dingo1

Hi,

I've just completed a Perc 5i install, got a chep unit from ebay.

I have upgraded the memory to 512 MB stick of ECC Registered DDR2 PC5300.

I have upgraded the BIOs to DELLs latest 5.2.2.0072.

I have latest WHQL drivers detected by Vista.

I have 4 of 73.5 GB Fujitsu MAY2073RC, 2.5" SAS HDD, 10025 rpm, 16MB, 4.0 ms in RAID 0.

I have a BBU attached.

I have enabled adaptive read ahead and write through cache.

I have run a basic test of read speed in HD Tune, see below :-



According to this board I should have a smoother graph due to read caching ? Can anyone explain why its so jagged and what I can do to resolve ?

thanks

dingo

fritzman

I can't answer your question, but can add another... why is the seek time 7.5ms?

Isn't that a tad slow for 4 SAS drives in Raid0???

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DuckieHo

It probably has to do with test itself.....

What are the sector size and benchmark sector size?

On the Pro version, you can adjust the benchmark sector size... I think the default is 64K.

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To answer most of your questions: (1) a fridge cannot cool a PC (2) 64-bit OS for over 3.4GB (3) If a PCIe card fits, it should work (4) Resolution, not screen size (5) If you have a question, it is not news (6) Report, not respond to Spam (7) Single-Rail/Non-Modular PSUs are not always better than Multi-Rail/Modular

uberjon

ditch the dell firmware/drivers.. switching to the latest LSI (or one of the others if you have warm boot issues) offers major performance increases! going from raid0 on dell, to raid5 on LSI = about the same speed. (when losing a drive for redundancy!)

what stripe size you using? whats running on your OS etc? what block size is the hdtune set at? what about hdtune's "accuracy" ?

i have recently discovered.. when i switched from 128KB stripe to 64, i decided to test the higher block sizes.. (512k 1MB/2/4/8) and i have noticed a fairly large improvement with higher block size tests! (an extra like 30MB/s+ gain)

his drives are only 10k.. they should be quite close to a raptor seek-wise..


edit: lol Duckie beat me to it! i went afk with post done but not "posted"

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8800GT FTW
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fritzman

iirc, my 4 x SATA2 drive ICHR9 matrix raid0 returned similar times to that... I expected better.

__________________
Office Rig : i7-920 D0, TR Ultra120Extreme, Gigabyte X58-UD5, 3 x 2Gb OCZ 1600's, EVGA GTX280, W7 Ult on an Intel 80Gb G2 SSD + 4 x W/D 1Tb Black's in R5 on a 1210 Areca, Antec P180.
FileServer : Q6600 SLACR, Asus P5K Premium wifi, 4 x 2Gb G.Skill F2-8000's, (Vista Ultimate 64-bit); Zippy Gamesman 600W
Heat (87-0-0)

uberjon

*cracks knuckles and gets ready to post his screenshot*

fresh off the press actually!

64KB stripe, 2MB block size for test latest LSI firmware/drivers. stock cpu etc..

Attached Thumbnails

 

__________________
8800GT FTW
^ best quote ever!!! ^

DuckieHo

-1% CPU usage?


The RAID card is off loading threads from the CPU! OMG!

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To answer most of your questions: (1) a fridge cannot cool a PC (2) 64-bit OS for over 3.4GB (3) If a PCIe card fits, it should work (4) Resolution, not screen size (5) If you have a question, it is not news (6) Report, not respond to Spam (7) Single-Rail/Non-Modular PSUs are not always better than Multi-Rail/Modular

uberjon

most likely the fact im head over heels in love with windows 7.. haven't touched xp/vista since sometime in december!

seems to be just that program.. the other one detects CPU properly?

__________________
8800GT FTW
^ best quote ever!!! ^

dingo1

Yep, they are 10k SAS, apparently seek time for drives is 4ms but in raid bench I get 7ms as stated.

I'm running Vista 64 Bit, 64 KB Stripe, 64 KB HD Tune.

All HD Tune settings were at defaults, its an eval version.

I want to optimise for realistic file sizes for software dev, I figured 64 KB stripe was best bet.

I read that there were potential boot corruption problems with LSI ?

Should I bite the bullet and go LSI ?

kolyan

ok i think i fixed the problem, it seems that i reconnected the cords on the drive in the wrong order and thus to the card the array seems to be degraded and the card didnt like that. When i removed (aka deleted) the array everything started working again


In any case the system Specs are

Q6600
MB: P5Q-Pro
4GB RAM
3 640GB Spinpoint drives for Raid
Vista SP1 x64