ASmedia 6Gb sata ports are slow

[Terminal_Meltdo]

I just bought a 240GB SSD 6Gb sata drive by Sandisk and hooked it up to the the 6Gb Asmedia port and I'm only able to get about 200-270MB throughput out of it. Is there a setting I need to change in the bios? Upon POST, Asmedia indicates Pci-E GEN2/SATA 3. Everything I can find in Bios is set to GEN3, unless there is a hidden option somewhere.

[VoXPCS]

Use the Intel ports instead, that's what I had to do. Also make sure you're got a 6GB cable and AHCI is enabled in the BIOS

[HiVizMan]

I tend to stay away from the Asmedia ports, will only use them for my optical drives.

Use the Intel ports if you can. If you have to use the Asmedia ones post back and we will try and sort out for you.

[Terminal_Meltdo]

Using the Intel ports is not the solution to my question. What is wrong with the transfer rate using the Asmedia? I have another 6Gb drive and would like to use it on my $450 motherboard that says I have 2 more 6Gb ports.

[Praz]

The ASMedia chipset is connected to the system using a single PCIe lane. This does not provide sufficient bandwidth for 6Gb/s throughput.

[Terminal_Meltdo]

Whose brilliant idea in engineering decided this would be OK do on a premium motherboard? That guy has earned a claim to shame award. That is a pathetic choice to make and an embarrassment for the Asus corporation. Not to mention lost revenue in the future by pissing off the customers for deceitful marketing, again.

I sincerely hope whoever made that decision gets FIRED!

[Jim-M4EZ]

Terminal Meltdown wrote:

Whose brilliant idea in engineering decided this would be OK do on a premium motherboard?

I was under the impression that the limitation of 2 onboard Intel SATA III 6.0 Gb/s ports on the Z68, Z77, X79 boards ...

... rest solely & squarely on the shoulders of Intel ... :eek:

I could be wrong, & if so, I'm sure the correction will be coming forthwith ... 😉

[Nodens]

If I'm not mistaken every addon controller on X79 boards ( regardless of company) is connected in the same way due to chipset/CPU architecture. It's also a rule of thumb that onboard addon controllers or NICs (those that are not incorporated in the south bridge) are always slower anyhow.

[Techotic]

It's not only Asus. Other motherboard brands use the same controller. It's really just a cheap add-on so manufacturers can advertise more SATA3 ports.

The Asmedia controller on this board (ASM 1061) is similar to the Marvell 9128 SATA controller (on x58 boards), in that it only uses one PCI-E 2.0 lane (max 5Gb/s). The Marvel 9128 gets ~400/240 MB/s max read/write ATTO, the Asmedia having similar performance.

SanDisk 256GB ATTO Benchmark on ASMedia ASM1061

This being a premium flagship board, Asus should of went with the Marvell 88SE92xx SATA3 controller (as found on the Asus Z9PE-D8 WS, ASRockFatal1ty X79 Champion, ASRock X79 Extreme9). It has 2x PCIe2.0 lanes + RAID support, with performance closer to the Intel controller.

By the way, the latest Asmedia drivers/firmware found HERE, should slightly improve performance.

[dklhs90]

Wow thats strange. I have a RAID 0 going on on the 3Gb ports and have gotten results like the following