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

Sorry for the noob question, but can understand the SATA port supports SATAIII but with SATAII speed. Can I conclude from this that I should buy a SATAII ssd instead of a SATAIII ssd. Because there won't be a performance difference between the 2?

 

Has anyone updated there RST Driver or reinstalled to see if the issue for
Sata 3 is fixed
There is an update on intel support page dated 11-11-11 version 10.8.0.1003

 

If you have a SATAII port, a SATAII SSD would be enough, but you can get a SATAIII SSD for future-proofing if you want.

 

I have tried it, the same story as before. After installing my SSD speeds drop to SATA 3Gbps. So MSAHCI is still the driver I use.

I would buy a SATA 6gbps SSD. It should run full speed on your M14X out of box, if not, tweaking will make it work.

 

UPDATE
UPDATED ALIENWARE BIOS to the latest BIOS AS OF 8/24/2011 A05

CORSAIR FORCE 3 120GB SATA 3 HD with updated 1.33 firmware
EVERYTHING INSTALLED WITH IRST etc

 

Anand00X, please tell me which Bios it is, if A06, please give me a link. And ... thanx for making this thread. +rep

 

I have the A05 installed

 

so no one's tested any SSDs on an M14x with A06 bios?

 

Noob question, what's the easiest way to check if my SSD is running on SATA 3GB/s speeds or SATA 6GB/s speeds without using benchmarks?

P.S.: Laptop in my sig isn't what I'm talking about.

 

Try running this small app:

 

Thanks! Another question, the WEI score of my Hard Drive is 7.9, does this automatically mean that my SSD is running at SATA 6GB/s speeds or do SATA 3GB/s speeds also score 7.9 on Hard Drive in WEI? Using stock BIOS A05 from DELL site with all stock drivers installed (including RST, updated chipset drivers, etc). Do all M14x fluctuate from SATA 6GB/s to SATA 3GB/s and back?

 

7.9 SHOULD mean SATA 6Gbps, when I install Intel RST, (or Bios A07 or A08) my speeds drop to SATA 3Gbps and WEI is 7.6.

As far as I know, M14X runs either SATA 3Gbps or SATA 6Gbps, but does not switch up or down by itself.

However, this is only experience from my M14X and a few others I know.

 

When you say runs either SATA 3GB/s or SATA 6GB/s, is this upon system boot? When exactly does it "switch" if I may ask? Sorry if these are noob questions, I've been gone for quite a while, haven't had the chance to update my sig yet lol.

Thanks!

 

I meant it runs long term (lets say 'forever') SATA3. Or it runs stable or forever SATA6. The long-term stable WHICH EVER SATA speed can be achieved by installing Intel RST or certain Unlocked Bios tweaks.

So for example I hated running my system at SATA 3, so I applied tweaks, certain SSD Firmware and now I have been running SATA 6 for say 4 months.

 

Ahh alright, so in my case since I'm at SATA 6 speeds (according to WEI at least til I get to check later), I don't have to take out RST or do anything since it'll run "forever" at SATA 6 speeds, is my understanding correct?

 

I really hope that this is the case with your machine!!!

On mine if I install Intel RST, or if I do not use certain tweaks in unlocked Bios, and/or other mix of tweaks, I never get SATA 6 Gbps speeds.

Consider yourself lucky (if it is SATA 6Gbps that you run).

 

LOL Will double check later with CrystalDiskInfo, I only learned now that 7.9 meant SATA 6GB/s speeds..I kinda thought even SATA 3GB/s drives would register a 7.9 on WEI..Will post screenshots later and maybe run WEI again and see if the score decreases lol If I do find my drive at SATA 3GB/s, I plan to install MSAHCI driver and see what happens, I really want my M4 to run at it's full potential..

Update: Below you'll see my screenie showing SATA/600 with intel RST installed on the background..So does this mean I'm running permanently on SATA 6GB/s?

 

Permanently 'forever' LOL

Can you run ATTO? To be 100% sure?

 

Doesn't ATTO cause wear to the SSD since it'll blast it with writes? Where to I DL ATTO?

 

ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46 download from Guru3D.com

And set the TOTAL LENGTH file size to 32 MB. So the whole benchmark run writes only 32 MB on your SSD.

 

What other settings do I have to change as well as check boxes?

 

Only the 32 MB value. The rest stays default. See pic. I accidentally ran this one for you with 64 MB.

 

Below are the results. Note hitting 500MB/s though..Still at FW 0002, haven't updated to 0009 yet, hoping to hit 500MB/s..

 

I have read that FW0009 increases performance a lot. However, please contact someone with FW0009 just in case.

Glad you get SATA 6Gbps out of box.

 

Just installed FW 0009 and it does increase performance A LOT. Below are before and after 32MB ATTO benchmarks of my M4 at SATA 6GB/s with Intel RST and everything factory installed..Though I am using updated chipset drivers from the Dell support site, though I believe I was running at SATA 6GB/s even before I installed it though..

 

Hello people,

I've been creeping this thread for a while with all the great tips on the M14x and the shared hell of upgrading to a SATA3 SSD.

I thought I'd post my story with the Corsair Force GT 180gb. I received mine from newegg yesterday and had a hell of a time getting it to work at full speed.

Of course it works beautifully with A08 bios at SATA II (typical ATTO results for a well functioning SATA2 SSD).

I had a hugely unstable system with A05 and RST installed to the point where it wasn't even worth benchmarking (if I could even get into windows in the first place!).

Now I did the following in my attempt to get stable SATA3 speeds with a clean win7 install (while at A08) and NO RST:

1) Performed LMP reg fix
2) installed A05 unlocked
3) on the reset I went into BIOS and adjusted the following:
a) Disable port 0 hot plugging (already done)
b) Enable Storage break event
c) Disable c-state
d) Disable energy efficient p-state

I tried to run ATTO with this setup and got the good read speed and abhorrent write speeds (see pic).

I tried also disabling P-State (IST), but had more or less the same result as the picture attached.

I tried re-enabling C-state with no real effect (slightly less stable so I turned it back off again).



So that's about it, I guess I'll re-flash to A08 until I get some more ideas or if anyone has any tips, please let me know. Haven't seen anyone try a Force GT yet so it would be cool if others who did spoke up! I think I'd rather have nice, solid and stable SATA2 than weird SATA3 speeds.

WEI HD score is 7.8.


Thanks!
Mike

Dont' have a sig but it's an:
M14x deliverd Jun'11. 8 gb stock ram, 3.0 GT555m (GF106), Intel 6205 with an 1103 on order.

 

Hi, RocketPower

The green stuff below helped me with solving benchmark freezes/slowdowns in ATTO. Since I applied it, no more freezes. Please note I only used to have freezes in benchmarks, but there might have been some during normal use, who knows? Would be logical.

I do not know how advanced you are, so simply copy the green lines below to a text file, name it whatever.reg, make sure there is no hidden txt extension in the filename, right click on the created file, launch with regedit, apply, restart. After restart, see new menus in your power plan, set the parameters as in the attached picture on the right and restart again. You have a new SSD, but still, leaving the laptop in LOG OFF state overnight should help with the write speeds. Good luck.


Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Power\PowerSettings\0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442\0b2d69d7-a2a1-449c-9680-f91c70521c60]
"Attributes"=dword:00000002

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Power\PowerSettings\0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442\dab60367-53fe-4fbc-825e-521d069d2456]
"Attributes"=dword:00000002

There are 3 other things I would do to make your SSD 'wake up'. In device manager (see pic on the left) uninstall (both at the same time) the SSD, uninstall ATA channel 0, restart as many times as prompted (Win7 will reinstall the same drivers automatically). After all this run WEI with the purpose of registering the changes (important?).

 

Hi C69k! Your reputation precedes you in all the help you've given me in your prior posts.

I tried your mods in addition to what I've stated (I've reenabled P-states (IST), though) and noticed the following:

1) Still got highly asynchronous read/write, but read is definitely SATA3 (see pics). Still a bit wonky though.

2) Weirdly enough, my 6205 card connects really quick now at startup as if I had A08 back in. Before with A05 unlocked and suggested settings it would jam at startup, and would take forever for me to get into the network adapter settings to disable then re-enable it so it would work. Or I could just wait 5 minutes, but I'm impatient...

3) I'll try the logoff all night trick tonight. What's the theory behind this?

Here are my WEI and ATTO scores. I tries AS SSD and it freakin BSODded me to hell...




Now for real life use, honestly I do not notice the difference between SATA2 and SATA3 modes on my M14x, except minor instability issues with SATA3, which is a shame since this laptop was mega stable with the old stock samsung HD (not even one single BSOD, unbelievable compared to my old E1505).

I tried BF3 in both modes and did not notice a difference, but both were a big step above using an HD.

I tried FSX in SATA2 mode and it worked much nicer as well. Still have to install all my addons as well, that should challenge the SSD a little more. Will try FSX with SATA3 today when I'm done reviewing stuff for work today.

So question is, and sorry to get all quantum physics on you all, but how good are these benchmarks? Are they causing the problem and ruining the measurement? Do people really see write issues when you get the classic asynchronous SATA3 results? I'd love to hear some experiences, I'll share mine after a few days of fun. I also use this for work; I can't stand my work laptop (Lenovo W510) since it's been so dumbed down by IT. Quite a beast though.

Also my Bigfoot just came in the door, so I'm going to try and install that now .

In any case, thanks and I'll be reporting from the Force GT camp soon enough.

Thanks,
RP

No worries about difficulty in your posts, I'm an engineer, so you can talk dirty to me.


UPDATE
---------

Just BSODded after installing windows/office updates. Fan was going nuts and things were getting laggy and then it happened... more reports to come.

PS Just installed the bigfoot 1103 and man is it a stable, reliable little beast. Works great in SATA3 mode, ping is better, data rate is better, and connecting to web pages is a good half second faster on average. I wonder what was causing problems with the 6205 before...

 

RocketPower, thanx for your rep. As to your question in your previous post:

3) I'll try the log-off all night trick tonight. What's the theory behind this?

SSD and/or Win7 should start Garbage collection after about 15 minutes being Logged-off (I hear fans coming on for about 30 seconds-1 minute, so the proc is busy with my SSD) and the cells should get refreshed - I do not know how long this takes. And writes are always low when you run out of fresh cells. Once a week one overnight is enough I have read & experienced I see no slow-downs on my already 5 months stable Win7 (also running ATTO lol).


I had terrible issues with mi Vertex 3 MI in the beginning. I have installed Win7 about 50 times (no kidding) the first month I bought it. My ATTO results were similar to yours. Firstly, I used Dell supplied Win7 disk, made a copy to USB 3 stick. However such installation would not last long and I was not able to start Win7 at all. Then I downloaded (after research at Cape Canaveral Calgary) Win7 64 Home Premium image off internet, extracted to USB3. The installation went suddenly twice as fast and ... That is the start of my stable Win7 bootups and speeds and overall stability. No more reinstalls necessary.

 

I also used the non-Dell Win7, mostly because those jerks didn't bother to give me a disk, only the recovery partition. Alien Respawn was so annoying with its spam messages I removed it almost right away back when I got the thing. I used Ultimate though, and not Home Premium.

In any case, I left it logged off for an hour and it already seems sllllliiightly better, can't wait to log it off when I sleep!

Also, I'm not impressed with the power consumption and fan noise with C-state and energy efficient P-state settings compared to the deathly silent operation when at A08. Once I get stable full speeds on the force GT, I'm going to try reverting those settings and seeing if the speed is preserved.

I guess this amounts to the following:
1) Dell misunderstood or misled us/themselves on the limitations of the HM67 chipset.

2) Their fix was to simply disable SATA3, since their lawyers probably said it was ok.

3) The reason why they did this, was because of the settings needed for SATA3 to work would kill the advertised battery life, which is a big marketing parameter (most people don't care or don't know what SATA is)

4) Windows garbage collection is not well implemented for personal laptops, especially those using SSDs. Speaking for myself, I never log off as I'm the only user. It's weird they would schedule this in a state that may never be used. I wonder if garbage collection also occurs when windows is locked? I definitely use that a lot!

Anyway it's still to be seen whether logging off for long periods of time actually makes the force GT write speeds optimal.

Also I see you're using A03 unlocked, is this in any way better than the A05 unlocked from your experience?

I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Much thanks from Montreal, always wanted to visit Amsterdam besides Schiphol airport!
RP

 

As to your questions in the post above:

When Windows is locked....GC should also kick in, but I am not sure about this. The rule is computer must be 'idle'.

Under load, A03 has higher fan speeds or more steps (or they kick in at lower temps) than A05 and newer. When in idle A03=A05 regarding fan noise and frequency of being on/off.

 

Well this saga will have to continue later.

I read up on secure erasing the drive to increase performance, which worked fine, but MS backup failed in restoring the image I had saved (%#$%$#!!!!!).

So while trying to recover the image with the SSD on an external enclosure, the power to the drive went out while working and corrupted it.

Trying to initialize the drive in win7 failed due to 'Device not ready'. When It tried to low-level formatting with Gparted, it failed with multiple I/O errors. Sounds like a brick to me.

Ah well, I guess this was my 'training SSD'... I should have my replacement by the time I get back from a business trip next week.

Lesson learned: take the warning with write cache enabled VERY VERY VERY VERY seriously or lose your drive!

sigh...
RP


PS definitely will cough up the dough for Acronis. MS backup sucks!

 

Its good you say what happened, I did not know that the write cache is so important to be enabled. I checked, and I have it enabled and will leave it like that. Thanx for info, +rep.

 

Thanks!

Remember when you had to eject USB keys before removing them? This is because of write cache being enabled. Now by default it's off for USB keys, meaning you can remove them at will (well, you might corrupt a file mid-write but you won't trash the key). This lowers performance, which is ok for a key but not acceptable for a SSD.

Anyway newegg was really cool about it, they got it back within a day of shipping and accepted it and will send the new one in a couple of days. All I paid was 25CAD for the shipping.

Cheers

 

Hi, anybody tried the new intel 330 ssd's on the m14x? It's available here(PH) at ~160USD which is quite reasonable because 120gb SSD's usually go for ~200+ USD here.

Anyone has any experience running this on the r1?

 

Hello,

After some time fiddling around and being busy with work I got around to another attempt at squeezing out SATA3 speeds on the force gt... this time with a bit more luck but still not as good as advertised.

I'm going to let it TRIM all night again and see if it helps. If that doesn't work I'll zero-wipe the disk and restore an image using Acronis this time around.

So what I did this time was reinstall win7 ult, and the rest of my stuff using A08 so I wouldn't have any instability issues while installing everything. I then reverted to A05 unlocked, fixed the BIOS to the usual settings described above, fixed the power settings after modifying the registry and reinstalled the drivers for the drive and ATA0.

This is the result, writes are much better than my post above:




cheersss
RP

I tried a couple of things right now during a boring meeting:

1) rolled back to the MS AHCI driver, didn't change much... slightly better, slightly worse depending (note the previous driver was intel 6 series/c200 sata controller 9.2.0.1011):


Next I created a restore point and installed intel RST, and of course it throttled back to sata 2 even with a05, I couldnt' even reboot with this crap so I had to use the restore point to get back to before:


The journey continuesssss


RP

This is the day after trim. A05 BSODs a lot with this drive (FW 1.3.3).

Next step is to wipe it all to zero and re-image, otherwise I think there's three ways our of this:
1) Corsair upgrades their FW for this drive
2) If the M14xr2 mobo fits the R1, eventually swap it out when I get a good deal
3) Live with SATA2 and A08.

RP

 

For those who uses HyperX SSD. Did you guys updated your firmware? did it make any difference?

 

I have sold my M14X, but anyone having problems with SATA 6 Gbps stability please consider this. Flash to A08, so the SSD will be stable on startups (I have tried it, no more unsuccessful Win7 startups) it works perfect ... pretty late though lol). Then, DL program called Fancy Cache For Disk (free beta) and you will get this (see picture) + no unnecessary writes to SSD.

Please see pic. and note, that the speeds are benchmarking the SSD itself. WOW ... new for me. Win7 Startup time is 14 seconds from the red Bios post 'progress line' (at the bottom).

Read review and setup tips, I have 8 Gigs fast memory. And I have MSAHCI = no Intel RST installed. Anyone tried this with Intel RST? LOL

I just did and see pic 4. Not good news for intel RST for some reason. Back to AHCI ..and.. speeds are back to highest _\|/_.

Almost forgot: no more stuttering in games and I use A08 at stock settings. I have not noted any higher higher FPS in-game, but everything is faster and feels smoother.

Romex FancyCache Review - SSD Performance At 13GB/s and 765,000 IOPS In 60 Seconds Flat! - The SSD Review

 

ha wow, that actually works well. Makes me want to get 16gb of ram now to cache half. It's basically like a momentus drive but instead of miniSSD and HD hybrid, it's a step higher: mini RAM disk cache and SSD.

Also I don't have RST installed but when you install the HM67 drivers, it installs an Intel (6) series/c200 series chipset family 6 port sata AHCI controller - 1C03.

I don't see any difference with this driver and AHCI on my laptop.

RP

 

Rocket, thanx for rep. Yes, with Ram Disk program which I used to use, I had to assign what programs will use it (for example Google chrome caching), but with Fancy cache it caches all programs automatically.

 

hi guys, i have a problem with a corsair force 3 240 gb (firmware 1.3.3) when i attempt to use bios A05 (locked from dell). I just tried with and without rst but was very unstable with a05 from dell and was impossible to do a fresh install. Now im using A08 (limited to sata 2) but very stable. So, someone could help me showing the right config and best aproach to make my m14x works with sata 3 ? I rely thats works based on anad00x post. I still have hope that my system might work like atto bench from first page.

 

Good luck - I don't think there was ever a catch-all solution? And it seemed like people would still get weird boot issues, problems related to Intel RST/various drive properties in windows, unsustained SATA III performance, and more. I was upgraded to an r2 and I would never go back. Just stand up for yourself and demand more from AW. They can take it!