychological, you will not see a significant increase in game load times. The fact you have a SATA II port doesn't change anything said here. Keep your ten most played games installed on the SSD and migrate the rest to HDD or use Steam's delete local content feature for games you won't play again for a while then redownload later. A lot people get caught up in the belief they need an SSD big enough to install every game in their library .. No need, use the cloud ondemand install system to your advantage.
 
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Brahmzy said:
It still amazes me, to this day, people are still doing the Marvell deer in the headlights thing.
This has been a known issue for almost THREE YEARS. THREE YEARS and people still post on here that something's wrong with their 6G SSD(s). I mean I was chomping at the bit for the P67 boards to come out specifically for intel SATA3 support. And it's like a thread a week on this - STILL! On this site, OCZ forums, Anand. Everywhere. Ugh.
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As I'm sure you're aware, this is one of the subjects that the experienced guys ignore. It's been answered countless times and if the OP can't bother to search, I can't be bothered with the OP. I'm always willing to help someone who helps themselves but the sense of entitlement from some of these guys makes me wanna gag.

I've seen some hilariously bad advice on this type of question and just let it go. :)

Don't get frustrated Brahmzy, just ignore it. :)
 
Old Hippie said:
As I'm sure you're aware, this is one of the subjects that the experienced guys ignore. It's been answered countless times and if the OP can't bother to search, I can't be bothered with the OP. I'm always willing to help someone who helps themselves but the sense of entitlement from some of these guys makes me wanna gag.

I've seen some hilariously bad advice on this type of question and just let it go. :)

Don't get frustrated Brahmzy, just ignore it. :)
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Oh wow someone has a superiority complex... im entitled because I didnt know that x58 doesnt have native sata 3 and when you hook sata 3 drives to the sata 3 ports on my motherboard you get less than sata 2 speeds... i didnt know its not because im entitled or anything its because I havent fooked with my pc in a while and recently had the chance to hook up some new parts and wanted to get rid of my v rapters and replace them with just ssd's.

Anyway I decided to get 3 kingston 3k 120gb drives. They are hella fast and only slightly slower than the 2 840 pros I have now. I should get around 750/750 read and write performance from them and I will have 360gb of total storage for games and windows.

I hooked my 2 840pros to the sata 2 ports on my motherboard and the drives are way faster. I was getting 570/550 read and write with 2 drive on sata 2 so add in a 3rd and that should top 700. The thing is I paid 144 dollars each for the 840 pros and I just bought 3 kingston 3ks for 80 dollars each so the 3 of those drives are cheaper and faster than the 2 840 pros. I also dont intend on upgrading my motherboard or processor any time soon
 
Xenozx said:
Oh wow someone has a superiority complex... im entitled because I didnt know that x58 doesnt have native sata 3 and when you hook sata 3 drives to the sata 3 ports on my motherboard you get less than sata 2 speeds... i didnt know its not because im entitled or anything its because I havent fooked with my pc in a while and recently had the chance to hook up some new parts and wanted to get rid of my v rapters and replace them with just ssd's.

Anyway I decided to get 3 kingston 3k 120gb drives. They are hella fast and only slightly slower than the 2 840 pros I have now. I should get around 750/750 read and write performance from them and I will have 360gb of total storage for games and windows.

I hooked my 2 840pros to the sata 2 ports on my motherboard and the drives are way faster. I was getting 570/550 read and write with 2 drive on sata 2 so add in a 3rd and that should top 700. The thing is I paid 144 dollars each for the 840 pros and I just bought 3 kingston 3ks for 80 dollars each so the 3 of those drives are cheaper and faster than the 2 840 pros. I also dont intend on upgrading my motherboard or processor any time soon
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Really ?

You never owned a 256gb 840 Pro so you can't say that.

Your comparisons, excitement, and overall thought process amaze me as they are false.

BUT, do what makes you feel warm and fuzzy, and keep telling yourself that you got the performance > 840 pro with slower drives, in raid0... :rolleyes:

4K Random Read
Kingston 3k 240gb - 40mb/s
Samsung 840 Pro 255gb - 101mb/s

4KB Sequential Transfer Read
Kingston 3k 240gb - 141312 / KBs
Samsung 840 Pro 255gb - 328704 / KBs

Your Raid0 will have faster transfer time, but you only have 380gb so your not going to be transferring a lot of large files. This is why most people in SSD threads tell you to look at the 4K / randoms because you CAN feel those going from 40 to 100 mb/s.... at least I could tell night and day the snappyness increase.
 
OP.

Again, you made an uninformed purchase and now you have expensive SATA3 SSDs that don't perform as they were intended.

This is the same thing we see once a week from AMD and x58 guys. That's why we made the comments. Now you know. And next week we'll see somebody else that dropped $400 on brand new shiny SATA3 SSDs and will scream about the vendor lying about their specs and they'll need to be educated. You can see how it gets old after 3 years. No worries.
Years ago, I asked mods on multiple forums to post stickies in their storage forums saying something to the effect of "IF YOU OWN AN x58 MOTHERBOARD AND ARE ABOUT TO PURCHASE SSDs LOOK IN HERE" or "THINK YOUR x58 MOTHERBOARD WILL DO SATA3 PROPERLY? THINK AGAIN" , but none of 'em bit.

I got one reply and they said that it could lead to a potential lawsuit from hurt SATA3 SSD sales.
 
Yep :(

3 - x58 here... other than SATA performance the $/performance eon X58 is hard to beat at the moment.

THIS is why I'd suggest a $200 REAL controller to make them perform as they were meant, and then use the controller in your next build(s) for storage/spinners, or "OLD" (at that time) SATA III :D:D
 
Xenozx said:
Anyway I decided to get 3 kingston 3k 120gb drives. They are hella fast and only slightly slower than the 2 840 pros I have now. I should get around 750/750 read and write performance from them and I will have 360gb of total storage for games and windows.

I hooked my 2 840pros to the sata 2 ports on my motherboard and the drives are way faster. I was getting 570/550 read and write with 2 drive on sata 2 so add in a 3rd and that should top 700. The thing is I paid 144 dollars each for the 840 pros and I just bought 3 kingston 3ks for 80 dollars each so the 3 of those drives are cheaper and faster than the 2 840 pros. I also dont intend on upgrading my motherboard or processor any time soon
Click to expand...

Well I suppose the Kingstons will be faster for running benchmarks all day. I think a lot of people would rather have the 840s though.
 
im entitled or anything its because I havent fooked with my pc in a while and recently had the chance to hook up some new parts and wanted to get rid of my v rapters and replace them with just ssd's.
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A little reading/research would have cured your problems.

I have an X58 MB but if you're going for SATA3 and more than 2 SSDs (I have 3 Crucial 256GB SSDs) you need an external controller card (I have an LSI 9260-4i).

An easy search would have alerted you to the Marvell controller.

Good Luck!

PS.....
THIS is why I'd suggest a $200 REAL controller
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It costs @ 450.00 - 500.00 for something decent.
 
ocellaris said:
You should probably avoid the power supply forum where the same three or four questions gets asked almost daily for the last five years :)
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LOL! I think I will!

It used to be pretty interesting over there until the the origional JonnyGURU gave it up.

He "Called a Spade a Spade" and introduced true PS testing facts without pulling any punches.
 
Im going to do a little mor res3arch I havent quite bought the kingstons yet its just an idea. I have 2 670's and a killer nic card and a xfi forte sound card taking up my pci slots. So like i have to see if I add a true raid card x4 if it will drop my 670s to 8x mode which I dont want to do.

I bought my x58 when it first came out and when you look at fps in games an i7 920 at the same clock speed as a 2600k gets pretty similar fps so for gaming my setup is good to go and I see no reason to spend another 400 on a proc and mobo and memory at this time as what I have works.
 
I need to update my sig but I have an asus x58 workstation board now not the p62 deluxe
 
Seriously, I've only read about the Killer Nic card and it seemed like a waste.

Stick with the SATA2 ports on your MB and leave it at that unless you want to spend 500.00 plus the price of another SSD.

That's the best advice you're gonna recieve and I suggest you take it. :)

PS....And this could have been found by searching on this site.
 
This listing () has been removed, or this item is not available
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This is what I see but it doesn't matter.

The cheapest option is an LSI 9260-4i and extra FastPath chip.
 
Xenozx said:
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=380535092653i know a good raid card costs big money but if I bought and used this one would I see better #s with my sata 3 840 pros then using the onboard sata 2 ports?
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Link's dead. I don't know if you're shooting for RAID0 - if you are, it takes a VERY good RAID card to beat the onboard intel 6G PCH's RAID0 performance. A cheap card is not going to get you advertised speeds.
Honestly, it's so late in the game now, why invest further into your x58? A RAID card is investing into your x58.
Just rock the Marvell or intel SATA2 ports until Haswell IMO. Once you have a Z87 board, that $300-$400 RAID card will be an unneeded furnace in your system. Long boot times, slot taken up, obsoleted, expensive component etc.
Just my opinion - If you're going to hold onto your x58 until the bitter end, it's your call, but you will pay one way or the other if you do that. I hated to give mine up, but I love my 4.8 Sandy and I'll love Haswell when it releases (hopefully.)
 
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