Challenge: MOBO veterans come - need urgent solution

[charlesma]

To the awesome people in Toms Hadware and the vetarans who often visit and give advice, I've delayed in posting on online forums for a solution in problems, but the issue I'm having is annoying me to no end and I have searched all the forums to no end to find a solution.

I have a:

Asus P7p55de Motherboard
Gskill Eco 4gb Ram kit
ASUS GTX460
Corsair HX520
ASUS Xonar Essence ST Sound Card
2 x Samsung hd502hj hard disks

Now I'm literally almost giving up hope in finding a solution to this and considering forking out money to buy complete new and expensive parts because the time and frustration I'm spending on this is killing me.

Main problem:

1. I originally purchased 1 Samsung HD502HJ and the burst speed I was getting in HDTune 4.6pro was abysmal, only 120mb/s which was way below my maximum speed and the potential of sata2.

I purchased another one and tested it and it came out with the same results.

When I tried on a friend's computer, he was getting burst speeds of 200mb/s consistently

I tried changing the video card to an ATI 4850, no difference

I tried taking one piece of ram out, no difference

I even went into the store and got my motherboard replaced with a new one, no difference

I went to update the bios, no difference

I tried putting the two hard disks into raid0, not only is the burst speed still shocking but the line graph is showing erratic spikes and performance is only 163.3mb/s and burst speed is still 138.6.

2. After updating the bios, my pci-e x1 network card is now having trouble receiving a signal from my router and is going at half the speed.

This is driving me crazy, should I just change the power supply, seeing its one of the only things I havent tested and try my luck? Theres no sign that its defective but it seems like the only thing I havent replaced. I've checked the mobo manual if there is any jumpers i can change to improve sata 2 performance, but i dont see any.

Seeing as this is a difficult question, I would appreciate any experts to give their opinion and advice on how to fix this. It will be much appreciated. Thank you!

2.

 

[o1die]

This isn't a power supply problem, but an issue with the motherboard chipset. I had a similar issue with my ssd. So far, I've found no solution. My board has an h55 chipset. Your hdtune speeds are identical to mine. I get faster speeds on an nvidia chipset board for am3.

 

[charlesma]

This isn't a power supply problem, but an issue with the motherboard chipset. I had a similar issue with my ssd. So far, I've found no solution. My board has an h55 chipset. Your hdtune speeds are identical to mine. I get faster speeds on an nvidia chipset board for am3.

So, is this a limitation of all h55 chipsets? How do I know what chip my mobo is using? And if is an issue, is a a defect, a well known issue, can I get a refund?

 

[Emperus]

As per the info you've provided till now, your motherboard is built on the P55 chipset.. Now to your problem, which OS do you use.? Is your's and your friend's config same or identical.? Don't depend on synthetic benchmarks.. Try out some real world tests.. Like copying dvd's, large and multiple small size files, burning etc..etc. Perform similar operations on your friend's PC and compare the timings.. They'll give you a more conclusive result.. Also remember, even SSD's do not saturate the bandwidth offered by SATA interface..

 

[Scotteq]

Questions: Did you install in IDE mode? or AHCI mode?

and - are you sure you have connected to the SATA 3 ports on that motherboard? I ask this because makers sometimes can/do/will mix types, even on the same mobo.

 

[o1die]

I noticed no difference in speed with ide and achi. I had identical readings for both. Had to update the ssd bios to get achi to work. I believe the issue is ata 100 versus ata 133 support. My ssd will run at the higher setting, but the board doesn't support it. Getting a refund is really not an option unless you want to change to amd. All 1156 boards have Intel chipsets. Haven't seen any bios updates that address this issue, and in real usage, you won't notice enough difference to bother with a refund.