Sluggish SATA III HDD

[rendez2k]

Hi there, heres my system:

Gigabyte GA-X58A UD3R Rev2
Intel Core i7 930 - Quad Core & HT CPU
6Gb Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600Mhz
GTX 480 PCI-E
2 x 1TB Western Digital WD1002FAEXSATA 6Gb/s drives
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD753LJ 7200 32mb Cache SATA II
3 x SATA II CD Writers
Corsair 650W PSU
Windows 7 Pro x64

Now, It might be just me but lets say I'm doing some intensive hard disc bashing (like copying files) - the PC becomes slow to use and even simple things like loading a web page takes noticeably longer. Surely thats not normal? Could it be incorrectly set up or a driver issue? Running in standard IDE mode and no Raid. Installed all the default recommended drivers from the MB CD and I don't see any newer ones on the Gigabyte site. Any ideas?

 

[lp231]

The borderline-excessive ten SATA ports are still present on the UD3R (rev 2), with the six SATA 3Gbps ports of the Intel ICH10R Southbridge coloured light blue. Confusingly, the two SATA 6Gbps ports are the same colour as the additional pair of SATA 3Gbps, which are powered via Gigabyte’s SATA2 chip. You have to read the tiny writing on the board to make sure that you plug your shiny new SATA 6Gbps SSD into the right socket. Thankfully, the UD3R (rev 2) allowed us to install Windows with our C: drive plugged into any of these SATA ports, unlike the original.

 

[rendez2k]

The HDDs are definitely in the SATA 3 ports (I disabled them in the BIOS to make sure!). The 2 x additional SATA 2 Gigabyte powered ports are the only two spare.

I've actually been told on the Gigabyte forum that it may be better to put them in the Intel SATA 2 ports because the SATA 3 ports are poor?

 

[sminlal]

You're not going to see any performance difference whether you plug your drives into the 3Gbit/sec or 6Gbit/sec ports. No hard drives can transfer data faster than 3Gbit/sec anyway (most of them max out at around 1.5Gbit/sec).

It would be better to run in AHCI mode (not IDE mode) because that enables some additional features, but it probably won't make a noticeable difference.

Chances are you've just got too many files on the the same drive and when the drive gets busy other programs trying to access it have to wait.

 

[rendez2k]

You're not going to see any performance difference whether you plug your drives into the 3Gbit/sec or 6Gbit/sec ports. No hard drives can transfer data faster than 3Gbit/sec anyway (most of them max out at around 1.5Gbit/sec).

It would be better to run in AHCI mode (not IDE mode) because that enables some additional features, but it probably won't make a noticeable difference.

Chances are you've just got too many files on the the same drive and when the drive gets busy other programs trying to access it have to wait.

Is AHCI better? Seems like very conflicting views from what I've read?

 

[anupam_luv]

Im also riding on the same boat...
but I'm using AHCI mode + Intel RST drivers (Also installed Marvel Storage Controller drivers befor RST) .... even then it look like Im using a normal 3Gb/s drive...

Dont knw why it is so, whts the use of 6Gb/s technology if it cannot deliver?

 

[sminlal]

Is AHCI better? Seems like very conflicting views from what I've read?

IDE drives were used in old PCs. SATA is the new standard disk interconnect, and "AHCI" is the protocol that's used by the disk drivers to talk to the SATA drives through the motherboard controller.

When SATA was first introduced, the device drivers included in older operating systems like XP didn't understand how to talk to SATA drives using AHCI. To work around this problem the SATA controllers on most motherboards support an "IDE" mode which makes the SATA drives look like IDE drives to the operating system. This lets older operating systems work using the older drivers.

But IDE mode doesn't support some of the newer features of SATA/AHCI such as hot swap and native command queuing (NCQ).

SATA/AHCI drivers have been included all recent operating systems, including Vista and Windows 7. If you're using one of those operating systems there's absolutely no reason to be using IDE mode, and because of the NCQ support you can theoretically get a little better performance using AHCI mode.

If you've read something that suggests IDE mode is somehow better than AHCI mode then I'm afraid it's just not right. The only exception would be if you're using an older operating system and you don't want to have to load an AHCI driver from a driver disk at install time.

Here's a review that compares the two modes: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=505&Itemid=38

 

[sminlal]

Dont knw why it is so, whts the use of 6Gb/s technology if it cannot deliver?

The 6Gbit/sec standard was developed because the very fastest SSD drives now require it. But the companies that create and use SATA chipsets don't like having to work with different SATA versions at the same time, so the entire industry is moving to the new standard.

This is no different than the drives that use the 3Gbit/sec SATA chipsets. Hard drives have used those chips for a few years now and have nowhere close to needing that much bandwidth.

Think of it like a bridge that can carry 10000 cars per hour - just because it's got that capacity doesn't mean that it's needed in the middle of the night.