Poor RAID 0 performance with K8T800 Pro/VT8237

[bjohannes]

So I just set up two new Western Digital SE16 SATA2 drives inRAID 0 and I'm getting fairly poor results. The speeds reported by HDTach are almost the same as the scores obtained by my single WD 80GB EIDE drive with 8mb of cache (each of the new drives has 16mb of cache).

I set the stripe size to 64kb, which seemed to be the largest size that I could select when setting up the array. Does anyone know what would be limiting the speed of these new drives?Thanks!

The two new drives in RAID 0
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b225/bjohannes/WD2500KS_RAID0.gif


My old EIDE drive
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b225/bjohannes/WD800JB.gif

[RotorHead]

That does seem low for those drives.......

Let me see if I can dig up some info for ya. :thumb:

[bjohannes]

Sweet thanks!

[RotorHead]

I found this review over at the TechReport covering different SATA chipsets

Chipset Serial ATA and RAID performance comparison
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q2/chipset-raid/index.x?pg=1

If anything this will give idea of how the chipset compares to the others.

I guess at this point I would check drivers and see if you have the latest ones.

[bjohannes]

Well I've got all the latest drivers I can think of, including the latest VIA Hyperion chipset drivers, VIA RAID drivers, graphics drivers, soundcard drivers, you name it!

Is it possible that my stripe size of 64kb is set too small or too large?

Btw RotorHead, are you a chopper pilot?

[RotorHead]

What are your settings in the BIOS regarding the SATA?

Not a pilot, just a maintenance guy.:thumb:

[bjohannes]

Nice do you work on the helos in your pic (MH-53 Pave Low?). I've got a private pilot licence, fixed wing though.

As far as I can tell there really are no BIOS settings for the SATA. All I could find was an option to enable/disable the SATA RAID ROM and the boot order for the disks, no actual settings to be found.

[RotorHead]

Ya, I worked on the Pave for about 18 years I'm now working on th HH-60G.

I think I stumped on your problem.....the only other thing I can think of is, reloading drivers and maybe check in windows to se if the read and write caching is off.

maybe some other folks will jump in here with some ideas.

[RotorHead]

Do you have the V-RAID software that came with the drivers loaded ?

[bjohannes]

Man those are some massive helicopters. I did install the V-RAID software, doesn't seem to do much but I've got it. Where would I enable read/write caching?

I did just come across this on the WD site:

"Motherboards with some Via chipsets are not compatible with SATA 300/MBs drives. Chipsets VT8237, VT8237R, VT6420 and VT6421L will not detect the drive. This WD support article details several ways to handle this incompatibility.

Our Second Generation Serial ATA hard drives use autospeed negotiation. This enables our Second Generation Serial ATA hard drives to automatically detect the motherboard data transfer rate, making it backward compatible with First Generation Serial ATA data transfer rates. However, because this technology is so new, some older First Generation Serial ATA controllers are unable to support autospeed negotiation and cannot recognize the drive. This “drive not detected” condition occurs when a chipset is incapable of correctly negotiating the data transfer speed with a Second Generation Serial ATA hard drive."

I didn't have any problems detecting the drives since I did jumper them to run at SATA 150, but I'm starting to get the feeling that the old VT8237 doesn't allow these drives to run at their full potential. Crap :beat:

[bjohannes]

Btw RotorHead, what kind of maintenance do you specialize in? I'm guessing you're with the USAF? I've always been fascinated with helicopters but I've never been up in one before.

Thanks for all your help so far!


Oh yeah, I couldnt seem to enable write caching for some reason. Would that explain the performance issues?
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b225/bjohannes/writecaching.jpg

[RotorHead]

The older chipset does make sense, but even still, first generation SATA was 150, and if you got your drives set that way, you should still be getting at least 80 - 100 burst speed out of them.

Your screen shot, even tho its grayed out, is showing write cache enabled.



Here is a link to my public profile, It's easier then retyping everything :D

http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/member.php?u=5

And here is a cool movie for you to watch. :rock:

http://www.mh-53pavelow.com/media/videos/mh-53pavelowmovie.wmv

[bjohannes]

That movie kicked ass :rock: man those things are mean looking.The aerial refuelling with a herc would be tricky. I've flown in hercs a few times, definately a sweet plane. From the looks of it I don't think write caching is enable on my RAID drives. This is what that same screen looks like for my single EIDE drive:

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b225/bjohannes/writecaching2.gif

[RotorHead]

http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=20&threadid=69524&enterthread=y

I think, after reading this thread over at Via Arena, that your low disk performance may be related to the Via Raid being on a PCI to ISA Bridge. If this is the case then your drives are saturating the bus and therfor are already at the max throughput.

A possible solution would be to pick up an aftermarket PCI SATA controller.

[bjohannes]

What the... wierd. That defeats the purpose of SATA in the first place doesn't it? If that's the case then the AV8 is the last VIA-based motherboard I'll ever own.

I'm thinking of upgrading to an ATI X1900XT, in which case I'll be getting a new mobo with PCI-Express. I'm thinking that the DFI NF4 Ultra-D would be a good choice any comments?

Thanks for finding that for me too! I was on the via arena forums and posted there as well, and the only suggestion I got was that my SATA cables weren't good, or that I had a bad PSU. Sounded like B$ to me, especially since the guy recommended a specific brand of cable that I should buy.

[RotorHead]

I'm in a similar situation on my Motherboard, except it's not as bad. My on board promise controller is on a PCI to PCIe bridge so I at least get a full 133MB transfer rate but not the full 150. It may be that Abit wanted to rush out SATA support because every thing I have read so far suggests that this is one of their first implementations. I'm trying to find some of the tech documents for the VT8237, but no luck so far.

I'll see if I can dig up some reviews for this motherboard that show the RAID performance, I could be missing something. But if not, thats about the best logical explanation I have.

[bjohannes]

Hmm are there any motherboards that don't have this architectural bottleneck built into them that you know of?

[Cheech]

I have the SLI-DR board, so same chipset as Ultra-D if that's what you were considering. Drives in my sig, similar to drives you have purchased too.

SATA II ports on these NF4 boards run on the PCI Express bus i'm pretty sure.

http://img495.imageshack.us/img495/9061/hd20tach20long20x8620disable20.th.jpg (http://img495.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hd20tach20long20x8620disable20.jpg)

[bjohannes]

Nice! I'm starting to lean towards the new mobo option. You've got the same RAM I do, what kinda speed are you getting out of it? I'm thinking of going with an Opteron 165 as well, I've heard it has a good memory controller to handle the EB plats without a sweat.

[Cheech]

Only running ram @ stock 250Mhz.

Opty running on 10x multiplier 1:1. Haven't tried to push the setup further to be honest.

Only had the dual core for a couple of weeks, so plenty of tweaking to come i'd imagine :)

I would say the FX CPU's would probably have the best memory controller, but I'm not complaining with my 175 :lol:

[bjohannes]

Well my Newcastle seems to max out at 2.4GHz and I have to switch command rate to 2T just to keep it stable. I'm hoping to do a lot better with an Opteron.

[bjohannes]

Btw what WD drives do you have there, the WD1200JS? What kind of stripe size do you have set?

[RotorHead]

Cheech, thats a great drive score :rock:

bjohannes, I think it will be hard to find a motherboard with a different chipset, but then again I heven't looked. It would be cheeper then switching over to PCIe based system.

[Cheech]

Btw what WD drives do you have there, the WD1200JS? What kind of stripe size do you have set?

Yep, there the ones :thumb: 32k stripe size with read cache disabled.

[bjohannes]

Wow my WD2500KS's have twice the cache per disk and are gettin their asses kicked! Just not right. Stupid VIA chipset urgh. Your CPU utilization seems kinda high in HDTach, is that because of the smaller stripe size?

Rotorhead, AFAIK, most other S939 mobos are NF4 based. In terms of AGP support you're probably right, my options are very limited.

If the current Crossfire chipset had decent USB 2.0 and SATA300 support I'd grab that one in a second, but the current implementation is somewhat lacking.

[Cheech]

Yeah cpu utilization will be higher just because there onboard controllers, and not dedicated raid controllers with there own cpu i'd imagine. I'm sure once you get yours up and running with similar speeds, it will probably report similar cpu usage.

Not sure about the stripe size causing the additional cpu use, It seems to fluctuate a bit. Have seen it report 4%, 8%, 13% etc.

The only option you will have for SATA II support and AGP is the ASrock boards. Personally i'd update, but i'm silly with my money like that :p

[bjohannes]

Yeah I'm pretty sure I'll be upgrading ($3K tax return at the end of February :rock: ). Here's what I plan to get:

:idea: Opteron 165 Dual Core

:idea: DFI NF4 board (or one of the new Crossfire boards if they're out)

:idea: ATI X1900XT

:idea: Viewsonic VX924 LCD

[Cheech]

Nice. Have to love the tax funded computer spending spree :lol:

Setup looks very nice :thumb:

[bjohannes]

Yup definately looking forward to it :deviltail :rock:

[bjohannes]

Quick update; I just did a format and fresh install of Windows XP Pro SP2 and loaded all the latest drivers. I even changed the stripe size to 32K. I'm still getting the same results in HDTach :beat:

RotorHead I think your theory about the drives being capped by the available bus bandwidth is dead on! Hopefully I'll have my tax return cheque in hand by this time next month so I can upgrade my motherboard and a few other things, which leads me to another question:

How big of a difference can a new motherboard with the same socket/memory specs make on overall performance? I guess time will tell.

[Cheech]

How big of a difference can a new motherboard with the same socket/memory specs make on overall performance? I guess time will tell.

I don't think you will notice a change in performance between a motherboard which runs at the same speed, memory at the same speed etc.

That is of course if you run the exact same settings as you're running right now. You wouldn't be doing this, you would be upgrading to a motherboard which would allow you to run the disks off controllers with appropriate bandwidth and you wouldn't have the issue you do now.

More than likely the Opteron is going to have a better mem controller than your cpu right now, and that would allow you to get the most out of your memory etc as well.

So the motherboard change isn't magically going to make ddr400mhz feel like dr600mhz, but the change in performance is what you will be able to do and achieve with your other components rather than with the new mobo :yup:

[bjohannes]

I was thinking more along the lines of the motherboard itself being faster and more efficient. The Abit AV8 isn't bad, but it's a first generation S939 motherboard. It was actually just discontinued so it isn't even being made anymore!

You're definately right though, it'll allow me to make better use of what I've already got! I'm looking forward to dual core :rock:. Did you find it was a big difference going from single to dual core? I'm also planning on getting a X1900XT which will kick some ass in the 3d department :fire: