Awful speeds with ASM1061 Sata3 card. Is it the driver?

Mugsy

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May 12, 2004
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Last November, I bought a fast Corsair Force GT Sata-III SSD, even though I only have Sata-II ports on my MoBo (couldn't pass up the sale.)

I've been running that way for months, achieving 273MB/s reads and 241MB/s writes.

Wanting to take better advantage of the speeds this drive is capable of, I purchased an ASMedia ASM1061 x1 Sata-III card to use in my 64bit Win7 rig.

Using the default MS driver, my Read speeds improved by as much as 35% (405MB/s), but my write speeds fell though the floor (down 60% to roughly 100MB/s.). So I tried the driver provided on the supplied CD and got even worse results (the supplied driver appears to be 32bit.) Disabling my MoBo's AHCI mode and relying instead on the cards own AHCI firmware improves things a tiny bit, maybe 2%.

I have a triple-boot system with XP and Linux on it as well. MS does not have XP drivers for this card, so I had to use the supplied driver and the results were HORRIBLE (159r/99w).

Linux recognizes the drive, but I can't find a Linux benchmark that can do WRITE tests to a formatted "non-boot" drive.

Searching around online, I can't find a newer/better ASM1061 driver. And the only "confirmation" that it might be a driver issue is a YouTube video of a guy putting the same card in a MAC and getting FAR better results (plus the fact my boot times are exactly the same with the card as before.)

Can anyone confirm my Read/Write performance with this card is a driver issue and not a hardware one?
 
No sooner than I asked did I find a solution.

For others suffering from the same problem... miserable Write speeds with your SSD in Win7... simply go into the Device Manager and disable "Write caching" on the "Policies" tab for your SSD.

More than TRIPLED my Write speed and even gave my Read speeds a tiny boost!

"Write caching" is not needed with an SSD.
 


I would very much like to see those "tripled write speeds". Any proof of these speeds?

You quoted 241MB/s above and now you're saying its more than 723MB/s? Seems extremely unlikely when you consider that the chip has a PCI-E x1 lane restriction similar to Marvell chips.

And FYI here.. the write caching policy uses system ram caching if no cache is available ON the device itself.
 
No, triple over what I was getting with Sata-III before I disabled Write Caching. I was achieving 241MB/s before addition of the card, using the Sata-II ports on my MoBo.

Here are my results using the Sata-2 ports on my MoBo:
http://www.outlawwebdesigns.com/images/My_ATTO_sata2_results.jpg

Here are my results using my Sata-3 card before I disabled write caching:
http://www.outlawwebdesigns.com/images/My_ATTO_sata3_ide-results.jpg

Here are my results AFTER I disabled Write caching:
http://www.outlawwebdesigns.com/images/My_ATTO_sata3_caching_disabled.jpg

Hope that clears things up.
 
it does.. and thanks for that.

just an FYI here for you and anyone else reading this though.. disabling write caching doesn't typically have that result(especially not on a Marvell based chip) and that would be down to a driver issue with that particular ASMedia chip.

Not that it matters since you got to where you wanted to be.. but just sayin, is all.
 
Brief follow-up:

Disabling the built-in Windows-7 Read/Write cache resulted in more accurate *benchmark* results, but a few file copy tests showed some caching is still necessary. (a 5GB copy on the same SSD took 3-1/2min w/o caching, 1min with).

At least I was able to confirm the card is functioning properly, but clearly "caching" is still necessary even with an SSD.
 
Hi all,
greetings from Italy
I would like to post my personal experience with an XFX 790i board with a fresh installed ASM1061 pci sata 3 card and a fantastic Sandisk 240 Extreme SSD disk.
Because no one posted benchmark about this configuration, i am happy to share my experience with you
I am very satisfied because results was astonishing and i am very close to a native 6gbps integrated controller.
Hardware is:
XFX 790i P09
SANDISK 240GB EXTREME FW R201
ASM1061 CONTROLLER FW 0.95

Pci express lane was overclocked from 100 to 115mhz to enhance some bandwidth.
sandisk240gbnew.jpg