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Hey guy,
Recently I purchased the Dell Perc 5i akong with 4 WD 640AAKS drives.
I am using the "good" old DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra (until future upgrade).
I flashed the card to the latest LSI (v60) Firmware.
Now, the thing is I can't get the board to identify the controller once I set the two main (the X16 size) PCI-E ports to 8X/8X mode.
it is some sort of SLI mode for those who know/knew the board.
I tried the Pin 5/6 trick but to no avail.
The only two methods I managed to get the MB to identify the controller is when the PCI-E ports are set to X16/X2(or it is X1).
So at the begging I got my VGA card using the X16 port while the Perc5i was chucked full on the X1, HDTach was showing a flat line on the 150 MB/s.
so now I switched the slots and the VGA card is stuck with a PCI-EX2 bandwith while the card gets all the X16 bandwidth
Anyone has Ideas regarding this ?
And another thing:
performance wise, I ran different setting of the card and it seems to be a bit slow, for instance:
Raid0 with 64K stripe and Adaptive read ahead, i get a flat line around 275 MB/s.
Why is it flat (should be a curve) and why only 275 mb/s when I know 4 of these drives can get more than 400 MB/s at the top and should get around 350 on average.
Am I missing something ?
128K stripe gives better results for both Read and write, what are the cons and pros of using bigger strips like 128/256 ?
I set the array using the LSI MegaRAID Storage manager from Windows, if it matters anything.
Another strange issue regarding different test results: HDTune Vs. HDTach.
I am using Windows XP Pro SP3 with the latest LSI drivers.
with HDTune I get lower read speed and lower access times.
in HDTach I get higher reads but with higher access times.
Here is an example of two benches using the same Array settings:
HDTach (Long Bench):
HDTune (64K):
Again, your thoughts/ideas are more than welcome.
Recently I purchased the Dell Perc 5i akong with 4 WD 640AAKS drives.
I am using the "good" old DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra (until future upgrade).
I flashed the card to the latest LSI (v60) Firmware.
Now, the thing is I can't get the board to identify the controller once I set the two main (the X16 size) PCI-E ports to 8X/8X mode.
it is some sort of SLI mode for those who know/knew the board.
I tried the Pin 5/6 trick but to no avail.
The only two methods I managed to get the MB to identify the controller is when the PCI-E ports are set to X16/X2(or it is X1).
So at the begging I got my VGA card using the X16 port while the Perc5i was chucked full on the X1, HDTach was showing a flat line on the 150 MB/s.
so now I switched the slots and the VGA card is stuck with a PCI-EX2 bandwith while the card gets all the X16 bandwidth
Anyone has Ideas regarding this ?
And another thing:
performance wise, I ran different setting of the card and it seems to be a bit slow, for instance:
Raid0 with 64K stripe and Adaptive read ahead, i get a flat line around 275 MB/s.
Why is it flat (should be a curve) and why only 275 mb/s when I know 4 of these drives can get more than 400 MB/s at the top and should get around 350 on average.
Am I missing something ?
128K stripe gives better results for both Read and write, what are the cons and pros of using bigger strips like 128/256 ?
I set the array using the LSI MegaRAID Storage manager from Windows, if it matters anything.
Another strange issue regarding different test results: HDTune Vs. HDTach.
I am using Windows XP Pro SP3 with the latest LSI drivers.
with HDTune I get lower read speed and lower access times.
in HDTach I get higher reads but with higher access times.
Here is an example of two benches using the same Array settings:
HDTach (Long Bench):
HDTune (64K):
Again, your thoughts/ideas are more than welcome.
