To the Big Guns in Toms Hardware: Ultimate Challenge

[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:

Windows 7 64 Bit
Asus P7p55de Motherboard
Gskill Eco 1600 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 updating to the various drivers for the SATA controllers and this did not make a 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.

 

[saint19]

Hi charlesma and welcome to THG.

Well we will try to solve ur problem here. Now I will assume that u have Win 7 x64 as OS right?.

Can u post please the link of the G.Skill RAM specific that u already have?

 

[charlesma]

Hi charlesma and welcome to THG.

Well we will try to solve ur problem here. Now I will assume that u have Win 7 x64 as OS right?.

Can u post please the link of the G.Skill RAM specific that u already have?

Yes, I am using windows 7 64 bit with G Skill Eco 1600 ram under normal bios settings.

I've tried all the sata ports and different cables as well as updating the controllers as well to no avail.

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it.

 

[saint19]

Which of this kits do u have?

 

[charlesma]

Which of this kits do u have?

Sorry, I wasn't aware that there were three types.

The one I have is

G.SKILL ECO Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBECO

 

[saint19]

Do u check in the BIOS the drive configuration? must be IDE or AHCI.

When u test the HD in ur friend's rig. Do u see something out of normal?

 

[charlesma]

The BIOS drive configuration on my computer is IDE. It won't let me change to AHCI unless I reformat. I've got it under raid 0 now and the speed is still slow.

My friend uses a p5q, with 4gb corsair ram, running with the same psu but with a radeon 4850. I tried his video card on my mobo and the same results came about. Nothing out of the normal but under hdtune his hd benchmarks were much smoother and his burst rates are all >200 mb/s.

 

[saint19]

What temps do u get in ur CPU and mobo?

 

[charlesma]

The temps on my cpu and mobo are very normal

39 degrees on mobo and around 39-41 cpu

 

[Paperdoc]

Any chance your HDD has been set to force it to slow down to original SATA 1.5 Gb/s speeds? see this Samsung page for details on how this is done when needed to connect a SATA II drive to an older controller. It includes ways to ensure the slower speed is NOT forced.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=126

 

[charlesma]

I don't think so.. The motherboard I have only has sata II slots as it is fairly new. Furthermore, I've never installed any software limiting the operation of the slots.

I'll try the patch anyway and see if that works. In the meantime, I'd like to know if there are any other possible reasons for this. It's funny because burst speeds are actually pivoting around three numbers. Every third test on HDTune (for one particular I/o), it's up to 160, but the other two are always around 120.