SATA NCQ / Read Cache options missing

tgbyhn10111

tgbyhn10111

tgbyhn10111

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OK I have been searching the forum for a while now and not found what I'm looking for so I'm posting.

I have 2 seagate 160gb 7200.10 drives I want to run in raid on my
P35_DS3P using the ich9r controller.

i set the following BIOS options:

Sata RAID/ACHI Mode: RAID
Sata Port0-3 Native Mode (Intel ICH9R Routhbridge): Enabled (to allow SATA controllers to operate in Native IDE Mode.)

I have had the drives running in Raid 0 but only got around 90K/s average read under vista (according to HDTune), which is a dissapointment. I'm trying to improve that score.

I have read on this forum that you can improve raid performance by turning ncq and the read cache off but I can't find those settings anywhere.

Anyone know where I can change them?

Thanks

Pete
 
Here is something rpstewart posted on the topic. Any more info anyone?

In theory it's a great idea, the drive is able to reorder I/O requests from the
system to try and minimise the delay caused by physical head movements. For example if the system requests data blocks A, B and then C but A & C are next to each other with B at the other side of the disk NCQ will supply A, C then B.

There isn't much to be gained in a desktop environment because the I/O queue depth never really gets long enough to allow NCQ to make decent decisions but in a server environment it's reported to be pretty good.

Now when you apply it on a RAID system things can really go to pot because for good performance the RAID controller relies on the disks to send it the data it requested, in the order it requested and preferably for both disks at the same time. So when NCQ starts trying to second guess the RAID controller things can get a tad confused and the controller has to start waiting for data blocks or re-ordering blocks and performance suffers as a result.
 
ACHI Mode supports NCQ, if you just use "RAID" mode NCQ should be disabled. Not sure about the cache.
 
I may be wrong then. Why not check your motherboard manual out, it should explain what each mode supports, i.e AHCI - Advanced Host Controller Interface, enables advance feature like NCQ and hotplug. Look up RAID in the manual :)
 
The manual is not specific enough. While it does state that ACHI enables the advanced features like ncq, it does not explicitly state that the RAID option turns these off so there is still a question mark there.

The person in the other thread could be wrong.

Think I'm going to have to try several different BIOS configs and bench the results.

thanks
 
Just read your first post again and you said you get 90K/s average, you should get atleast 110-120Mb/s average. I also notice you said your using the ICH controller, LOTS of other people are having problems with slow speeds using this controller, but when they use the Gigabyte one they get much better speeds.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17744921 - this is one of the threads.
 
I think they were using older intel controller though. I'm using the latest P35 board with the ICH9R controller which is supposed to be the dogs or so I thought. Have you heard any bad reports aboutr this version? Sure i saw a review on Tomshardware that rated it.

I would be happy with 110-120K/s.

maybe it's because I'm using vista 32 premium
 
tgbyhn10111 said:
I would be happy with 110-120K/s
Click to expand...

You do realise 110K/s is 0.1074 Megabytes per second? That would be incredibilly slow.

I use the Intel ICH5R without any problems, and my friend uses his ICH8R on the DS4 without any problems. I seriously doubt the OS your using would make much difference in speed either.
 
did I type K? I meant MB LOL

I did do a quick test with XP and was getting 110MB/s average but that was with HDTach which doesn't work on vista.

think I will reload xp and try hdtune.

Anyone know which is more accurate for average transfer rate tests?
 
HD Tune says my 300Gb Seagate 7200.8 gets 48MB/s whereas HD tach says 57MB/s using XP, a bit odd how it gets different results but then again HD Tune does take about 10x as long to complete :)
 
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