Sager NP9170 questions: GPU@x16Gen3? All drive bays SATA-III?

Just learned that the SATA drives in the M17x R4 are SATA-II, which is a severe limitation for me, so I'm looking for an alternative. I've searched quite a bit but I can't find the answers to a few questions on the NP9170:

1) The two SATA HD bays are SATA-III (6 Gbits/sec), but are the mSATA and optical bays also SATA-III? I want to put 3x 120GB Kingston HyperX SSDs and an ADATA XPG SX300 128GB SATA III in the mSATA slot and RAID-0 all of them. Or perhaps just use the mSATA for OS & 3x HyperX as RAID-0. Need to hit >1.5 GBytes/sec off the disks and into the GPUs.

2) Is the GPU attached to the CPU by x16 PCIE Gen3? Can someone run AMD's PCIeSpeedTest on a NP9170 with a 7970M and post the results here?

TIA for the info.

 

msata and odd bay are both sata2, regular hdd bays are sata3

pcie 3.0 is supported but currently theres just the 680M that uses that bus. besides,u wont notice any perf difference between 2 and 3 since currently not even desktop cards like the 690 are limited by pcie 2

btw u sure that the r4 doesnt support sata3??? cant imagine that...

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Bad news, but thank you for the info

All AMD's SI GPUs are Gen3x16, including the MXMs. I had a 7970 workstation card running in an Intel IB CRB mid-January 2012 transfering 12 GB/sec. I also had an MXM PCIE carrier card that lets me put any AMD MXM in a standard workstation. The 7970M also hit 12 GB/sec.

For most GPU users you are correct since PCIE bandwidth isn't the long pole in the tent for games.

I don't play games.

 

It is quite simple. Currently there is no Intel mobile chipset with more than two SATA3 ports, the other ports are SATA2, and that includes the HM77 in the NP9170 / P170EM. Oddly enough, current AMD Trinity mobile chipsets have 6 or 8 SATA3 ports. So you might say that the much more powerful Intel mobile CPUs are more or less crippled by their chipsets.

The MSI GT70 / MSI 1762 has such a Raid 0 setup consisting out of two mSATA SSD drives. In theory and in some test situations you get a blazing performance, but in every day practice the results are not overwhelming. Keep in mind that the raid hardware of these chipsets isn't the most powerful raid hardware you can imagine. I also don't know if TRIM is still working in a raid-0 configuration, and you definitely want TRIM to work.

I went for one Intel 520 480GB SSD, very fast although the 240GB version is faster. It is also very reliable, I don't like to lose my data. Keep in mind that with a 4 member raid-0 setup you have 4 times as much chance to lose your data as with a single SSD.

 

you are quite correct with that, my bad

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If you want to hit 1,5GB/s so badly, I would recommend getting 32GB RAM and setting up a RAM cache of 16 ~ 24 GB.. it'll reach 7GB/s if not more

 

> Currently there is no Intel mobile chipset with more than two SATA3 ports ... current AMD Trinity mobile chipsets have 6 or 8 SATA3 ports

I've had a Trinity for about a year - very nice processor for performance/watt, but I need an IB coupled with a 7970M - they each have particular pieces of functionality I need for this project. Looks like I have to find a way to settle for 1GB/sec from a pair of SSDs. That's 2x better than I could stream in my M17x R2 - I hit 475 MB/sec sustained in that laptop.

I am not concerned with losing the data. If that happens, I'll replace the drives and restore the data. What I need is to stream ~250 GB of data through a 7970M as fast as possible in a laptop. 4.1 minutes is a long time to wait. No, 32 GB of DRAM won’t help. 384 GB would

So, does someone have an NP9170 with a 7970M they could run AMD's PCIeSpeedTest on and post the results here please? Total of about 1 minute. Download from here, run the .exe (not the random version), cut & past the results in a post.

Prove your Sager is better than an Alienware M18x R2! At least GPU I/O wise - see this thread.

 

My new HP Pavilion dv7-7010us can take 3 (yes, three) SATA-III SSDs. I have tested 2 sites (Main & Optical drive replacement) both at >535 MBytes/sec each (Atto, 8MB, direct I/O). Waiting to get the carrier for the 3'rd one. >1.5 GBytes/sec from disk in a 17", $620 USD laptop (plus 3x $60 120GB Kingston HyperX SSDs).

Oh yeah, plays 3 BluRays from disk on a single charge. >9 hours running Outlook and cruising the web via WiFi. Not a GPU screamer, but an all-day, write OpenCL GPGPU code anywhere on the planet kind of laptop. Trinity A10-4600 FTW!

 

Wow those are great numbers. If you wanted more business/school/entertainment use and not too much gaming performance looks like a very solid option.

 

The MSI GX60 super raid will have 4 SATA-III slots (2x mSATA, 1 HDD, 1 ODD), so you could create a huge array with that ^-^.

 

jeez, that would be way too much of a risk for me@data reliability. and i for one just haaaate doing backups all the time xD

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It supports raid 5

 

well sure,but i thought we were talking about raid 0 and insaaane speeds here

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True, over 2GB/sec read anyone? ^-^

But hopefully we can see some more gen 3 mSATA slots appearing as having a couple in a machine could really give you a kick up in performance without sacrificing anything.