Force Series 3 60 GB showing very poor read/write performance

This isn't your normal "wear and tear" performance either. The absolute best read/write speeds I'm getting in ATTO are around 240MB/s, less than half what they should be. You can check out the system I'm running on in my specs (I think, first post here, although I've lurked a bit) to see if anything stands out to you.

My SSD is indeed on the 1.3.3 firmware as that was, in fact, the thing that first brought me to this forum.

Also, I do have "SATA 3.0" enabled in my BIOS. In fact, I even tried disabling it, rerunning the ATTO benchmark, then going back to my BIOS and re-enabling it then running the benchmark again to see if that made a difference. (SPOILER: it didn't)

My BIOS and all drivers are up to date, unless new ones were released while I wrote this. That said, the results I'm getting look like they're hitting a "SATA II wall" i.e. I'm getting roughly SATA II read/write speeds (although they seem a little slow even for SATA II, to be honest) which makes me think it's an issue with the motherboard somehow.

This is extremely frustrating (:confused: + :mad: + :[pouts: = this) so any help anyone can offer will be greatly appreciated.

sounds like the drive is on the Marvel chipset port which does not seem to reach sata3 speeds. try the other ports.

from your manual..."* Advertised performance is based on maximum theoretical interface values from respective Chipset vendors or organization who defined the interface specification. Actual performance may vary by system configuration."

users with that sata chipset have the same limitation. the forum has tons of the same issue with marvel controller chips.

Ok first post here and it's about my Brand new Force 3 SSD, i also am getting real poor speeds and am begining to think it is my motherboard that is to blame.

Below i will post a screenshot of my ATTO bench.

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/803/attossdbenchmark.jpg

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I have done the basics checking firmware and Enable AHCI Mode and have a SATA3 cable and am 99% sure im on the SATA3 6gb/s port.

But these speeds are shockingly slow from what i have seen home users getting off this SSD.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Nope, all my storage drives are connected to the AMD southbridge, the affected Corsair SSD as a single disc and my two HDDs in a RAID 0 array. The Marvell controller is being used for my optical drives only.

Also, to make sure simply having the Marvell controller active isn't somehow causing the issue I've also tried running the benchmark with the Marvell controller disabled in BIOS and got the same results. In fact, that's actually the screenshot in my op as it was the last thing I tried.

have you checked the gigabyte forums yet? im sure you are not the first to run into this.

afaik only the intel or some nvidea chipsets run the fastest at or near spec. check on their forum and please report back.

thanks.

the second ATTO really looks like a controller limitation as its very consistent.

I would hope not, considering the pdf that came with the 1.3.3 firmware said that it had only been tested with intel and AMD controllers, which would indicate to me that the AMD controller should be running at least close to advertised speeds.

Anyway, I did find at least 1 person on the gigabyte forums with the same mobo having the same issue so I threw in a "yeah me too, but with a corsair SSD" (theirs is an OCZ Agility) and I'll let you know if I get an answer back.

i only use the info i learn here about which controllers have the best luck out of the gate. i should have said AMD as well but i just read about a driver update for an nvidia that sped up the mbs/s so it was fresh on my mind.

yes please let us know!

OK, this is awesomely weird. I found another thread discussing disk performance issues on the gigabyte boards. It seems that enabling/disabling RAID 5 support on the AMD SATA controller has a significant impact on drive speed. Since I had no plans to use RAID 5, I had disabled it. Once I turned it back on in the BIOS my ATTO benchmark speeds jumped up to around 400MB/s. Still a little slower than I'd like, but I noticed those speeds seemed to drop a little after I updated my chipset/RAID drivers, so that could be it. (I found them on the AMD website through a thread on the gigabyte forums, the drivers weren't yet available through the gigabyte website, which is why I thought mine were the most up to date)

Regardless, enabling RAID 5 support in BIOS for this controller seems to be the key. I have no idea why, and the drive still isn't benching quite as high as I'd like (was hoping to hit closer to 500MB/s) but I'll take it.

YESSS! think Marvell have released a new far better controller now,

NEW SPEED !!

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php?topic=3200.0

Drivers page

http://www.station-drivers.com/page/marvell.htm

Screenshot - Not max speed for this SSD but it has finally hit a Fast speed

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/5178/attossdbenchmark2.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Hope this helps any one else with Corsair Force 3 SSD and Marvell Chipset.