14x SATA II, SATA III Benchmark Comparison - BIOS Enabled or Disabled Discussion

Weird, mine works great with just the storage break event enabled. These m14x's are finicky. I can't get mine to boot with a second hard drive because it's sata 3gb/s... Talk about a pain.

 

Is your 3gb/s drive in the dvd bay? External? Can you please post ATTO speeds here? I also posted the c state tweak at OCZ forums, maybe more people can benefit. Hoping for us all this was it. Dell should five us free 2960XMs at least.

 

Yes, same here only goes up to 2.6 now (which is ok expecially considering heat issues).
Why is that?

And thanks

 

Haha heat issues automatic M14X motherboard downclock support. I think custom90gt has an answer to your question, I wold like to know also. On my computer enabling break events slashes read speeds to 200,000 instead of yummy 500,000 in ATTO all the way down.

 

NOW IT WORKS the way you suggested!!! Why it suddently runs normal consistent writes/reads at 500 I dont know. I Enabled c states lol left storage break event enabled. Topper. With c states disabled I was getting heat throttling because I think as my processor ran 4 cores permanently ingame at 2.674,68 at all time (temps shot at 97-92-90-93) playing Crysis2 for half an hour. Now it runs normal turbo mode 2983.60 and temps were max. 92-89-85-90 so almost no throttling during Crysis 2 gameplay, at least not for a long time ... simply put much smoother gameplay. Man, this is the shiznit. custom90gt Well done.

p.s. The above processor frequencies I measured in desktop mode manually running virus scan to give the processor something to do. Temperatures were measured ingame.

 

Hah, well I'm glad it's working for you with just the storage break event enabled... These laptops crack me up, but thankfully mine has been running great with no hickups (and tons of restarts/power downs to test it).
I'm really impressed with a lot of the features in this bios. I understand a lot of it, so if you guys have specific questions, let me know and I'll try to answer it or point you in the right direction...

 

what settings do you alternate to achieve sata III speed? I'm using a kingston hyperX SSD

 

For me enabling storage break event in the power config tab allowed me to reach sata 6gb/s speeds...

 

thats all you changed in the bios? Thats without RST right?

 

right, no RST. I had to uninstall it and reinstall chipset drivers to get it to work.

 

I seem to be getting SATA III speed...
my read are up to par but not my write

 

Hi Pokemon, go to bios and try disabling c states. This helped me to get my reads/writes back in ATTO. Then, the next day I left storage break event ON and I enabled c states back on, and all is stable now.

If this does not give you higher speeds, I suggest going to device manager, uninstall driver for your SSD, restart, Win7 will auto install it back on, restart, run WEI (for system registration purposes). This worked for me.

 

i tried to run WEI, but it's giving me BSOD.....

 

Wow, strange. Can you restart and try WEI again? If not, only post ATTO?

 

Second attempt still BSOD. Seems like my system is unstable without RST. when I try to run ATTO the whole computer hangs...

Also do you have a second HDD on your computer? I think that might be the issue...

 

Sorry to read that you have problems. I would revert all settings back (Bios) or not run WEI anymore (even as last resort re-install RST, but you should keep fighting without RST as no one that I know had SATA 6Gbps speeds with it installed on M14X, it took me 2 months to get my Vertex 3mi working as it should). Another point of view is that if WEI runs with BSOD, something is not quite right. I would revert and try without RST.

I do not have anything in DVD tray, disconnected and took out DVD drive as I do not use it at all. I do not believe that your second HDD is causing this ... wait WEI benches also HDD/SSD but which one? The system one, of course lol. So far I have never heard of anybody getting BSOD in WEI in this forum. ATTO freezes on me also sometimes, especially if after fresh restart I go straight for ATTO bench run. I wait a minute or so and ATTO goes on, while system is completely frozen, missing a line or two due to extremely low speeds with smallest files probably due to system interfering (score 541 or so in-between good speeds of small files bench). I hope this helped a bit.

 

Ohkay thanks I'll try it again tonight. So first without RST but standard bios? Then if that runs fine. Then change the bios in c-state off and storage break on nothing else needs to be changed?

 

In standard BIOS 05 you do not have the option to change c states and you do not have the option to break storage. Try without RST, c states off and break storage on. I hope it works. I am positive that the two bioses are identical, only the unlocked one gives you more options.

 

Ran the test with C-state off, no RST, break storage on. This is my result. Way better than before (happy that its averaging 100mbs for read now.. should i put c state on again? what does c state do anyways?

 

If I were you I would run it like this for a few days and then see if the writes come back up. However I am sure that you do not want to wait a few days lol. Its up to you, maybe give it a run with c-states on again lol

c states

(update) C-states, C-states and even more C-states – Blogs - Intel® Software Network

Happy for you. Good reads are important, writes will come back, believe me.

 

??

I reversd all setting and the processor is still only at 2,0 instead of 2,2 and if I start e.g. Fritz Chess Benchmark it maxes out at 2,6 ????

How can I get it back to 2,2 and 2,9 ???

 

Enable c states if you disabled it.

 

Today I received my 256GB M4. Bought the one that comes with a transfer kit. Cloned my original HDD and just dropped the SSD in. I'm quite surprised, I'm getting SATA III speeds without doing anything. No messing with C-states or storage breaks, didnt touch Intel RST. Nothing. It just worked. Am I the first to accomplish this? :O

Stock "locked" A05 BIOS

 

Nope - I've had that exact setup running for about a month now. So far no problems. I don't plan on doing a fresh re-install unless something gets fubared or I decide to put the M4 into my next desktop build - but that's likely to be next march for Ivy Bridge :-D

 

First of all, hi. I'm a long time reader but first time writer on that forum.
I'really impressed with the possibilities of that ... dodgy bios. It looks like it's genuine and at least, it works good.
Magic, with that bios, my vertex 3 240gb is just working as it should. I get what is advertise by ocz. some of my read speeds in atto are even higher than 550mb/s. really impress. I've been trying for month to get that drive and the laptop to work properly together and now, it's a reallity. It's stable, no crash, no hang, nothing.

Now i'm happy!

 

Well, my Vertex 3 MI 120 is stable but only on 2.09 firmware. Please could you tell me what firmware you use and what settings you changed in Bios? I am unable to load Win7 on firmware 2.15.

 

Good morning,

I used firmware 2.11 for V3. I have the regular V3, not the MI. I disabled c-state, enabled storage break event and disable any hot-plugin and lpm aggressive lpm. That's it and so far so good for the last 4 days.

Update:

Just installed FW2.15. V3 is running at full sata3 speed with default bios value (no break event, enable c-state. etc.). Full sata3 read AND write speed. No intel RST installed. Will come back to tell if stable in the long run.

Update 2:

Stability wasn't part of the deal... back are the unstable write speed and disabling the c-state cause my laptop to hang extremely frequently... Looks like 2.15 may be good with Intel RST to get rid of hang up during booting but I think I can forget about the sata3 speed if RST is involved

 

Thank you man, +rep. You can always revert to 2.09 (i do not see the guide on OCZ page no more, but it still works and I know how - very simple), which is pretty ok, especially for startups. The speeds on 2.09 are ok too, but lower than 2.13. I have c states enabled, storage break event enabled, lpm off, no RST, newest Intel chipset from Intel page, no Intel management engine installed, no hotplugging, no energy efficient p-states, no aggresive LPM support, no spin-up. I hope this helps a bit.

 

Can you let me know how to revert to 2.09? I've been looking a bit on the net but I'm unsure still.
BTW now, 2.15 makes my m14x hang like 5-6 times in a row before I can actually bootup into windows. It's getting worse everytime... I really want to revert to 2.19 or 2.11, (or should I just revert to buying a mac... ). No those sandforce controllers are really messy! Maybe, I should try reinstalling on it with fw 2.15. Who knows?

I meant 2.09 not 2.19

 

I meant 2.09 not 2.19

 

I believe you need this fast. I do not know how advanced you are, how you flashed so I write this as simple as possible. This is how I do it.

I used usb stick (256 Mb) installer for flashing to OCZ firmwares. Right now some (hopefully all) following 2.06, 2.09, 2.11, 2.12, 2.13 and 2.15 FW should be available on OCZ server. Next is a link explaining how to make such a usb stick.

Bootable Tools for OCZ Vertex/2/3, Agility2/3, Solid3, Revo, and Ibis SSD's

Now, force-flashing to 2.13 (or other) is pretty simple. Make sure you are connected to internet, preferably by cable. Put in the USB stick, restart system, your system should boot from usbinto linux, if not, leave the stick in, go to Bios and select boot from USB. After linux boots, Click top menu (out of the 3), or just press Enter, wait for extraction to ram and you will see this screen (***1***).

1. Dubble Click on My Documents icon
2. Find icon with filename OCZ (NOT icon with OCZ logo named ocz.png).
3. Right click on the icon, Select Open with SciTE Text Editor
4. Go to line with ./fwupd -log /dev/sd?
5. Change it into ./fwupd -log -force -fwl FW_2_13 /dev/sd?
6. Save and Exit (close all open windows)
7. Make sure your internet connection is active
8. Dubble Click Update Firmware icon, after the window opens press Enter (repeat this step until you see fw flashed to 2.13)
9. Restart computer from Linux to Linux again, then Shutdown. Take out stick and enjoy smooth startup (I hope).

Btw. Fix Temperature works for 2.13

p.s. Re-flashing to the same FW: ./fwupd -log -force /dev/sd?
p.s.2 Re-installing Win7 on 2.15 and CMOS battery reset did not help me to start Win7 on 2.15. After i flashed to 2.13 system started at the first try.
p.s 3 Flashing/Re-flashing unlocked Bios 05 with 'run as administrator' is recommended.

(***1***)

 

Thanks man, my m14x is back to life. It boots every single time with 2.09. I'm just about to try playing with bios settings now... we'll see. So far, I'm gonna stick with 2.09.

Thanks again

 

yeah guys i'm having an issue with my caddy, if i put windows straight on it, i will get errors, even if i install RST and with the custom bios, i did the tweaks mentionned here, windows just doesn't want to run on this caddy or at SATA 1.5

any ideas?

 

You're running an SSD in the caddy???

 

i got two ssd's my old one was a sata2, and now i got a sata3 ssd as my main.

 

A ssd in a sata 1.5gb/s port is pretty much worthless. You'd be better off throwing an older mechanical drive in there for space.

 

It is more than worthless, its causing problems all day.

The optical drive slot killed me 1 SSD, then killed the partition table on the replaced new drive - one day when it booted I was told drive D need to be formatted before use. Luckily I did not pay the price of my valuable document. I gave up SATA III on this laptop. Put the old X25-M into the main drive and happy days

 

still, even with a mechanical drive, i get the issue, windows won't install on the caddy drive.

 

Why are you putting windows in a drive that is in the caddy? I tried the caddy once and had issues because the drive was sata 2.

 

delete this.

 

I recently purchaced a m14x and installed a Corsair Force 3 180 GB SSD.My reads and writes were avg 220 mb/s but both wwre very consistant.This morning I decided to upgrade the chip set from 1019 to 1030 and after reboot I ran ATTO with the same results nothing changed.I then uninstalled RST and rebooted ran ATTO right before leaving for work and both Read and Write were at or above 500 mb/s.Will post .jpg showing before and after this evening.Seems RST is very flaky...

 

attached are my results from before and after removing RST

 

Very nice. Yes MSAHCI is the way for M14X. I think laptop motherboard RST makes sure that everything saves power. I have eliminated all bugs for my SSD to run NORMAL and Fast lol

Force looks like a good stuff. I bought 2x4 gigs Kingston Hyper X 1600 pnp and cant wait to receive it in two days.

I think I will never use classic HDD again.

 

I have upgraded my hard drive to a 512GB Crucial M4 on my M14x, I am very happy with the speed boost even though I have confirmed via AS SSD that I am limited to sata 3Gbit. I am however less than impressed by the reliability issues from cold boot and hibernate, for one it never resumes from hibernate as others are also documenting in this thread. Like the others here, stability after boot and in Windows is rock solid.

I also have a 256GB Crucial M4 (identical throughput specs to the 512gb, both on firmware revision 0009) in my desktop running at full sata 6Gbit speeds. Benchmarking aside, when it comes to real world responsiveness I am going to stick my neck out and say under normal operation I can perceive no speed difference or extra sluggishness between these sata 3Gbit and sata 6Gbit systems, both are what I would class extremely fast and responsive compared to HDD (and if I discount reliability issues on the M14x).

I am on bios A04 and have read posts about the custom A05 bios, honestly I am not interested in getting the sata 6Gbit speeds as I have explained, I am more interested in my system booting and resuming from hibernate as it should and did before. Can anyone give any advise whether the procedures documented here about going to custom A05 bios and changing the storage breaks setting will remove these reliability issues, I do not care to do anything else I simply require the most reliable system possible without actually losing any performance.

 

My startup issues were connected directly with firmware version for my OCZ SSD. The latest FW 2.15 caused huge start up problems, previous 2.13 is stable.

As for Crucial I have read this:

Solution: C300 Disk Freeze-ups in Windows 7 solved... - Crucial Community

 

cheers C, but I am doubtful that is the solution because he states:

My issues are not manifested via an event viewer error message during Windows 7 operation, operation after startup is rock solid, it is startup from cold boot and hibernation that craps out during the actual startup.

I will probably give both methods a try and post the results here.

 

Can you flash a different (previously relesed) firmware?

 

If you'd like to have an official statement that I got from a DELL engineer is that the current Alienware M14x is having a SATA II port and does have a supported function for SATA III, however operates only on 3 GB-s as it's backwards compatible.

Maybe upcoming Alienware M14x will have an actual SATA III port instead.

Frankly that the current M14x does not have a SATA III is terrible.

 

Then how are some people achieving SATAIII speeds? This doesnt make sense.

 

The M14 manual says support=yes, speeds=no. I think, in their labs, they always ran SSD using Intel RST drivers. MSAHCI driver guarantees SATA III (6Gbps) on (I believe) every M14X.