Am I using SATA II or SATA III?

[Guest]

Hello,

I just put a system together using a MSI 890GXM-G65 motherboard and WD6402AAEX hard drive, both SATA III capable. My problem is that both AMD Overdrive and HDTune report the system is using SATA II. So my question has to be, is the system taking advantage of SATA III and the utilities are not trust worthy, or is it operating using SATA II and what do I need to do to make it use SATA III? Any help is greatly appreciated. I do not see anything obvious in the BIOS. Thanks, Eric

 

[Emperus]

Not all ports on the motherboard are SATA III compliant.. Few are SATA II.. Refer to your motherboard manual to know which ports offer SATA III (they are differently colored generally).. Connect your hard drive to one of those ports if it is not connected already..

 

[Frankles]

I am the original poster. I had to create another account with Tom's. It is a long story.

Emperus, I really appreciate your response. My understanding is that all SATA ports on this mobo are SATA III.

I would like to know if anyone has seen AMD Overdrive or HDTune (free version) report that the hard drive(s) are SATA III? If someone has this would eliminate a mis-reporting issue. If no one has seen these utilities report SATA III operation, I would like to know if there are some other utility or utilities I might need to use to ascertain if the hard drive(s) are operating in SATA III mode.

Again, I appreciate the help!
Thanks, Eric

 

[jaquith]

Duh, ALL 100% of your SATA ports ARE SATA3 - so you couldn't choose a SATA2 post id you tried. CPUz, HDTune, and most utilities can and do report part/configurations/etc incorrectly.

BTW - you wasted money - {SATA3 6.0Gb/s} only refers to the controller "type" and has zip to do with the speed of HDD itself, only a hand full of SSDs {e.g. C300 128 GB or larger} break the SATA2 limit of 300 MB/s per device limit. At the spec 126 MB/s (Max) you're not even half way there.

 

[ko888]

Do you have the AMD SB8xx chipset drivers installed?

 

[Frankles]

Do you have the AMD SB8xx chipset drivers installed?

I really appreciate your reply.

I believe I do. I installed the "Chipset" drivers off of the Drivers & Utilities disk that shipped with the mobo. I did some exploring of the disk and the SB8XX drivers were several directories down in the "Chipset" directory.

I am beginning to believe the AMD Overdrive and HDTune utilities are just reporting wrong, but I would like to be sure.

 

[jaquith]

Run ATTO - http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?sku=Disk_Benchmark

If the the drivers weren't installed you HDD won't run and if the benchmarks are ~ 126 MB/s you're running correctly.

 

[MRFS]

Another simple test is to run the "Raw Disk Read" in PerformanceTest
and keep reducing the total size of the file that is read:

http://www.passmark.com/

Eventually, that file will be small enough to fit into the 64MB cache
and the motherboard's controller will ONLY be reading from that cache
and NOT from the spinning platters.

When we did this experiment, we saw the expected result
only when the file size was about 1/2 of the HDD's cache;
thus, in your case, try 32MB, then 16MB, then 8MB.

Also, it helps to do the same test at least twice, to ensure that the
file is stored completely in that cache.

At some point, the measured speed will reflect the interface
or "burst rate" between the HDD's cache and the motherboard's controller.

See also the "Burst Rate" in HDtune.

This approach is the best, and simplest, empirical test that we can recommend.


MRFS