P8Z68 v Pro Won't run at 6Gb/s

[Wavelength]

Hi all,
I recently upgraded to a Vertex 4 SSD from a Vertex 2 on the V Pro. However, as measured by HD Tach and HD tune, I am only hitting right under 300MB/s read speeds. It seems to be confined to SATA2 speeds for some reason.

I have confirmed that:
It is plugged into a chipset SATA3 port (grey port, and confirmed in BIOS)
Latest Motherboard BIOS
Intel RST lists this disk's transfer rate as 6Gb/s


Chipset is set to RAID mode in BIOS; I am also running a two-disk RAID-0 array on the intel chipset.


So, I am stumped and frustrated! This SSD should be running 2/3rds again as fast. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[AM2A]

I'm not sure which vertex 4 you're using. You can check out benchmarks to see how fast it should be. Here's some:
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/OCZ-Vertex-4-SSD-Revisited-the-128GB-Version-and-New-Firmware/?page=2

6Gbs is the max sata can handle, the drive isn't going to running at 6gbs on average

 

[inzone]

On the motherboard you have sata2 ports and sata3 ports and they are controlled by either the Intel chipset or the Marvell chipset with some of the newer boards having the Asmedia chip as a sata controller.
With the sata3 (6 gb/s) ports you have some of them controlled by the Intel chipset and some copntrolled by the other controller whichever that is acording to the board brand. You want the raid drives arttached to the sata3 ports controlled by the Intel chipset and sometimes there are only two and the other sata3 ports are controlled by the Marvell/Asmedia chip and that could be your problem. I have tersted several SSDs on the Marvell chip and on the Asmedia chip and found that you don't get the SSDs rated max speeds on those chips.
So if your board only has the two sata3 ports on the Intel chip then your out of luck but if you have four sata3 ports on the Intal chip then you want to make sure that the SSD is connected to one of them.

 

[Wavelength]

Thanks inzone, but I think you are misinterpreting my question. I do not care about the two drives of the RAID array running at SATA3, only the SSD. And it is not running through the Marvel chip, and Intel RST confirms it to be on a SATA3 port through the chipset (and I have gone so far as to disable the Marvel chip in the BIOS to be absolutely certain I'm not using it)

 

[inzone]

I knew what your question was and I was trying to show you that the SSD needs to be connected to the Intel controlled sata3 port to be running at the full rated speed. A lot os motherboards have four sata3 ports and the raid is usually running on the Intel chipset so that leaves the other two ports controlled by the Marvell chip.
Is the SSD the OS drive? Does it have the latest firmware loaded?
I hae also found ATTO to be more accurate then HD Tune and for some reason there are a lot od sotware that isn't very good and then there are some that are better. I had cpuid hardware monitor to show what the temps are on my cpu and found that they were kind of high and caused me concern because I use water cooling , so after trying different things including rerouting the tubing and reseating the cpu it didn't change so I downloaded another program named Real Temp and it showed my temps to be normal.
So I suggest trying ATTO to see if you are running at speed or not. Of course whe you buy a program you get better results then the free ones.

 

[mubin]

Actually copy speed is always half when you copy sata device to sata device. Sata device to ram will be at full speed. Thats what i see when i copy SATA II hdd to another SATA II hdd. Only 150mb/s. Half of 300mb/s.

I think sata speed are supposes to deliver data at full speed to system memory. For two sata device, speed reduce to half as sata controller has only 300mb/s max. Speed split up. Thats what i think as i saw.

 

[Wavelength]

Yes, the SSD is being used as the OS drive. It does have the latest firmware (1.5). I will look into other benching programs, but I know there have been benchmarks published online using one of the ones I'm using and they got SATA3 speeds. Overall performance is pretty quick though, so I'm not really prepared to pay for a benching program just to track this down (saturating 300mB/s bandwidth, which is more than the old SSD did!).


Mubin: what you're talking about would be dependent on the controller architecture and the bandwidth it supports combined with the speed of the drives themselves. It certainly does not apply to my case, and it probably does not even apply to yours for the reasons you are thinking it does. The Intel chipsets have more than enough bandwidth to copy disk to disk to at 300mB/s. My guess is that since you said "hdd" you are talking spinning drives, not SSDs, in which case you are transferring disk to disk at only 150mB/s because that is the speed of your hard drive, not the interface.

 

[mubin]

@Wavelength, my hard drive's speed is 300mb/s, both.