SSD's on raid 0 & PCI controllers

[brebnahbrau]

Hello;

I just ran pt7 and got quite a slow result for my hard drives, but i will give you some computer background first.

i have 7 hard drvies all up.
2 x 32g SSD's, raid 0, running on a sil3112r IDE sata raid controller
3 x 320gig on 0+1 for redundancy sata
1 x 160gig sata
1 x 80gig on the onboard IDE (lifeline windows98 xD)

problem being that when i got the new ssd's i had no spare sata slots on my mobo (gigabyte ma-770 only has 4) and i cant take out the 3 320's on raid as to not loose my data.


My PT7 results were as follows;

Disk - Sequential Read: 49.0
Disk - Sequential Write: 38.5
Disk - Random Seek + RW: 12.2

CPU Mark: 2272.1
2D Graphics Mark: 314.7
Memory Mark: 524.1
Disk Mark: 360.5
CD Mark: 332.4
3D Graphics Mark: 793.6
PassMark Rating: 943.4



Could it be that my mark was considerably lower because of the PCI controller?
( i know a fair bit about computers, but not the capabilitys of PCI speeds, but i assumed that they were very decent)

Or is PT giving me a slower result because of having so many harddrives?

It seems as if the SSD's are extremely fast however when im using the computer. (can delete 10 gig in milliseconds etc...)


Any light on the matter would be appreciated.
Cheers
Alex

[David (PassMark)]

The time to delete a file is not really a measure of the hard drive speed as only the FAT is effected.

The results given by PerformanceTest are not directly effected by the number of hard drives installed.

You didn't actually say which hard drive you tested. You can select the drive to test from the Edit / Preferences window in PerformanceTest

[brebnahbrau]

You didn't actually say which hard drive you tested.

I did the test on local disk C:/ (striped SSD's)

the perform'o'graph shows a sharp incline to 38mbps @ 0.2 seconds then fluctuation between 35-40ish mbps whilst writing.

many of the aspects of computing seem much faster, which has what has got me stumped.

i.e. windows installed in about 10 minutes.
i installed a game update from the big raids to a game on the solid state drives (about a 1 gig update) which normally would take 10-15 minutes, however it only took about 1 minute with the solid states.

However if i do the test on H: (the onboard raided 0+1 320gigs)
read is 113
write is 98.5

which really only points to the IDE raid controller which could be slowing them down so much????

Or could their be something else preventing either perfromance, or giving the illusion of lack of performance to PT7

[David (PassMark)]

Not all SSD's are fast. Only the high end expensive SSD's give really fast sequential read write times. Where they stand out is the very low seek times.

(about a 1 gig update) which normally would take 10-15 minutes, however it only took about 1 minute with the solid states

1GB in 60sec is only 16MB/sec. Hardly proof that they are blazing fast

[brebnahbrau]

I'm sorry to say but, hardly any useful knowledge here admin... partly my fault i guess.

basically, do the PCI have limitations, i know they can be 100/133 mhz or so, but roughly what does equate to about mbps?

are the pci and bus speeds comparable? (in theory i could have 4 SSD's if i wanted to go for broke, but i dont know if i would have to have a major motherboard upgrade)

Does the software itself 'assume' that the pci can only go so fast and limit the testing per say? (doubtful i know)

the ssd's are quoted at 170r/100w.

All in all however, i must say the software is very polished and quite a pleasure to use. I will be purchasing soon, as im a keen tinkererer

[David (PassMark)]

There are many different PCI standards, as it has been around for a while and you didn't state what your card it.

From Wikipedia.
PCI 32-bit/33 MHz 133.33 MB/s
PCI Express 1.0 (x1 link) 250 MB/s
PCI 64-bit/33 MHz 266.7 MB/s
PCI 32-bit/66 MHz 266.7 MB/s
PCI Express 1.0 (x2 link) 500 MB/s
PCI 64-bit/66 MHz 533.3 MB/s
PCI-X DDR 16-bit 533.3 MB/s
PCI 64-bit/100 MHz 800 MB/s
PCI Express 1.0 (x4 link) 1,000 MB/s
PCI-X 133 1,067 MB/s
PCI-X QDR 16-bit 1,067 MB/s
PCI Express 1.0 (x8 link)] 2,000 MB/s
PCI-X DDR 2,133 MB/s
PCI Express 1.0 (x16 link)4,000 MB/s
PCI Express 2.0 (x8 link) 4,000 MB/s
PCI-X QDR 4,266 MB/s
PCI Express (x32 link) 8,000 MB/s
PCI Express 2.0 (x16 link)8,000 MB/s
PCI Express 2.0 (x32 link) 16,000 MB/s

It probaly isn't the bus. But it might be the RAID card or it's drivers. There is no limit in our software.

[brebnahbrau]

Hello again passmark.
(after a fair bit of stuffing around with low level formats etc)
I have moved the ssd's to the onboard SATA.... Great Success!!
Result 595.4
seq read 101.5
seq write 48.5
random seek rw 14.6

I do find that these numbers will vary between 5-20 mbps, i guess this is normal? is it depending on programmes in the background and how windows is interfacing with them at the current moment?

thanks for the help fellow sydney sider