Help wanted for performance issues on OCZ Agility 3 Raid Pack

Jules123

Jules123

Jules123

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Joined
24 Nov 2011
Posts
26
Hi,

I have just purchased from Overclockers the OCZ Agility 3 Raid Pack 2x 60GB (120GB) 2.5" SATA-3 SSDs and installed it as Raid0 into an Overclockers Tyrannosaurus system that has an Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z running Windows 7 x64 Ultimate.

On benchmarking I get read speeds of 680MB/sec for file sizes of 8MB/16MB in size (tested using HD tune plus others). The product on the website claims Maximum Read: 1000MB/sec + (RAID) so I expected something fairly close. Would anyone know why I am not getting faster read speeds?


Here is info on how I installed the SSD drives:

Used the Marvell SATA controller ports as the Asus motherboard's other 4 SATA ports can be set either as all Raid or none; I already had drives running off them not in Raid (including the OS drive).

Ctrl + M to bring up the Raid Management page for Marvell. Configured the two drives as a Raid0 volume. Chose 64KB stripe size, CacheWriteBack (in other words the default selections).

In Windows 7, under Computer Management I saw the combined partition as a 114GB unallocated. So assigned a drive letter and chose "Create a Simple Volume".

Rebooted. Ran benchmarks.

Benchmarks showed read speeds at 680MB/sec and that I wasn't getting the 1000MB/sec+ as advertised. Anyone have any ideas why I am not getting that performance?


Kind regards,
Jules

P.S. I did see on another thread on the forums here where someone was getting that performance (1000MB/sec) on the same SSDs and complaining they wanted more!
 
Hi and welcome to the forum.

a) For the best performance you need to run the SSD's off the Intel SATA 3 ports. The Marvell SATA 3 ports might be a bit better than Intel SATA 2 but they're not as good as Intel SATA 3.

b) The benchmark that OCZ use when quoting maximum speeds is ATTO. You won't see the same sort of speeds using other benchmarks.

Your "slow" speeds are likely due to (a) above and the "poor" benchmark results may be compounded by the particular benchmark(s) you're using.
 
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Yeah, thanks people, I think you're right about the Marvell being the bottleneck, but this is my set-up:

On Intel SATA 3 ports (6Gb/s):
Crucial SSD 256Mb - Installed with OS (Windows 7 x64)
Samsung 500MB HD

2 x Intel SATA 3 ports (3Gb/s):
Empty

Marvell ports 6Gb/s (supposedly) configured at RAID 0:
OCZ Agility 3 60GB
OCZ Agility 3 60GB

I don't think I can get a configuration with the Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z motherboard that will allow me to put the OCZs in RAID 0 from the Intel ports and still boot off my Crucial SSD? All drives on the Intel ports have to be in Raid or none at all, is that right?

I guess I'm stuck as is, am I right?

Jules
 
All drives on the Intel ports don't have to be in a RAID array even though the controller is set to RAID mode.

That doesn't solve your "problem" though as you have 3 SSD's and only 2 Intel SATA 3 ports that can make best use of them.

Just leave everything as it is.

Your boot drive is using the fastest SATA 3 port and the RAID pair are hardly sluggish.
 
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