Asus Rampage III Extreme ZioMod Bios (Latest: 1601_S17)

[Chispy]

I haven't actually tried the 11.5 OROMs with the normal RST Drivers because according to everywhere, the 11.5 OROMs and RSTe 11.5 Drivers are meant to go together.

If the problems start happening when you install the 11.5 RSTe Drivers then it must be them that don't work properly on our board not the OROMs.

So far so good , Great Bios Raid ROM , the best ones by far 11.5 , thats with normal latest whql 11.2. Time to see if it is the 11.5 drivers or not that dont like x58. ill be back in an hour with 11.5 drivers installed.

[sinders]

Either that or the 11.5 OROMs paired with the RST 11.5e Drivers don't like my SSD Drives when configured in RAID for some unknown reason.

[Chispy]

Intel Raid ROM V.11.5.0.1414
Intel RST Driver 11.2.0.1006
Test # 1
Asus R3E X58 ICHR10
W7x64 bit
Raid0 128k Stripe size used
AS SSD
ATTO

7/18/2012 11.55PM


By chispy at 2012-07-18


By chispy at 2012-07-18


By chispy at 2012-07-18

Findings: Bios Raid ROM 11.5.0.1414 its faster than Bios Raid ROM 11.2 even with RST Driver 11.2.0.1006 as shown in the bench tests AS SSD and ATTO. It wont let me update to Intel Driver RST 11.5 , the system says it's using the latest driver and it's up to date. I will now re-install w7 x64bit installling RST Driver pressing f6 during w7x64 fresh installation and i will report back in a few hours.



Second Part

Test # 2

Intel Raid ROM V.11.5.0.1414
Intel RST Driver 11.5.0.1184
Test # 2
Asus R3E X58 ICHR10
2x Samsung 830 128GB SSDs Raid0 , Secure Erased Both SSDs
W7x64 SP1 bit Clean Fresh Install with all updates
Raid0 128k Stripe size used
AS SSD
ATTO

7/19/2012 3:32AM

AS SSD


By chispy at 2012-07-19

ATTO


By chispy at 2012-07-19

My Findings and Conclusion: More Performance out of the combination of using both , Bios ROM 11.5 and RST Driver 11.5 , so far this is the best combination of driver RST and Bios Raid ROM for a good bump in performance , Writes did improved the most. Much more ballanced performance across. Very stable so far. I will hammered it with a lot of work and benchmarks for one week to see how the performance has degraded , or if by miracle some kind of TRIM or garbage collection its past trhu the Raid0 but as simple drives and not as a Raid0 array , time and testing will tell us next week wednesday 25th of July i will post the same benchmarks AS SSD and ATTO to see how far degradation has taken this array in one week thru a lot.



Test # 3 and conclusion.

7/25/2012 10:34AM

One week has passed since i have started torture testing my Raid0 array , testing mode used as follow: 3 consecutive runs of each benchmark 5 times a day for a whole week AS SSD , ATTO , Cristal Disk , Anvil Storage Utilities , HD Tune , HDD Tach , Lots of writes and Lots of Reads + Large transfer files of BR Movies and huge pictures from diferent drives to and from the Raid0 array non stop for hours on end each day for 7 days , drive was used 24/7. Here its the real time performance of the same Raid0 array of 2x 128 Samsung SSDs on Intel ICHR10 x58 Using Intel Raid ROM V.11.5.0.1414 , Intel RST Driver 11.5.0.1184.

AS SSD


By chispy at 2012-07-25

ATTO


By chispy at 2012-07-25


Final Conclusion and my own opinion / understanding: YES some kind of Trim and or garbage collection its working under w7x64bit restoring performance back to optimal speeds , It is to my opinion and understanding that under w7 x64 there some new files within the driver that Fernando discover earlier namely C:\windows\system32\DRIVERS\iaStorF.sys , this file its some kind of new filter for the function of the new 11.5 RST Driver , this filter must be seen the SCSI device in the Raid0 array as single drives and passing TRIM and or some kind of Garbage Collection as it is the only logical conclusion after the rigorous torture testing done for 7 days to this Raid0 array , i observe very bad degradation on Reads and Writes after the 5th pass of all the bencmark test , the system Reads went down to 294 max reads and 232 Max writes on AS SSD and ATTO , but once i let iddle for a couple of hours the Performance went back up and was completely restored to optimal speeds. I will try to contact Intel for an explanation and if they answer my questions i will post them here , feel free to do your own testing , im done with mine and i did prove to myself that yes definitely something its improving performance back after iddle time of about 2 hours of iddle system time. Feel free to discuss my findings and if you have a better theory and understanding with real data as proff + extensive testing please let us discuss here , Long live W7 x64bit :thumbup:



By chispy at 2012-07-25

[lammer]

To Chispy,

I'll shamelessly reattach the screenshot of my findings on page 8 just in case you've missed it.

btw, i'm running the OCZ vertex-2 on RAID 0.

[KevinNash]

Everything's integrated in bios, of course! I don't think it's possible to flash the controller directly anyway. I borrowed a portable eSata drive and connected it succesfully to Marvell port 0... and it works! CTRL-M opens the bios config screen as expected, and bios/firmware version shown is 1.0.0.1033/2.2.0.1125...wow!

Hello I tried to open this screen by hitting Ctrl-M when booting, no way to succeed.

Is there a tip for that ?

[ZioGTS]

Strange... I just tried and it's working fine here. Check your keyboard and try again!

[KevinNash]

I haven't done the upgrade yet, I am still on Marvell Bios 1.0.0.1025.

Could it be the reason, did Ctrl M works on 1.0.0.1025 ?

Should I also change E6 and E7 on muy mobo Asus P7P55D-E ? I am not sure if it the same as your Rampage III ?

[ZioGTS]

If you want to update the firmware, and not only the controller bios, well yes, you need to update E6 and E7 too.

[sinders]

I haven't done the upgrade yet, I am still on Marvell Bios 1.0.0.1025.

Could it be the reason, did Ctrl M works on 1.0.0.1025 ?

Should I also change E6 and E7 on muy mobo Asus P7P55D-E ? I am not sure if it the same as your Rampage III ?

Since your board is different to ours, it might be a completely different way you have to do
it to upgrade the Marvell bios/firmware version on the Asus P7P55D-E.

Unforchantly, we don't have any experience in bios modding for that board.

[KevinNash]

Thank you for the help guys