The Sata III Conundrum

[Hardlock]

Hi, Been following OC3D for a few years, but wanted to ask a little problem I have.

3 Years Ago I spent alot of money on a Beast of a Gaming PC that I Built myself.

i7 930@4.0ghz

6gb Ram

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R

Radeon HD5870 OC

and three WD Cavier Blacks in Raid0. Averaged around 350mb/s

I Upgraded it last year with a H80 Water cooler, and two HD6870's in crossfire.

This Year I want to get a HD7970 (As crossfire was a pain in the arse, and only had 1GB of TextureRam) and Jump on the SSD Bandwagon, Now that prices are now almost affordable.

However Most of you know as well as I do that the Marvell SATAIII Chipset on the X58 Boards is complete Trash, and wont Allow pure SATAIII Speeds or stable Raid.

Is there any good SataIII controller cards that don't cost the earth, or is my only option to use the on board Intel ports and run them at only 300mb/s each. (And you never really ever hit that)

I thought about the OCZ Revo3 Drive, but it's cost is just stupid.

Can anyone think of any good alternatives or ways around my problem without upgrading my motherboard, I don't see the point on going over to sandy bridge or ivy just for sataIII connectivity. Most games don't even use 30% of current processor.

Many Thanks for your time

Martin

 

[tinytomlogan]

Mentioning OCZ even as an option is just stupid.

 

[Hardlock]

Mentioning OCZ even as an option is just stupid.

True, very true. Their stuff has become so cheap and nasty, I normally refuse to buy it now. But it is an Option, unless Mushkin Release their version any-time soon.....still waiting lol.

 

[S_I_N]

you can get an add on ssd raid card but like most cost can be a factor try googling sata 6GB/sec pci raid card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115077

 

[BKCXb]

I ran WB raptor drives (SATA 1.5Gbs) on a 775 board for years, and I replaced the loud spinners with a cheap SATA II SSD , and the speed was way better.

Even if your boards SATA ports limit your overall speed of your SSD and the total sequental thruput matches your raid array, you still will get a marked improvments.

If you run Crystal Disk Mark on your Raid array I'm sure you will find your 4K thuput lacking,( 2MB/s max if your lucky) and that most cheap SATAII SSDs can get easily get 10 times the 4K thruput.

Most importtantly while your spinners are taking a few ms to adjust their read heads the SSD will have already done hundreads of task.

What is your goal?? to keep your raid array? move to SSD? Raid SSDs? or SSD for OS and Raid array for games?

 

[Hardlock]

What I wanted to do is have two 60gb Corsair Force 3's IN Raid0 to get roughly 100/110gb of Storage to put my OS, Programs and a few games on it. Ideally as they are 500Mb/s, in Raid0 I should get 'near' 1GB/s.

Then I will reset my Current Raid0 WD Cariver Black as a Media Bank, Where I will tell Windows to put all the User data, videos, 1080p Video renders and uncompressed RAW footage.

I have searched for ages looking at pci-e Sata III cards but they either have the same trashy Marvel controller on them, or only use 1x Pci-e bandwidth, which cops out at 800Mb/s ish.

I might just have to put up with only getting just under 600Mb/s with the Intel Sata Ports.

I hate that the early X58 boards had none functional SataIII ports. Got royally shafted by marvel.

 

[BKCXb]

I think if all you want is raw MB/s you will always be up against your SATA controller and its overhead, but I think you will be suprised what just one SSD can do, even compaired to multipal HDD in Raid 0.

Most consumer add in raid cards are like you say, if you want a buisness solution it's gonna cost.

The best way to push back with your SATA II ports is to fill them all up and RAID them!

Also keep in mind manufaturers of SSDs put a blanket spec for an entire line, so 500MB/sec for a Force 3 is possable but smaller drives are slower than larger ones ,240GB ones are faster than 120 GB ones , which are faster than 60GB ones.

Also prices for larger drives are coming way down, some online prices of the Force 3 SSDs are:

60GB is $80 or $1.33 per GB

90GB is $120 or $1.33 per GB

120GB is $155 or $1.29 per GB

180GB is $200 or $1.11 per GB

240GB is $230 or $.96 per GB

480GB is $530 or $1.10 per GB

120GB SSDs used to be the sweet spot ,in that they were the lowest cost per GB and gave the most speed without going to a more expensive drive, now the 240GB drives are clearly in the sweet spot as they offer a tiny bit more speed than the 120GB drives and now cost less per GB.

The problem I see wrong in yout logic Is you want a small volume SSDs to read and write at very high speeds, with two 60GB ssd windows will give you 111GB , minus 20GB for windows leaving 91GB for games and apps. With 6 games on my 120GB SSD I only have a few GB left. What exactly am I gonna read/write to my drive at that speed with so little room??

Boot/loading times will be at the limit of the SATA ports for seqential reads and the limit of the drive at 4K reads reguardless of the port or controller. Thransfering files/writing to the drive will be limited buy source/destination of the file.

Two 60GB for Raid will cost $160 if you don't have to hunt down Corsair for rebates(which normally they give on the first drive not the second), for $40 more you can get a 180GB drive, or for $70 more you can get a 240GB drive, which will let you have room for large files that need that kind of speed to transfer, it will just take alittle longer to do it with one drive.

So its 2 small SSDs in Raid with alot of speed and no room, or more room of a larger SSD with alittle less speed.

Just something to think about, I am way happier with my SATAII SSD over 2 Rator drives in raid 0, I will choose the SSD every time. If you never owned an SSD before,I say atleast buy one 60GB(send off for the rebate) and try it first, than if you want to raid it, get a friend to order the second one(so you can get that rebate also)

but also consider the money may be better spent on a larger single drive. If more speed is needed, with SSD prices falling, you may be able to RAID the larger drive in the future for alot cheaper, but I think you will be happy with what just one can do.

I think these articals explains it best:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-hdd-performance,3023.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-60gb-benchmark-review,3137.html

pay attention to the random read charts.

 

[Hardlock]

Cool thanks for the insight, some of it when over my head but it's 4.30am here. (My sleeping pattern has messed up because of uni deadlines, Joy...)

I normally purchase my stuff from Ebuyer or Aria, which ever is cheaper at the time. Because the Price difference between the 2x60GB and 1x 120GB drive is a few pounds, I feel it's worth using two for the extra throughput, And like you said in the future I can just bang another one in there, ghost the drive, rebuild the raid on off I go again.

I understand the Main advantage is the Random operations that SSD excel at.

I only ever have 2/3 game installed at one time. At the moment all I play is Black Ops and Battlefield 3.

I just looked at my file usage with Treesize (Awesome software) never realised how much crap I still had on my pc I don't use. Files just get lost in a 2tb of storage. Even then I Short striped the Drives into two partitions, so that windows stays on the outer edge. (very clever way of keeping windows pokeyish on a mechanical drive).

I think two 60GB Force 3s will do for now, If I get stuck for space fast, I'll have to add another fast.

What is this Rebate about, I have never head of this, please do tell

 

[S_I_N]

MIR or mail in rebates Alot of manu's do this to intice buying then hose ya on them saying you didnt do this or that right. I've done it twice with Corsair and the first time they hosed me the second time I kept on them every other day lol.

 

[BKCXb]

If you only keep a couple games you can get away with 1 60GB now than add another 1 or 2 later and you will be fine.

yeap Corsair is bad for this , buying parts for my new build I got a HX-850 power supply because it was a deal with or without the $15 MIR because I had a $10 off coupon, and at the time the 600T SE case I wanted was on sale for $10 off with a $10 MIR making it a deal also.

I didn't need to spend the money on the case just then and I know I could find it later on sale for $10 off but the $10 MIR pushed me into getting it also. shipped off both MIR and they stiffed me on the case MIR, saying it was only for the regular 600T, when it didn't state that anywhere before getting it.

it's not the first time either, bought a h-60 , got it home and installed, fan was dead on arrival, tried everthing to get it to spin, wasted hours before I called the number on the bright orange piece of paper saying to contact them first, they told me to return it to the store!!! WTF?? over a $8 fan!!!!

They also offer MIR like they are now on the force 3 drives, but limit one per household per year, so basically they are punishing you for buying more of their stuff!!! It's best to find a good deal without a MIR, but if you both a good deal with a MIR, just assume you won't ever see that money.

 

[Hardlock]

If you only keep a couple games you can get away with 1 60GB now than add another 1 or 2 later and you will be fine.

possibly not, my most used programs + windows adds up to around 50gb.. BF3 is 15gb alone :'(

 

[S_I_N]

possibly not, my most used programs + windows adds up to around 50gb.. BF3 is 15gb alone :'(

thats on a HDD with an ssd you'll tweak out things ya dont need and things that should be turned off to save space and resources. Currently I have windows (fully updated, Crysis, Crysis 2, BF3, office plus a few others that escape me) leaving me 14.9Gb of usable space from 59.6GB formatted on a 64Gb ssd.

 

[Hardlock]

Well, maybe you can teach me

. I already have mu raid array partitioned so the crap going on the slower inner part of the disk.

At the Moment I use the Adobe Suite, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk AutoCAD, Rhino3d, Sound Forge, Office, and various Music and lighting programs.

I found out a lot of the space was taken up by steam. Wow it's a hog.

I did this on my system, I changed the Reg files so that all the user accounts and Details go on my Data Partition. It was a lot of work to get it right and took several OS Reinstalls to do it right. Is there an easy way to tell your the OS to put all the user Data (Desktop Included, as I use it for work I'm using at the time) onto the other drives, away from the SSD.