Need some official answers from DSO

Preferably one of the guys who is actually involved with the builds.

Question 1:  Various people have reported negatively on the SATA 6 Ports being used with SSD's in that "Trim Commands are not supported"  My own research has led to a mixed set of results, Older Marvel device drivers did have issues with Trim not being passed to the SSD, However from what I have read in various places New drivers for the Sata 6GB ports have resolved this issue.  So my question is, with the Rampage III Extreme Board, does it make sense to plug the SSD into the Sata 6gb ports or not?  if the Port does not support trim, this would seem like a big no go.

Question 2:  Various people have differing opinions and commentary on Memory over 6GB on X58 boards.  Is there an actual problem in Overclocking systems with 12GB of Memory (in this case it will be the Rampage III Extreme board)

As I have said Ive seen a lot of commentary on the forms about this and have googled my little fingers off reading other peoples input and its a mixed bag, so am looking for the DSO builders responses here.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Question 1: I'll have to check with the team on this. I'll get back to you on this or our tech @Venom will shortly. We're going to verify this in-house on a system.

Question 2: More memory makes overclocking a little more complex on certain setups. Going with 12GB isn't an issue, even if you want a high-overclock. Going with an unlocked processor such as the i7 980X makes it easy since we don't have to worry to much about the BCLK and can easily overclock the CPU via multiplier increases.

MagiK,

I'm glad you asked those questions, especially the one in regards to RAM and overclocking. I had decided to drop to 6GB, even though my current work PC (That I can't bring home with me ) is 12GB, due to potential overclocking issues. But if I can get a nice set of 12GB RAM, which I know from experience I can utilize (for work tasks), and still receive a nice o/c then I'll most likely go that route.

higher density sticks pose a bit more problem than standard ones. We went through this when moving from 1Gb sticks to 2Gb sticks. But either way 1600Mhz RAM 12Gb is not a  problem, it does put more stress on the integrated memory controller, but it is not a big deal, high RAM speeds does magnify the problem. It takes a very, very good IMC to run 2200Mhz+ of 12Gb RAM stable.

higher the RAM speed, the harder it is to get stable.

no, it has nothing to do with the RAM, it has everything to do with the Integrated Memory Controller, which is on the CPU itself. Taking 2000Mhz RAM and running it at 1600 is no less load than running 1600Mhz RAM at 1600Mhz, most 1600 Mhz RAM will run at 2000Mhz anyways, just loose timings. lol

Thanks for the info Venom, it is something that will be vital to my build when the new systems get released.  I will need to know how to have my Disks connected.


Justin So what you are saying is that, the Higher Specced RAM will not perform better than 1600 RAM?  The OC's will be the same or less?

So the Corsair Dominator memory might perform better after all, but not be Bang per Buck wise?

Edited by MagiK - 04 Nov 2010 at 2:42pm

1600MHz DS Certified and Corsair have the same speed and timings, so the performance should be identical.

Originally posted by MagiK Thanks for the info Venom, it is something that will be vital to my build when the new systems get released.  I will need to know how to have my Disks connected. Justin So what you are saying is that, the Higher Specced RAM will not perform better than 1600 RAM?  The OC's will be the same or less?

Higher speed RAM is just that,  If you are getting the 980x CPU, RAM speed will not effect the overclock at all.

Originally posted by justin.kerr Originally posted by MagiK Thanks for the info Venom, it is something that will be vital to my build when the new systems get released.  I will need to know how to have my Disks connected. Justin So what you are saying is that, the Higher Specced RAM will not perform better than 1600 RAM?  The OC's will be the same or less? Higher speed RAM is just that,  If you are getting the 980x CPU, RAM speed will not effect the overclock at all. RAM speed and CPU speed are not connected, there are done independently. The faster the RAM the better, performance wise, but, scaling is not linear, the faster you go, the less the gain will be. Myself, if using 1600Mhz RAM I like the Timings to be CAS 6, CAS 7 at the max, but I also tune every single timing, where from DS 95% of the timings will be on AUTO.  The total bandwidth that RAM can handle is not a calc just off the RAM speed, but also the timings, or cycles, and also the BUS speed, going to and from the RAM also influences the bandwidth.

If you have some time one day, I'd like to know what the other 100 timings are for lol.  I guess google could tell me but, I'm more interested in the ones that will have a greater increase in performance, versus those that have a very minimal impact.

eh, there is definitely not a lot of good info online about it, there are bits and pieces, but thats really such a degree of fine tuning that its tireless from what i understand from justin, lol, not something you slam together in a few hours

Originally posted by justin.kerr <FONT style=": #000000">Alex have you guys been looking at the high density RAM?  the 3 stick 12Gb sets are getting very affordable. 12Gb is no problem overclocking, especially 1600Mhz, if you want 2200+Mhz stable, it gets a lot harder.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll ping the product team about it.

Let me ask him.

Dragoon I want a firm answer from someone who is actively testing it now, Ive found conflicting reports from all over the net...so I want an answer from the people that will be building my system.  No offense.  Apparently from what I can tell the problem was not the Marvell chips but the drivers being used....or so it has been reported.


Edited by MagiK - 12 Nov 2010 at 5:31pm

I have my doubts about it supporting TRIM, now knowing how crappy that Marvell chip is with SATAII drives (not sure how it performs with SATAIII yet), or maybe it's just EVGA having issues.  I'll test both EVGA and ASUS.

I'll be testing the Marvell controller with different drivers within the next few days, has been crazy busy here.


Edited by venom - 12 Nov 2010 at 6:03pm

Is CrystalDiskInfo enough or does it get faked out?

I prefer CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD for testing.

Does Intel SSD Toolbox make a distinction between the TRIM command being sent, and the the controller/SSD doing anything with it?

EDIT: Never mind answered that myself, it reports a value of 1 for my RAID array, even though there is no TRIM in an array, so it can only tell you so much.


Edited by Dragoonseal - 12 Nov 2010 at 7:01pm