14x SATA II, SATA III Benchmark Comparison - BIOS Enabled or Disabled Discussion

[nlovejr]

Yes, it is a newer version. Dell is 1019, this is 1030.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...ipset&lang=eng

I recently purchaced a m14x and installed a Corsair Force 3 180 GB SSD.My reads and writes were avg 220 mb/s but both wwre very consistant.This morning I decided to upgrade the chip set from 1019 to 1030 and after reboot I ran ATTO with the same results nothing changed.I then uninstalled RST and rebooted ran ATTO right before leaving for work and both Read and Write were at or above 500 mb/s.Will post .jpg showing before and after this evening.Seems RST is very flaky...

[nlovejr]

attached are my results from before and after removing RST

[c69k]

Very nice. Yes MSAHCI is the way for M14X. I think laptop motherboard RST makes sure that everything saves power. I have eliminated all bugs for my SSD to run NORMAL and Fast lol

Force looks like a good stuff. I bought 2x4 gigs Kingston Hyper X 1600 pnp and cant wait to receive it in two days.

I think I will never use classic HDD again.

[Bungletron]

I have upgraded my hard drive to a 512GB Crucial M4 on my M14x, I am very happy with the speed boost even though I have confirmed via AS SSD that I am limited to sata 3Gbit. I am however less than impressed by the reliability issues from cold boot and hibernate, for one it never resumes from hibernate as others are also documenting in this thread. Like the others here, stability after boot and in Windows is rock solid.

I also have a 256GB Crucial M4 (identical throughput specs to the 512gb, both on firmware revision 0009) in my desktop running at full sata 6Gbit speeds. Benchmarking aside, when it comes to real world responsiveness I am going to stick my neck out and say under normal operation I can perceive no speed difference or extra sluggishness between these sata 3Gbit and sata 6Gbit systems, both are what I would class extremely fast and responsive compared to HDD (and if I discount reliability issues on the M14x).

I am on bios A04 and have read posts about the custom A05 bios, honestly I am not interested in getting the sata 6Gbit speeds as I have explained, I am more interested in my system booting and resuming from hibernate as it should and did before. Can anyone give any advise whether the procedures documented here about going to custom A05 bios and changing the storage breaks setting will remove these reliability issues, I do not care to do anything else I simply require the most reliable system possible without actually losing any performance.

[c69k]

My startup issues were connected directly with firmware version for my OCZ SSD. The latest FW 2.15 caused huge start up problems, previous 2.13 is stable.

As for Crucial I have read this:

Solution: C300 Disk Freeze-ups in Windows 7 solved... - Crucial Community

[Bungletron]

As for Crucial I have read this:

Solution: C300 Disk Freeze-ups in Windows 7 solved... - Crucial Community

cheers C, but I am doubtful that is the solution because he states:

when I use the Rapid Storage from Intel, the entry in the Event Viewer is: Event ID:9 - The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.

My issues are not manifested via an event viewer error message during Windows 7 operation, operation after startup is rock solid, it is startup from cold boot and hibernation that craps out during the actual startup.

I will probably give both methods a try and post the results here.

[c69k]

Can you flash a different (previously relesed) firmware?

[Quinn]

If you'd like to have an official statement that I got from a DELL engineer is that the current Alienware M14x is having a SATA II port and does have a supported function for SATA III, however operates only on 3 GB-s as it's backwards compatible.

Maybe upcoming Alienware M14x will have an actual SATA III port instead.

Frankly that the current M14x does not have a SATA III is terrible.

[$horty]

If you'd like to have an official statement that I got from a DELL engineer is that the current Alienware M14x is having a SATA II port and does have a supported function for SATA III, however operates only on 3 GB-s as it's backwards compatible.

Maybe upcoming Alienware M14x will have an actual SATA III port instead.

Frankly that the current M14x does not have a SATA III is terrible.

Then how are some people achieving SATAIII speeds? This doesnt make sense.

[c69k]

The M14 manual says support=yes, speeds=no. I think, in their labs, they always ran SSD using Intel RST drivers. MSAHCI driver guarantees SATA III (6Gbps) on (I believe) every M14X.