Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers - Anyone getting slower SATA2 3/GBs speed?

[limitz]

Quote Originally Posted by Grymmie View Post
Take a look at http://rog.asus.com/150372012/news/t...-motherboards/

hmmm...
That was an interesting read. Achieving up to 1,000MB/s read/writes is definitely attractive. Although, I noticed on my particular RAID0 array, that I can only hit that read/write performance when on 11.6 IRST drivers and when on IRST 11.7-12.0.0.1083 I can only achieve 500MB/s read/write performance.

According to IRST User Interface: RAID0 x2 SSD
11.6.0.1030, 11.6.2.1002, 11.6.5.1006
SSD port 0 = 6GB/s, SSD port 1 = 6GB/s (1,000+MB/s read/write):)

11.7.0.1013 through 12.5.0.1066
SSD port 0 = 6GB/s, SSD port 1 = 3GB/s (500MB/s read/write):mad:

Seems the 11.7 and above IRST drivers likes to throttle down the speed of my port 1 SSD to 3GB/s rate, or it is some kind of bug that Intel has broken when fixing other bugs.

Here's how you can check yourself:
1) Open IRST interface in Windows
2) On the left side of interface click Advanced
3) Click on each of your SSD's in SATA_Array_000

Are all of your SSD's in the Array showing SATA Transfer Rate: 6 Gb's?
Are you positive your RAID0 Array is performing as a dual SSD Array should be giving you up to 1,000 Gb's speed rates?

-IRST Drivers-
-I use ATTO Benchmark-

[limitz]

No one huh? Every is getting perfect SATAIII 6 Gb's speed rates on IRST drivers under Windows 8 x64? And up to 1,000+ Write/Read benchmarks in RAID0 x2 SSD's?

Interesting. Maybe my SSD on port1 is just failing and time for RMA.

[feniks]

I might have been too early claiming all was well with IRST 11.7 on my RAID0, in the other thread.

despite the fact that I see both SSDs in port0 and port1 properly reported as SATAIII 6Gb/s, when I run AS SSD benchmark I see speeds about a single drive performance level. definitely not right. I will be downgrading IRST driver to 11.5 for comparison.

EDIT:
no change in performance with IRST 11.5 hmmm ...

[limitz]

feniks wrote:
I might have been too early claiming all was well with IRST 11.7 on my RAID0, in the other thread.

despite the fact that I see both SSDs in port0 and port1 properly reported as SATAIII 6Gb/s, when I run AS SSD benchmark I see speeds about a single drive performance level. definitely not right. I will be downgrading IRST driver to 11.5 for comparison.

EDIT:
no change in performance with IRST 11.5 hmmm ...

Yeah man it's a strange one alright. You should seeing speeds above 500+ Gb/s W/R with two SSD's in RAID0; surely also depends on what your drives spec's are too. But definitely should be between 500-1,000 W/R. I use ATTO to bench SSD's and I will either get speeds of 500 W/R or 1,000-1,100 W/R. Fortunately I am able to control what speed my drives will perform at by using a specific IRST driver.

IRST Drivers labeled as SLOW give me 500 Gb's and FAST 1,000+ Gb's speed.
Try them out for yourself and let me know how you went on.

[feniks]

well, there is much more to that LOL. I totally ignored the array stripe size setting (left it at default 32K), I also have Write-Back Cache Disabled in IRST.

will probably re-create the array and re-image it soon.

32K stripe size seems to be my culprit for starters ... might go with 128K after all. but first I need to change write-back cache and re-test.

[limitz]

feniks wrote:
well, there is much more to that LOL. I totally ignored the array stripe size setting (left it at default 32K), I also have Write-Back Cache Disabled in IRST.

will probably re-create the array and re-image it soon.

32K stripe size seems to be my culprit for starters ... might go with 128K after all. but first I need to change write-back cache and re-test.

Oh okay, yeah, go with 128K. I chose 128 since Intel RAID OROM suggested it was better for RAID0. 🙂
I also have write caching enabled too.

[Code187]

I get better results with a old driver.

[feniks]

My RAID0 must be sort of misaligned ... mostly ... found this handy tool/calculator
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

and I seem to have several things off LOL. will try optimizing it benchmarking performance with AS SSD at every step.
I have ATTO too, but it uses uncompressed data only so it not so good for real life conditions (most of files are compressed this way or another).

[feniks]

damn it ... created 128KB stripe, restored image, enabled Write-Back cache ... and now getting even worse speeds in AS SSD LOL!!!

It turns out that my partition is misaligned for the given file cluster size (512b), stripe size (128KB) and default SSD values (NAND Erase Block 512KB, PageSize 4KB) according to this tool:
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

Here's my current AS SSD, it's terrible, only thing that jumped up is write 4K-64 and access time, all the rest looks same or only slightly better than it was and way worse than on a single SSD in AHCI mode LOL. Running IRST 11.5 and OROM 11.0 (BIOS 1707).

*look at my partition offset 844800 K ... when I plot this value to calculator it throws off 3 things into misaligned status (versus default value of 1048576 )

... what's worse is that Paragon Alignment Tool 4.0 says all is optimally aligned ... da hell??
what am I missing here? should I switch to later OROM and IRST?

[feniks]

just realized something ... why am I running iaStorA instead of iaStorV??? or rather what's the difference between the two?