random reads and write perf on m4a79xtd evo?

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I'm about to pull the trigger and get a second 160GB intel ssd for raid 0. I wanted to know if my mobo asus m4a79xtd evo will bottleneck the drives' random read and write perf. The guys over at XS seem to think that the 890gx is up to par with intel's stuff but how much worse is my chipset? enough to buy a new mobo?
 
AMD onboard RAID is less advanced than Intel onboard RAID. Especially for RAID5. But since you will be doing RAID0, either should be fine.

Just to clear something up: your motherboard doesn't have anything to do with it. It's the software drivers that actually perform the RAID functions. So what matters is the quality of the RAID driver from your vendor (AMD/Intel/nVidia/JMicron/Silicon Image/etc) and your CPU and RAM abilities when doing RAID5 on the Intel driver with write caching enabled. For RAID0 and RAID1 and combinations of those, CPU/RAM should be very low for any system.

And you can always do a software RAID0 in Windows, that would be fast as well, especially for SSDs.

If you use Windows then i recommend Win7. And note that you will not have TRIM capability when you put SSDs in RAID on Windows platform.

Oh and can you show us your current benchmarks? Screenshots of AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark benchmarks (free downloadable) would give us a bit more to talk about. :)
 
i'll be using an x-18m 160GB gen 1 intel ssd, and an x25-m ssd also 160GB. They'll be raid 0 so I think I'm ok there... I'll bench once built.

how do I go about formatting them so they are aligned? aligned partitions seem to perf better.
 
If you let Windows 7 create the partitions when installing (while in the Setup) then you should be fine as Windows 7 and Vista create aligned partitions. Also after you installed Windows you can create partitions in the Disc Management which will be aligned as well.

If you use another program to create the partition (or for example Windows XP setup) then it is possible it will be misaligned. Be sure to try AS SSD on each drive letter you can find; all partitions should be aligned!
 
ok, as soon as the other sdd comes I'll run these and get back to you. thanks for the input.
 
some snaps of 4k formatted single gen 1 160 gb ssd

ssd-random-337.png

ssd-read-50.png


220MB/s reads aren't bad at all.
 
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HDTune might not be such a good benchmark. Try CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD instead!
 
You have AHCI disabled and are running in IDE emulation mode. This causes your 4K QD32/64 scores to be virtually the same as QD=1, because the SSD cannot receive multiple requests at once without NCQ and NCQ depends on AHCI.

So try enabling AHCI in the BIOS and re-run the benchmarks. The 4K 32/64 scores should be 150MB/s+, and since Intel has 10 channels could theoretically be as high as 10 times the normal 4K benchmark score.
 
Ok lemme look into that. Thanks a million for the tip I'll post new benches later today
 
looks like theres no explicit option in bios to support AHCI but I think there are two ports that do have it. It's complicated...I didn't really do my hw on this mobo. so i found the option, I should have installed windows with this option on to AHCI mode. the way the board is setup there are 4 blue ports that are ports 1 - 4 and then two black ones that are ports 5 and 6. if either is set to AHCI mode only the 1 - 4 ports work and when I tried it it would see the SSD and the blue ray drive but not my hdd and if it did see it windows wouldn't load. So I've been trying to find ahci drivers for win7, I think if I installed win7 with the the ports set to ahci windows would have set up the drivers for me. right?
 
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finally got raid working and I have worse perf now.

it could be the 1.8inch power and sata connector adapter I have for the 1.8 x25-m g1, or it could be that I didn't format that drive in windows before I got it like the first one; or it could be the chipset...

wtf-suck-236.png
I'm starting not to like this mobo...ugh
 
You should not use HDTune if you want to test performance on other than plain HDDs. A RAID setup thus cannot be tested properly by HDTune.

I recommend you only use AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark for benchmarking. Asides sequential performance (which is pretty much irrelevant) this also shows you random I/O performance which IS relevant. And it also shouldn't artificially cap your RAID scores. So please don't use HDTune on RAIDs and other complex setups anymore it's not made for that and it scores do not mean anything when used in such situations.

Also, AS SSD would tell you the alignment, which is also important. If it says OK you're good if it says BAD then your alignment is not okay. Probably means that you didnt create the partitions using Windows but using some other third party program.
 
Don't be sorry. :)
I just don't want you to think that the numbers you got with HDTune are any way representative of your actual performance. So test with the right tools first!

The sawtooth pattern in HDTune just tells you that the speeds can go (and will go) higher with a proper benchmark with higher queue depth.
 
here's the as-ssd bench
low-sucks-347.png



perhaps I should just not use the hw raid and run them in ahci mode and then have windows in windows setup make a sw raid? can win7 setup do that?

all the #'s are skewompus:
hmm-odd-792.png
 
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I've seen write speeds for single disk ssd setups going to 100MB/s... would a sw raid be better? For example I wonder if putting these drives in ahci mode on the controller and then letting windows raid them using a dynamic disk would be faster? Can I even boot like that?
 
Your speeds are somewhat disappointing. Could you test a single SSD in AHCI mode without RAID with both AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark?
Can you also open task manager and look at CPU utilization during the test? The "Performance" tab showing a graph of CPU usage is very good; and then run both AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark.

Remember, with dual-core your CPU can be bottlenecked at 50%; with quadcore your CPU can be bottlenecked at 25%. The CPU usage should be alot higher when doing the 32/64 queue random I/O tests.

If single SSD performs well, then you can test with software RAID inside windows. These drivers may be better than the AMD RAID drivers (note that this isn't hardware RAID at all). I got good speeds with MS Windows RAID0 driver on HDDs; linear scaling with 8 HDDs.

If you want to test more and make screenshots, i'll comment on each one of them and tell you if they are any good or not.
 
That looks much better!

Now you may want to try with Windows Software RAID and compare these scores. But you can also call it a day. With these scores, i think you can be happy. I do see some degradation in write speeds; but may be related to not having TRIM; these are G1s after all. Still very high scores and should work great for you.
 
yeah I'm packing for school and such. I'll try software raid one of these days, perhaps this coming weekend.

some final questions -

how do I run garbage collection on G1s? Is there just a tool to run periodcially? Any idea why 512k writes aren't higher or are they good enough?

you've been way helpful thanks!
 
There's the Intel toolbox utility. But i'm not sure whether it works on your array. You can do things like clone, secure erase and restore clone but its cumbersome. Only Linux/BSD would get your TRIM in RAID at the moment.

Any idea why 512k writes aren't higher or are they good enough?
Click to expand...
Could be higher, probably related to RAID engine. Normally, on bare SSDs the 512K score and sequential are roughly the same.
 
hmm i guess it wont matter much, just burnt pride until I exhaust all my options i.e testing to see if windows sw raid is better or just convincing myself to quit obsessing and not buy a new mobo just for "better" raid numbers lol.
 
Yes. Also try secure erase on Ultimate Boot CD (google on that; its useful!); it got HDDErase included which can do Secure Ease. This resets the performance of your G1 SSDs.

Then test again with both AMD Driver RAID and Windows software RAID; then you could better compare the numbers. Again, only if you want to. You can also call it a day. But if you do test, post the numbers here so you can get some feedback on them. :)
 
I'll do that. I have to lay out the possible configs. Here's what I'll do in the near future:

un raid the drives
boot the ultimate boot cd - erase them to stock
recreate raid drive
test

un raid the drives
boot ultimate boot cd - erase to stock
create sw raid in windows
test

big question: how do I create a sw raid in windows? do I have to do it from a working windows install and then install do that dyanmic disk or will the win7 setup do it?? I really don't know how to make a sw raid setup in windows.

also - why the discrepancy in benches between as-ssd and crystalmark?

also how do I know that win7 during setup formatted the drive with a 128kb block size as that was the allocation size of the raid controller
 
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i had to scratch the itch, I didn't secureErase the drives but here's a fresh install on the 2.5inch ssd

singlessd-743.png


going to try to get the 1.8inch ssd and make a dynamic striped disk.

one oddity that has me worried is that the 1.8inch ssd (same x25-m just an x-18 with an adapter) shows up in the bios but the win7 installer wouldn't see it but saw the x25....
 
how long does it take -- er should it take -- to to a full ntfs format on a 160GB ssd? I suspected that the 1.8inch ssd was having issues after the win7 setup wouldn't recognize it. I started formatting it and via windows it takes for ever. so I cancelled it and am doing it via diskpart.

lol the guy on ebay said that the 1.8inch disk had had little usage - smart reporting via the intel toolbox for ssds reports 1.47TB of host writes ;-(

"Media Wearout indicator" only indicates 98 so I'm good I think.
 
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the 1.8inch drive is the culprit....damn!

lemon-381.png
the slower of the two is the 1.8inch drive...

any ideas how I can fix this? or what might cause this? I'm going to look into researching if flashing the fw might help
 
Turns out the second ssd that was slowing the raid down needed to be aligned. I think I did that by flashing it. I found the latest firmware online, flashed it, and I knew something was good when the formatting with default settings to ntfs went about 3 hours quicker than before the flash. Write speeds are in fact better than the x-25 which I will flash the firmware of and create the hw raid and bench.

sucess_21_21-528.png
 
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