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SSD Update - Intel ICH9R Problems Solved

 by Gary Key on December 31, 2007 1:30 AM EST
9 Comments | Add A Comment
9 Comments

We had hoped to have the first section of our SSD roundup available today. However, as it turns out, our time has been spent regression testing a total of six drives with the Intel ICH9R controller chipset on the X38/X48 test boards.  The reason for this is that Intel provided a solution for the 80MB/sec cap rate that we reported on earlier this year.  At least a solution that in initial testing under Vista, the SSD drives capable of exceeding the 80MB/sec barrier are now generating results near, or in some cases, better than the NVIDIA and AMD chipsets.

How is this possible?  Utilizing the Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver set 7.8.0.1012, setting the drives to AHCI operation in the BIOS, a clean install of Vista Ultimate 64-bit, Vista hotfix updates up to 943986, and a little bit of patience, we succeeded in breaking through the 80MB/sec barrier with our MTRON and MEMORIGHT 32GB drives.  We were extremely pleased when Jason at DV Nation contacted us yesterday with like results and even provided corresponding numbers for our update today.

We are still testing tonight (including XP), but from all indications the combination of AHCI operation under Vista, the latest Intel and Microsoft drivers/hot fixes has solved the 80MB/sec cap rate.  Our numbers today were generated with a test bed that features an ASUS Maximus Formula motherboard based on the X38 chipset, Intel Q6600 Quad Core processor, and 4GB of OCZ PC2-6400 Flex memory.


HD Tach 3.01


MTRON 32GB MSP 7000
 


 


MEMORIGHT 32GB MR25.1
 


 


MEMORIGHT / MTRON 32GB RAID 0 - Intel ICH9R
 

Our first HD Tach 3.01 results show the Intel ICH9R offering performance near the NVIDIA 780i on the MTRON Drive.  The most noticeable differences between the two drives is in the average write speed where the NVIDIA 780i manages a 83.2MB/sec rate compared to 80.9MB/sec for the Intel ICH9R.  However, this drive on the Intel controller managed two spikes where the minimum transfer rate hit 33MB/sec compared to 66MB/sec on the 780i.
 
The Intel ICH9R enjoys a slight advantage in both read and write transfer rates on the MEMORIGHT drive with average write speeds hitting 106.8MB/sec compared to 104.9MB/sec on the 780i.  Yes, the differences are very minor with this drive, but it does show that the Intel ICH9R is up to speed finally with the SSD drives.  We included a brief look at the RAID 0 performance between the two drives to highlight their read and write differences.  That does it for today, we will be back shortly with a full performance review on these very fast drives with a variety of controllers and applications.

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  • AnnihilatorX - Saturday, January 5, 2008 - link

    I cannot get my Mtron and ICH9R on P5K-E to work
    Whenever AHCI mode is enabled, my computer won't boot, the boot loader won't even load. I suspect that is caused by a timeout in loading the bootloader. There is an unknown cause resulting in a detection delay with Mtron drives, as reported below:

    http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/244776-14-dete...">http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/244...ection-d...

    With AHCI mode enabled, booting to Vista Installation CD, Vista setup would not recognise the Mtron drive. I suspect the Mtron drive has incomplete AHCI support. Mine is an Mobi 3000 16GB, which is a 2.5" one. So that may be the problem. But I have also read that it works fine with laptops with AHCI. Maybe that's something to do with ICH9R I am not sure.

    Using many of the reported working workarounds to convert my existing Vista and XP from IDE mode to AHCI mode failed miserably.

    I have given up on this already.


  • Mudvillager - Thursday, January 3, 2008 - link

    Look at that CPU utilization... Ouch!

  • Shining Arcanine - Saturday, January 5, 2008 - link

    The CPU utilization is not because the CPU has to do additional work, but because the data from the SSD is coming back so quickly that the CPU does not have to wait to process it. This makes everything processed much quicker, causing the CPU utilization to become higher, which is inversely proportional to the time it takes to process everything. This is a good thing.

  • Mudvillager - Thursday, January 3, 2008 - link

    This is so awesome, AT, you really are the best?

    My questions:

    Does this also apply to Intel P35?

    Does it still suffer from slow boot?

  • Mudvillager - Thursday, January 3, 2008 - link

    Of course I meant to use an exclamation mark after the first sentance.

  • gxavier - Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - link

    You're really missing out on the sdd speed with onboard raid. If you have money to afford an SDD drive, you should have the money to afford a real hardware raid card.

    I just swapped out my raid 0 array on my 680i (110mb/s capped, 80-90 mb/s average) for an Areca ARC-1210 pci-e controller in raid 5. Average sequential is 193 mb/s, and burst is in the high 690 mb/s range. Insanity.

  • testmeplz - Monday, December 31, 2007 - link

    I assume this solution wouldn't work on a laptop without the raid controller right? I guess my laptop has ICH8 as well.

  • irev210 - Monday, December 31, 2007 - link

    If you have a santa rosa laptop, most have AHCI enabled from the factory when vista is pre-installed.

    This means that you should be able to update past the roadblock.


    Besides -- 80MB/sec cap is still NOTHING to sneeze at on a notebook.

    More importantly beyond pure read speed is the access time and the I/O performance of SSD's.

  • Etern205 - Monday, December 31, 2007 - link

    Most of Intel's 3 series chipset uses ICH9 not ICH8.
    Except for the Intel P31 which on the Asrock mobo it uses ICH7.

    back to article...
    For the SSD, what is the sustain transfer rate?
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