Poor SATA performance on new build

footwo

footwo

footwo

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Joined
9 Jan 2005
Posts
84
Hi

I recently built a new PC from parts ordered from OC:

mobo Gigabyte GA-P55-UD5 Intel P55 :
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-203-GI

CPU Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz :
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-301-IN

RAM G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-16000C9 :
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-037-GS

GPU: XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-124-XF

PSU Corsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650TXUK):
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-008-CS

Case Thermaltake VL10001W2Z Element G Gaming Case:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-002-TR

Optical drive :
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-038-OT

The hdd's (3 of them) were left over from my previous rig (they are about 2 years old with the exception of the samsung spinpoint) and are as follows:

2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

and 1 recently bought Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ)

OK now onto the problem. I built the rig and everything seemed fine. When I went to install windows 7 however it took AGES to get through the setup process. Even waiting for the initial window to pop up so I could accept the license agreement took about 10 minutes. From then on it was a slow process but when the OS was installed it seemed to be fine.

However access to the drives *feels* slow to me, and infact my new machine which is a lot better than my older one scores lower on the windows performance index score citing disk access as the thing dragging it down. Opening movie files seems to take longer than it used to and I should point out that windows 7 ran flawlessly on my older machine.

I downloaded some hdd analysing software and it says that all my drives are healthy and fine so I'm not sure what's going wrong. I'll admit I know nothing about hdd's though so hoping someone can help shed some light on it here :D

Windows did pop up a complaint about a disc error on the spinpoint the other day but i just cancelled it as nothing seemed to be going wrong.

Any ideas?
 
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Have you checked the BIOS settings for the SATA controller? Ideally you should configure the SATA controller as AHCI

Matthew
 
Remember if you change the SATA controller mode Windows will probably not boot unless you set up the drivers correctly beforehand.

Footwo, have you used something like HDTach or HDTune to benchmark your disks?
 
I wouldn't have thought AHCI (Advanced Host Control Interface) would've made any difference (speaking from personal experience) and like rpstewart says, you may have problems if the drivers aren't setup correctly beforehand. It may be worth checking that you've used the the blue Intel SATA ports, as I've read somewhere on this forum that the white Jmicron SATA ports can be a little flakey. However I'm using a Jmicron port for my DVD drive and have had no issues so far, but then a DVD drive is not going to stress it like a HDD. If you're using the blue Intel ports (or you see no difference changing to them) then follow rpstewarts advice about using HDTach or HDTune and post the results.
 
BlackBat said:
I wouldn't have thought AHCI (Advanced Host Control Interface) would've made any difference (speaking from personal experience) and like rpstewart says, you may have problems if the drivers aren't setup correctly beforehand. It may be worth checking that you've used the the blue Intel SATA ports, as I've read somewhere on this forum that the white Jmicron SATA ports can be a little flakey. However I'm using a Jmicron port for my DVD drive and have had no issues so far, but then a DVD drive is not going to stress it like a HDD. If you're using the blue Intel ports (or you see no difference changing to them) then follow rpstewarts advice about using HDTach or HDTune and post the results.
Click to expand...

I am using the blue intel ports, SATA2_0 - SATA2_2 and my dvd drive is in SATA2_3.

Curiously though even though the samsung spinpoint is in SATA2_0, the POST detects the seagate drives first.

I'll try that software when I get home from work.
 
footwo said:
No I haven't but I will try that when I get home. What is AHCI?
Click to expand...

A native mode for accessing SATA disks, rather than an IDE emulation mode (which according to the motherboard manual IDE is the default). As others have said, if you make this change Windows may not boot, but I'm assuming that you have a recent fresh install of Windows, so a reinstall is not going to be a problem.

From looking at the motherboard manual it appears that there are three sets of SATA ports:

One set labelled SATA2_0/1/2/3/4/5/6 which are controlled by the Intel P55 chipset directly;
One set labelled GSATA2_0/1 controlled by a GIGABYTE SATA2 chip which is also responsible for the PATA IDE connector
One set labelled GSTAT2_2/3 controlled by a JMB362 chip which also handles the eSATA ports

The P55 chip will have the faster bus speed to the CPU (and also less hardware between the CPU and the disks), so should give the better performance, so check which SATA ports you are using (again if you change this, Windows may not boot and you may need to reinstall Windows).

Matthew
 
mdovey said:
One set labelled SATA2_0/1/2/3/4/5/6 which are controlled by the Intel P55 chipset directly;
One set labelled GSATA2_0/1 controlled by a GIGABYTE SATA2 chip which is also responsible for the PATA IDE connector
One set labelled GSTAT2_2/3 controlled by a JMB362 chip which also handles the eSATA ports
Click to expand...

Yeah I noticed that when I was installing and I am definitely using the blue itnel ports SATA2_0 to SATA2_2.

Reinstalling isn't an issue so I can always try that. If I switch to AHCI and install Windows on my spinpoint, will it matter if I have the other drives unplugged and then just plug them in later once windows is up and running?
 
footwo said:
Reinstalling isn't an issue so I can always try that. If I switch to AHCI and install Windows on my spinpoint, will it matter if I have the other drives unplugged and then just plug them in later once windows is up and running?
Click to expand...

No - changing other disks (or even switching between AHCI/IDE mode if they are on different controllers) should not be a problem. Worse case scenario would be needing to go into disk manager to assign the drive letters, or device manager to uninstall the disk and then run check for new hardware to let Windows redetect the disk and reinstall the (correct) drivers (obviously don't do this whilst doing something on the disk itself such as running defrag on the disk in question!!)

The main problem is making any major change to the disk that Windows boots off and runs off - as you can't just uninstall that disk from device manager without Windows falling over.

Matthew
 
Heres the HD Tune results:

First Seagate, this is where my C: partition is (Windows):

hdtunebenchmarkst325062.png


Second seagate, this is my D partition:
hdtunebenchmarkst325062.png


Spinpoint, this is the newest of my drives. I'm thinking about disconnecting the other two and installing windows onto this one to see how it performs:

hdtunebenchmarksamsunghq.png
 
There's a load of disk activity going on so that's why it may seem slow. Otherwise all your results are normal. Monitor your processes to see what's doing it.
But definitely use the Samsung for your OS, it's much quicker.
 
Those f3 values are about the same as i get when i tested mine using everest ultimate's disk suite last weekend.

You have got the motherboard and sata drivers installed haven't you?
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Those f3 values are about the same as i get when i tested mine using everest ultimate's disk suite last weekend.

You have got the motherboard and sata drivers installed haven't you?
Click to expand...

F3 values?

Yes, windows installed the drivers itself and I also used the disc that came with the board.

Something is definitely wrong though, no way should my new system be lower than my older one of the windows experience index
 
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footwo said:
Something is definitely wrong though, no way should my new system be lower than my older one of the windows experience index
Click to expand...

It does seem odd. I don't know the expected performance for your particular disks, but looking at your benchmarks, the two seagates are around the performance I'd expect for a typical 250GB disk, and the Spinpoint is a tad faster than a typical 1TB disk (but the spinpoint is meant to be a fast disk so that is to be expected).

It may be that the experience index is marking the disk down if it is in IDE mode rather than AHCI mode, but that is doubtful.

Another possibiliy might be to check the disk caching (look at the properties of the disk in device manager) to check that hasn't been disabled for some reason.

The first seagate, however, does seem to take a bit of time to get up to speed. This might be simply because it is a system disk and Windows was busy when you started the test. You might want to repeat the benchmark and see if the curve stays similar or produces a curve similar to the second seagate. However, there is a small possibility that the disk isn't working properly - although to be honest, I think this extremely unlikely. Have you ran any tool which can report the SMART status of the disk?

In any case, using the Spinpoint as your system disk is going to improve performance!

Matthew
 
OK, I would suggest running a few more benchmarks on that drive just to check if the slow startup was an anomaly or always happens. Even so, it may just be because that disk has the OS on it, so also try benchmarking the disk when you've installed Windows on the Spinpoint - if you still get that initial dip even when it isn't the boot/system drive, then it points to someone odd with the drive (although it may also be a badly seated or faulty SATA cable).

Matthew
 
I reinstalled on the spinpoint, it seems a little better but it is still dragging my windows exp index down. Everything else is 7.2 -7.9 but my disk access is sticking at 5.9.

I've enabled AHCI in the BIOS now but I can't notice a difference to be honest. I even removed the first seagate drive, unplugged everything and reseated everything.

On the upside I discovered that my CPU fan wasn't secure enough so I fixed that and now the CPU barely reaches 30 degree on load :D
 
footwo said:
I reinstalled on the spinpoint, it seems a little better but it is still dragging my windows exp index down. Everything else is 7.2 -7.9 but my disk access is sticking at 5.9.
Click to expand...
The Windows experience index is far from a reliable indication of performance. The fact that 5.9 is the maximum it will give to a mechanical HDD (regardless of speed) is testament to this.

footwo said:
I've enabled AHCI in the BIOS now but I can't notice a difference to be honest. I even removed the first seagate drive, unplugged everything and reseated everything.
Click to expand...
AHCI doesn't give you any performance benefit over IDE mode. It does give you NCQ but in a desktop environment that is of no benefit because the I/O queue depth never gets big enough for NCQ to be of use.
 
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