Motherboards Motherboard compatibility

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Bloody_Pete, 11 Oct 2010.

  1. Bloody_Pete

    Bloody_Pete Technophile

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    Hi Guys

    I've got a P5Q-E and I was thinking about one of these, but would it work at full speed?

    Pete
     
  2. SuicideNeil

    SuicideNeil What's a Dremel?

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    Best guess, the mobo is limited to sata2 3Gb/s, so you may only get that speed with the USB3 sata 3 6Gb/s controller when transfering data between an external drive & internal drives connected to the mobo via its sata controllers. Im assuming thats what you had in mind, rather than using the controller to hook up some sata3 HDDs/ SSDs to the mobo- I'd guess you'd be limited to 3Gb/s again that way too, but Im only speculating [/ noob ]
     
  3. Bloody_Pete

    Bloody_Pete Technophile

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    I was refering to the PCI-E bus being able to support it :)
     
  4. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    Yea it will :thumb: but you'll be limited to Gen-1 bandwidth, although it is an x4 so it should have enough anyway.
     
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  5. roosauce

    roosauce Looking for xmas projects??

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    If it's first gen PCI-e then you're looking at 250MB/s per channel I believe, x4 giving 1GB/s. According to the manual, you have:

    1 x PCI Express x16 slot at max. x4 link(black). Presumably the one furthest from the CPU.

    This Asus U3S6 will share out the bandwidth across the two SATA 6Gbps and Two USB 3.0 connections.

    1 SATA 6Gb/s = 750MB/s
    1 USB 3.0 4.8Gb/s = 600MB/s

    Basically, one device at full speed should be absolutely fine. Two will be competing and could overflow the 4x PCI-e lanes if you are saturating SATA/USB.

    Alternatively, that motherboard appears to have two PCI-e 2.0 (second gen) slots with the full x16 form factor. The Asus U3S6 should be able to plug into these slots too if you're not using them.

    That would take your primary PCI-e slot down to 8x PCI-e 2.0 (which shouldn't make a great deal of difference to your 5870) but then you would have the full 4-lane 2GB/s available for the U3S6.

    It really depends how many devices you're expecting to plug into the card, and whether you mind using up your second x16 PCI-e 2.0 slot (and therefore dropping your primary PCI-e to 8x).
     
    Last edited: 12 Oct 2010
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  6. Bloody_Pete

    Bloody_Pete Technophile

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    Thanks for the info :) I was only planning on running a single SSD, one of the C300's unless more SATA 6Gb/s SSD's are released, and possibly a USB3 device, so it sounds like it should be fine in a PCI-E 1.1 slot for now :)
     
  7. roosauce

    roosauce Looking for xmas projects??

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    Nice one. I have a C300 and U3S6 on the way myself - should be a bit of fun!
     
  8. Bloody_Pete

    Bloody_Pete Technophile

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    Let me know how it fares :)
     
  9. roosauce

    roosauce Looking for xmas projects??

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    Sure!

    Ph4ZeD also bought this combo and found that it hit rated top speeds (350MB/s) just fine. He's using PCI-e 2.0 ...

    I should be receiving/installing tomorrow. w00t!
     
  10. roosauce

    roosauce Looking for xmas projects??

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    Feerk. So it arrived today and I've just spent a bunch of time trying to get it working.

    My system with the GA-EX58-UD5 simply wouldn't boot with an SSD connected to the U3S6. A bit similar to these chaps I found.

    After much banging of head :wallbash: I flashed my BIOS to F12 and it worked pretty much straight away from that point. The process did also have the effect of pushing everything to default settings, which may have helped.

    It looks to work a treat. Below are the ATTO benchmarks for my Kingston V+ RAID0 (on Intel SATA II) and the C300. The Kingstons actually look a lot better, although I think that some other benchmarks (IOMeter?) might show a different story. I'll give it all a good thrashing over the next few days.

    [​IMG]

    The ASUS card is sitting right above my GPU, so I hope it doesn't overheat ...

    Now to use Steam Mover to shift a bunch of games over to the C300. w00t!
     
    Last edited: 13 Oct 2010
  11. yenic

    yenic What's a Dremel?

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    Found this thread in google search for my own P5Q-E + asus u3s6 questions.. great info TY.

    I should note, I bought mine for a WD Passport SE (USB3.0) drive, not exactly demanding, but if you put something like that on the usb3 portion, and even with a Intel G3, the bottom x4 PCIE port will still be more than enough. As an external such as that won't top 100MB/sec. That leaves 900MB/sec (minus overhead) for a SSD, more than enough in my case. That slot does share with the 2 x1 slots, so if you use a sound card or such, you're dropping the bandwidth on the x4, I'd keep those empty.

    I use a G2 right now, but plan on getting a G3, and will test the native P45 vs the Marvell Sata controller. I'm guessing the Intel will be more consistent, with lower latency still.. but Marvell taking higher peaks. We'll see, but wanted something to do some testing on. :)

    I wouldn't have bothered with this USB3/SATA6 card, but I won't be upgrading for a few more years as I've been pleased with this rig for some time now. Q9450 + 5870 and Intel 160GB G2.
     

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