SATA Controller Bottleneck?

[coopooc]

I'm wondering if anyone else has seen behavior like this or if I'm just unlucky. I've been experimenting with both a Sil3132 and an ASM 1061/2 based controller (both PCI-Expres) I used both of these controllers previously with multiport but I've since taken that out of the equation for performance reasons. Now I'm trying to directly connect one drive to one port.

 

For both cards though, I'm seeing performance around 92-98 MB/s and odd pauses about every 3 seconds where a write stops for about 1 second and then continues back at the normal speed. The source drive is much faster at more like 135 MB/s (according to the diskspeed script) so I don't think the issue is there.

 

I'd include more details but I don't have access to much else right now. At this point, I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar or if you have suggestions on troubleshooting. One obvious thing I haven't done yet is to connect the same drive to the motherboard's controller to see if it's the drive itself. Also, I haven't attempted to swap out the sata cable, it is a fairly long cable which may be a factor as well.

 

Thanks

[JorgeB]

According to my tests with a one or two devices, these are the max (sustained) speeds for those controllers:

 

SIL 3132

1 x 125MB/s

2 x 80MB/s

 

Asmedia 1601

1 x 375MB/s

2 x 206MB/s

 

[coopooc]

Thanks, that's really helpful. Curious to hear if you noticed similar pauses when you performed those tests.

 

Even with the pauses, the Sil3132 appears to be pretty close to where it's supposed to be but the ASM 1061 has something going on. I'm leaning toward my long sata cable...

[JorgeB]

Thanks, that's really helpful. Curious to hear if you noticed similar pauses when you performed those tests.

 

No pauses, could be cable/device or some other issue.