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SATA 3Gb/s or SATA 6Gb/s ???

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Pentium4 531 overclocker

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Discussion starter · #1 ·
Hi guys, while i was working on my system, i noticed that my OCz Rally 2 USB ran faster on its native USB 2.0 than the USB 3.0 i had on the rear I/O, now i was wondering if the same thing would affect my HDD, im using a WD caviar black 500GB SATA 3Gb /s drive, (Yeh i know.. i cheaped out) BUT i have it plugged into a SATA 6Gb/s port, running under a Marvell chipset. Would my drive perform faster on its native SATA 3Gb/s port?

Also it was my understanding from various sources that regular 7200 RPM SATA drive can't even use up the enitre bandwidth of SATA 3Gb/s yet. so theoretically, if i go with the native chipset of the P55 platform i Could skip on the Marvell controller loading during boot, and save some time, AND gain performance?
 
Discussion starter · #4 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by derickwm;12910314
I believe if you have a sata 3Gb/s drive plugged into a 6Gb/s slot, the speed is the same as in a 3Gb/s slot. You could always benchmark it to see though?
Click to expand...
right, but i leave the system on pretty much 24/7 so this will be new to me this "shutting down"
biggrin.gif


EDIT:
Ill bench tomorrow when i have time, ill restart the system, and run CrystalDiskMark right after its finished loading everything, on SATA 6Gb/s and SATA 3Gb/s
 
#6 ·
A hard drive has no chance of saturating the SATA 2 controller let alone SATA 3, so as a general rule it shouldn't have an effect on the speed of the drive.

What will have an effect is the speed of the controller interface, and there the intel chipset will always be faster, latency wise, than a marvel controller that has to work through said chipset.
 
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Discussion starter · #7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Firehawk;12910444
A hard drive has no chance of saturating the SATA 2 controller let alone SATA 3, so as a general rule it shouldn't have an effect on the speed of the drive.

What will have an effect is the speed of the controller interface, and there the intel chipset will always be faster, latency wise, than a marvel controller that has to work through said chipset.
Click to expand...
thats what i was thinking anyways i ran the tests and you guys wouldnt belive what i got!
tongue.gif
 
Discussion starter · #8 ·
[Just to keep things organized im putting into a separate post]
___________________________________________________________________
SATA 6Gb/s VS SATA 3Gb/s

Hardware Benching:

-Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200RPM HDD
-Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA 3Gb/s 7200RPM HDD

TEST BENCH IN SIG:

Speeds Testing:
-True SATA 6GB/s [Marvell controller]
-SATA 3Gb/s [Intel P55 Native Chipset]

TESTS PERFORMED WITH THEIR DESIGNATED SATA CABLES
(although they are both identical >.<)

Results are in pictures:
PIC 1 = SATA 3Gb/s Caviar Green
PIC 2 = SATA 3GB/s Caviar Black
PIC 3 = SATA 6Gb/s Caviar Green
PIC 4 = SATA 6Gb/s Caviar Black

SATA3GBsTESTWDCAVIARGREEN1TBSATA3Gbs.jpg

SATA3GbsTESTWDCAVIARBLACK500GBSATA3Gbs.jpg

SATA6GbsTESTWDCAVIARGREEN15Gbs.jpg

SATA6GbsTESTWDCAVIARBLACK500GBSATA3Gbs.jpg

_______________________________________
Explaination?

The Caviar Green Probably Out performs the Caviar Black because of the higher disk density, so 500 GB would only be half the platter, while in the Caviar Black, the density is lower, and the further the head gets from the platter the slower it gets.

Also, SATA 6Gb/s runs off of a 3rd party Chipset, and therefor SATA 3Gb/s ports have faster latencys.

[THESE ARE MY GUESSES CORRECT ME IF IM WRONG
 
#9 ·
Yeah, I'm going to say that it's the Marvell controller's fault. If the SATA III controller was built into the chipset, it'd probably get speeds closer to the original.
 
Discussion starter · #10 ·
Mhmm, and the drives perform miraculously better on SATA 3Gb/s than 6Gb/s =P this means, i can disable my Marvel controller and SAVE BOOT TIME!!! =D but now i have to rewire my Rig... >.< i guess ill leave that till the weekend when im off of such a big school load =P
 
#11 ·
You must have a very old Caviar Black then to get that low of a score.
 
Discussion starter · #12 ·
#13 ·
Somethings wrong then. It should bench quite a bit higher than that.
 
Discussion starter · #15 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ski-bum;12928366
I had a WD SATA 6GB drive and tried it with both SATA2 & SATA3 and found the Intel Rapid Storage driver faster than the Marvel driver. S. yes, I believe it's a driver issue also. Got rid of them and changed to the WD RE4's interprise drives for a RAID0 setup.
Click to expand...
Wow iv allways wanted to RAID 2 WD RE4's. but they were to expensive. =P
 
Discussion starter · #16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by PapaSmurf;12925633
Somethings wrong then. It should bench quite a bit higher than that.
Click to expand...
should i do a driver update? =P and how high should it be? is the Caviar Green drive scoring correctly?
 
#17 ·
My 1TB Cav Greens come in at 105 read. My 5 year old Seagate 7200.10 320 hits 75-80 read. A new Black like that should be about 130-150 like my 320gb Samsung F4.. A driver update might help, but I wouldn't count on it. It is worth a shot though. I'm using the stock Windows SATA drivers to get those speeds. I haven't noticed that much difference between the later Intel drivers and the one built into Windows 7 personally, but mine are on Gigabyte boards not Asus boards. I do have AHCI enabled though. I prefer to manually install the drivers from the F6 Floppy Disk Zip file rather than using the installer for the SATA drivers. I don't like having the rapid storage manager software running in the background wasting resources and cpu cycles. You don't have to install them using the F6 method during the Windows Install. I install them manually from Device Manager.
 
Discussion starter · #18 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by PapaSmurf;12934435
My 1TB Cav Greens come in at 105 read. My 5 year old Seagate 7200.10 320 hits 75-80 read. A new Black like that should be about 130-150 like my 320gb Samsung F4.. A driver update might help, but I wouldn't count on it. It is worth a shot though. I'm using the stock Windows SATA drivers to get those speeds. I haven't noticed that much difference between the later Intel drivers and the one built into Windows 7 personally, but mine are on Gigabyte boards not Asus boards. I do have AHCI enabled though. I prefer to manually install the drivers from the F6 Floppy Disk Zip file rather than using the installer for the SATA drivers. I don't like having the rapid storage manager software running in the background wasting resources and cpu cycles. You don't have to install them using the F6 method during the Windows Install. I install them manually from Device Manager.
Click to expand...
well i installed windows running in IDE compatibility mode, but i set it to AHCI a while back, and i disabled indexing, and other resource hogging garbage in windows, but i need to install something to make AHCI work? well, it thats the case then shouldnt my driver update have picked it up? ill post the scores in the next box to keep things clean
 
Discussion starter · #19 ·
SATA 3Gb/s Driver update Test Results
SATA3GbsDriverUpdateWDCAVIARGREEN1TB.jpg

SATA3GbsDriverUpdateWDCAVIARBLACK500GB.jpg


sadface at slowdown ={

these scores were simply after the driver update, i didnt install any AHCI driver or F6 anything
 
#20 ·
Something definitely isn't right here. What happens when you run HDTune and only post the screen shot of the HDTune without the rest of the desktop so it's large enough to be read? That might tell us more.
 
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Pentium4 531 overclocker
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