SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

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Thomas
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SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:36 am

Hi SPCR readers - I think it's time to try getting more out of my SSD.

My most demanding task is photo editing, namely Nikon NX-2. It's not running bad, but in certain situations it feels sluggish. It rarely pushes the CPU to the limit, and when it does, it's for a very short time. It never uses all my RAM.

During previous upgrades, the SSD disk clearly gave the biggest performance improvement in NX2, especially when I moved the temp files to the SSD.

So I suspect the SSD performance still might be the bottleneck - my current mobo only runs SATA 300, and according to a review of my Crucial C300, it runs quite some faster on SATA 600.

One way around the SATA bottleneck could be to buy a PCI Express SATA 600 controller. I do however have concerns regarding boot issues and/or performance. Do you have some suggestions/experiences here?

I use the IGP and dont plan on getting a discrete Graphics Card. Could I use one of these PCI Express ports?

1 x PCI Express x16 slot (Note3), confirming to PCI Express 2.0 standard
1 x PCI Express x4 slot, confirming to PCI Express 2.0 standard
3 x PCI Express x1 slot

I've also read, that there are SSD's on the way, which Mount directly in a PCI-Express slot. But are my PCI-Express ports fast enough?

All in all, at the moment I'm leaning more towards getting a new mobo, like the Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P. It dont have an IGP, so I'd need a graphic card and also DDR3 RAM. (It's hard to find mobos with IGP and SATA600).

Other considerations involve getting a faster/better SSD and/or faster RAM, but I'm very much in doubt how much I'd gain with faster RAM.

Current system:

AMD Phenom II 925
Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H
Kingston 6GB DDR2 ValueRAM
Crucial C300 64 GB
2 x Samsung F2 EcoGreen 500 GB

Do you have some suggestions?


Thanks :)
Thomas

lodestar
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by lodestar » Sun Aug 17, 2014 3:45 am

Thomas wrote:...It's hard to find mobos with IGP and SATA600
Have you considered the MSI 760GMA-P34(FX). It has 2 SATA III ports and onboard graphics, so would only need the addition of some DDR3 memory.

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Sun Aug 17, 2014 4:10 am

I checked it out, but it was sold out around here in Denmark. Maybe its available elsewhere, I check it.

How is the hw fan control on this MSI board?

Abula
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Abula » Sun Aug 17, 2014 4:30 am

One thing to check if you go with PCIe route is weather or not you will get to pass the trim command, else you will be losing performance writing on it, and you will have to do hard erases constantly to keep your performance. I would prefer loadstar suggestion into using native motherboard sata controller, im not that experienced on AMD, but i always had great results with intels satat III.

Also depends a lot into what are you doing to know if the ssd is the bottleneck, there are tasks that still will be, even with the fastest ssds or mulitple ssds arrays. You can always go into a ram disk if you need that much throughput. I somewhat doubt its the ssd though, but again depends on what you are doing with the PC.

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Sun Aug 17, 2014 11:14 am

Good suggestions here, thanks :-)

I've found the MSI board for a great, erhh, very low price. So I'll likely go the MOBO route.

RAM disk, good idea too. I might try that out later. One thing at the time...

How good are the MSI fan controllers? I mostly care about the CPU fan...

Also, as far as I've found out, the speed of RAM dont matter much with AMD Phenom processors. Am I right? Do I just buy the cheapest well known brand in the amount I want? 8 gig to start with, maybe 8 more later, if the RAM disk comes into play...

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by xan_user » Sun Aug 17, 2014 11:20 am

windows OS? what is the resource monitor showing for disk cue length ? im just curious...

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Sun Aug 17, 2014 12:05 pm

Well, xan_user, it's a bit embarrasing, but my way of thinking was off, and you was spot on. Disk que length is very close to zero.

It's Win7, by the way.

The odd thing, is that when I do a change to the Picture in NX2, the CPU is on quite low, and the screen show the result. Then, a few seconds later, the CPU maxes out for some seconds, and in some occations it's about 4-5 seconds, I think... It depends on what kind of change I make.

Okay, embarrasing or not, I'm happy you asked the question and I havent ordered that mobo yet.

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by xan_user » Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:10 pm

what are your results if you run an ssd benchmark? ive used AS SSD Benchmark in the past. it will also check if ahci is enabled.

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Pappnaas » Mon Aug 18, 2014 1:05 pm

Again as we expected, the write speeds weren’t so fantastic. In AS SSD a sequential write speed of just 75MB/sec is well below that of a decent 3.5in hard disk, and 80MB/sec speed in ATTO disc benchmark corroborates this.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storag ... d-review/8

The 64 GB choice could be your bottle neck. Read speeds seem up to par, for 2010 of course.

C300 maybe just outdated, i assume any 256GB SSD from 2013 or later will yield better results.

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Aug 18, 2014 3:30 pm

For grins, here's the C300 64GB vs the current MX100 256GB. Just to compare a couple of SSDs that cost the same but live in different times :)

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Mon Aug 18, 2014 6:51 pm

TRIM is on, AHCI is on, SSD firmware is upgraded to the latest, and no swap file. There's one newer mobo firmware, but I dobt it will help, as it's explicitly made for support for a newer CPU line. ANyway, I'll upgrade it soon.

I've found that the NX2 software has a slightly strange way of using the CPU. I'm in the process of analyzing a bit, and I'll be back about that part.

Sounds reasonable that a new SSD would improve things. Havent had the time yet to check if the below numbers are good or not. Though sequential speeds seems to be pretty much in line with ones from the bit-tech review.

I looked in the NX2 software editi tools temp libraries while editing, and to my surprise, there were only a few small files. It might be they are written to often, I'll have to check...

AS SSD Benchmark 1.7.4739.38088
------------------------------
Name: C300-CTF DDAC064MAG SATA Disk Device
Firmware: 0007
Controller: amdsata
Offset: 103424 K - OK
Size: 59,62 GB
Date: 19-08-2014 04:41:36
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 248,86 MB/s
Write: 47,09 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 22,67 MB/s
Write: 4,05 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 92,18 MB/s
Write: 4,55 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0,147 ms
Write: 1,011 ms
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 140
Write: 13
Total: 224
------------------------------

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Aug 19, 2014 4:32 am

Thomas wrote:AS SSD Benchmark 1.7.4739.38088

To run benchmarks is often preferable to perform a clean boot (I say so as your write data don't look like that good).

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:45 am

Hi Luca, I'm not really sure what you mean, except for the part that my write speeds could be better...

But is this due to my (old) SSD or is it due to SATA speeds?

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by vishcompany » Tue Aug 19, 2014 8:39 am

Thomas wrote:But is this due to my (old) SSD or is it due to SATA speeds?
Are we talking about read or write speeds? Here are the benchmarks of my X25-M 80GB, which has a SATA 3Gb/s (SATA 300) interface (I left your numbers for comparison)

------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 249,22 - 248,86 MB/s
Write: 78,89 - 47,09 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 16,75 - 22,67 MB/s
Write: 28,55 - 4,05 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 133,88 - 92,18 MB/s
Write: 50,53 - 4,55 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0,132 - 0,147 ms
Write: 0,165 - 1,011 ms
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 176 - 140
Write: 87 - 13
Total: 350 - 224
------------------------------

I agree with Pappnaas about the 64GB being the bottleneck.
But even then: Compared to the bit-tech test your write speeds are too slow. Is this SSD already worn out, or almost completely full? Did you leave some space for over-provisioning?

I also agree, that any 256 or 512 GB SSD will improve things dramatically (Samsung EVO in my other system has sequential writes of >440MB/s)

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by xan_user » Tue Aug 19, 2014 9:15 am

Thomas wrote:
But is this due to my (old) SSD or is it due to SATA speeds?
imo, old and too small/overused. for photo/video editing you want a lot of overhead on the disk. you should try and keep drive space at 50-70% full at most. i like this guideline for hdd's too, not just ssd's.

for an above average media editing machine, id suggest 2 ssd's one for the OS, and one for programs and files. (of course with frequent backups to external nas or external drive, and maybe cloud too)

edit: as for sata2 vs 3, i havet read it all but, you might want to check out this older linky, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sat ... ,3110.html

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Tue Aug 19, 2014 11:02 am

Thanks for the stats, vishcompany, they certainly indicate here's room for improvements.

I have 27,9 GB free of 59,5. It's about 3 years and 3 months old. Sometimes I'm using an imaging tool (similar to Ghost), which completely overwrite everything on the SSD. Dont know if that's particularly hard on the SSD...

I have the OS and all my programs + temp files from my photoeditor on the SSD. All my data are on old school disks.

I'm aiming for a highend photo editing machine. I'm looking for eliminating these 5-10 secs wait time during certain photo editing operations. One of them is noise reduction.

That article at Toms Hardware was great - since we already know that my SSD could be faster, I've counted out the SATA upgrade (at least until I upgrade my MOBO some day).

However, I still need to figure out if the SSD or the CPU is the bottleneck. I'll start resource monitors for the photo editing thing one of the days soon, and get more accurate analysis.

Thanks for all replies so far :-)

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by vishcompany » Tue Aug 19, 2014 3:04 pm

What puzzles me still is the fact you wrote earlier, that you apply a change on an image and it is shown almost instantaneously. Only after a little while the CPU maxes out for a few seconds. Doing what?

It certainly is worth checking also the Disk I/O in Resource monitor.

3 years does not sound too bad, unless you have been torturing it badly. Can you access SMART somehow? (I don't know if there is a tool by Crucial like Samsung magician or intel toolbox). Most SSD show a number of total writes.

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Aug 19, 2014 3:38 pm

Thomas wrote:Hi Luca, I'm not really sure what you mean

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796/en-us

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135/en-us

Thomas wrote:But is this due to my (old) SSD or is it due to SATA speeds?

IMVHO, if you have the same write speed after a clean boot, more probably to the SSD itself.

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Wed Aug 20, 2014 12:26 am

Thanks a lot Luca, I'll read up on this :-)
vishcompany wrote:Can you access SMART somehow?
I'll check up on SMART.
vishcompany wrote:What puzzles me still is the fact you wrote earlier, that you apply a change on an image and it is shown almost instantaneously. Only after a little while the CPU maxes out for a few seconds. Doing what?
This is excatly my main problem. I dont know what it's doing, except that I can see it's the editing software (NX2), that consumes the CPU. My guess is that it first updates the embedded JPG version of the picture/image, and afterwards works through the RAW, which is significantly larger. If, it's likely a matter of CPU. But it could also be it cant save the result and/or temp files fast enough. And this is where resource monitors comes into play.

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by xan_user » Thu Aug 21, 2014 7:24 am

6GB DDR2
just had a thought. what does your ram hard fault graph look like in recourse monitor during photo manipulation?

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Thu Aug 21, 2014 11:04 am

Sorry, but I'm unsure what "ram hard fault graph" is?

EDIT: To answer my own question: http://www.pcworld.com/article/241677/h ... nitor.html

Good suggestion, I'll try that. Probably in the upcoming weekend :-)

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Thu Aug 21, 2014 6:48 pm

RAM hard fault graph during photo manipulation: zero

Also had an eye on disk que length, and it's very close to zero too. I suspect this program simply is CPU hungry in certain situations. I have access to a Core i7 something laptop. I'll try the program n that one...

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:48 pm

I did some testing, and there's no traces of the SSD / disk is related to the CPU usage in NX2 (Photo editor).

Digging around in NX2, it appeared that certain operations on large photos, can cause the CPU to max out for 8-10 seconds. And still with this odd behavior, where I apply the change, the picture is corrected on the screen, and then the CPU maxes out for these 8-10 seconds.

I tried installing NX2 on a laptop with a very slow harddrive, 8 GB RAM and a Core i7 2760 QM 2,4 GHz. Same patteren, but now the CPU only maxes out for 1-2 secs.

So I'm considering a complete system upgrade. Being an AMD guy, I'm looking at MSI 760GMA-P34(FX) and a FX 8320. But I also have to look at what Intel can offer for the same price and if there should be a CPU with good value for Money for say, 50% more. The advantage of staying with AMD is that I can reuse my CPU cooler, but if I can get significantly better performance for, say 50-75% more in the Intel camp, I'll take that route...

No hazzle, just lurking and considering :-)

And thanks for all the help :-)

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by quest_for_silence » Thu Aug 28, 2014 12:52 am

Thomas wrote:So I'm considering a complete system upgrade. Being an AMD guy, I'm looking at MSI 760GMA-P34(FX) and a FX 8320. But I also have to look at what Intel can offer for the same price and if there should be a CPU with good value for Money for say, 50% more. The advantage of staying with AMD is that I can reuse my CPU cooler, but if I can get significantly better performance for, say 50-75% more in the Intel camp, I'll take that route...


The lack of any really good (I mean: reliable, with good fan management, technically advanced) mATX AM3+ board should address you towards Intel: take also into account that AMD is going to release some newer FX CPUs by the end of year.
Besides, the ASUS Triton 75 isn't that great for contemporary standards (moreover I think it's not up to the task with a hotter FX), so at first glance IMO that's not a compelling reason in favour of AMD.

Anyway, that's a partial picture of how Intel and AMD compare.

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by washu » Thu Aug 28, 2014 5:45 am

While for many things either AMD or Intel will be "good enough", RAW photo editing is not one of them. RAW editing is still something that can max out even brand new CPUs. I haven't used NX2 as I don't shoot Nikon, but I've used several other RAW editors and they all want the fastest CPU possible which today will be an Intel.

In your tests does NX2 use all your cores, especially on the i7? Or just max out a couple? If NX2 can only use a couple of cores then a fast i3 might be a good choice to save some money. If it uses all of them then an i5 or even an i7 will be a good choice.

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Fri Sep 12, 2014 5:21 am

Thanks for good suggestions here;

As far as mobo goes, I'd actually prefer a ATX above mATX - the reason for suggesting the MSI is it got integrated graphics and SATA 6. If I go the AMD route, I'mm willing to add in a graphics card in order to get better mobo choises. However, those money might as well go for a new Intel ready CPU cooler....

A note on my Asus Triton cooler, it's modded so the radiator is located directly in front of the exhaust fan. So I believe it can challenge even modern coolers. But of course, in case I'm wrong, I might end up adding a new cooler to the AMD budget.

Regarding CPU, when I tested on my Core i7 2760 laptop, NX2 maxed out all 8 cores. However, there are people out there with way more hefty machines, and there is a limit for how many cores NX2 can use (I dont recall the limit at the moment). But 8 cores should be perfectly fine.

Comparing Core i7 2760 and FX8320 it seems like the i7 has sligthly better multithreaded performance, however the 8320 has more than double L2+L3 cache. Which one will perform better with NX2 is hard to say, before trying out.

Anyway, Intel CPU's at the same price as the FX8320 dont seem to have significantly better multithreaded performance.... Am I wrong here?

Can you please name a couple of popular Intel mobos? Reliability, low idle power and good fan controllers are my priorities, as well as integrated graphics and SATA6. Are there some other modern features I shold look for?
Last edited by Thomas on Fri Sep 12, 2014 6:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Abula » Fri Sep 12, 2014 6:06 am

Thomas wrote:Thanks for good suggestions here;

As far as mobo goes, I'd actually prefer a ATX above mATX - the reason for suggesting the MSI is it got integrated graphics and SATA 6. If I go the AMD route, I'mm willing to add in a graphics card in order to get better mobo choises. However, those money might as well go for a new Intel ready CPU cooler....

A note on my Asus Triton cooler, it's modded so the radiator is located directly in front of the exhaust fan. So I believe it can challenge even modern coolers. But of course, in case I'm wrong, I might end up adding a new cooler to the AMD budget.

Regarding CPU, when I tested on my Core i7 2760 laptop, NX2 maxed out all 8 cores. However, there are people out there with way more hefty machines, and there is a limit for how many cores NX2 can use (I dont recall the limit at the moment). But 8 cores should be perfectly fine.

Comparing Core i7 2760 and FX8320 it seems like the i7 has sligthly better multithreaded performance, however the 8320 has more than double L2+L3 cache. Which one will perform better with tNX2 is hard to say, before trying out.

Anyway, Intel CPU's at the same price as the FX8320 dont seem to have significantly better multithreaded performance.... Am I wrong here?
You are comparing a mobile intel chip to an AMD desktop chip? Mobile chips have restricted by design the amount of voltage it can run off, they are also very limited on the cpu clocks because of the environment they will be running out. In my experience a mobile chip even an i7 is like 60% of what a desktop chip is capable, but also reflects on the consumption and power needed. That said, a desktop i7 chip will round circles on an AMD in most task, unless is very core oriented app.
Thomas wrote:Can you please name a couple of popular Intel mobos? Reliability, low idle power and good fan controllers are my priorities, as well as integrated graphics and SATA6. Are there some other modern features I shold look for?
If low consumption is your priority then look into Intel motherboards, even though they are getting out of the motherboard buisness, leaving it to 3rd party manufacturers, they are still in my experience the best in terms of efficiency, as an alternative, lately i seen very good results with AsRock, i would still bet my beans on intel though. Also a big key to get very low idle power consumption is the PSU, a lot of builds that you see achieve super low are using picoPSUs, as they are very good into those kind of low power settings.

Reliability... its hard to say with electrical components, none of all my boards have failed on me once they have started, intel, MSI, Asus, Supermicro, all of them i would consider good.

Fan Control... depends on what you want, under what it will run. For pure bios fan control with pure PWM fans i like MSI (asrock is pretty good, intel is also decent). For running under windows i like Asus and their software FanXpert. There is also Speedfan, that had very good success with a lot of forum members here that still swear by it, but if this is your plan search for one that has supports for all its sensors so you can set it up correctly.

Integrated Graphics all haswell (none E) will support intels built in iGPU on their chips, but crosscheck the chips as not all have the same iGPUs, some are more capable than others, nothing to do with the motherboard.

On the SATA6, intel haswell motherboards H87/H97/Z87/Z97 come with a intel native Sata III controller, aka SATA 6Gb/s.
Last edited by Abula on Fri Sep 12, 2014 6:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thomas
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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Thomas » Fri Sep 12, 2014 6:10 am

Thanks :-)

Fan control: I prefer the BIOS to do the work.

If I understand this correct "Integrated Graphics all haswell (none E) will support intels built in iGPU on their chips" - then I have to get a CPU with integrated graphics?

I agree on your reliability comment :-)

EDIT: The only reason for comparing the Core i7 2760 and FX8320, is that I have access to a laptop with this particular i7, and thus rin my beloved NX2 on that. So the comparision is only for getting an idea of what I can expect with CPU power like the Core i7 2760 ;-)

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by Abula » Fri Sep 12, 2014 6:31 am

Thomas wrote:Fan control: I prefer the BIOS to do the work.
I would give a look into Intel motherboards if you can although there are no H97 that i have seen, the last i saw was H87, Intel bios fan control is decent, not as good as MSI but still works out fine in two different motherboards i own. The trick with them is to go with good PWM fans, as in my experience all their headers are PWM fans headers and can be dropped really low, here where you have to play some with the bios but upon 30mins i have my intel motherboards setup the way i like them. Asrock and MSI in the other hand have a much more tweakable bios on the fan control, specially the CPU_FAN where you can set min and max temps and % pwm for very easy to setup (at least in my experience).

Personally i havent had good luck with MSI on the consumption side, not that its bad, just not as good as Intel motherboards (we are talking about little variance, like 2W). I know you said you prefer ATX, but worth mentioning that MSI recently launced a new line aimed at efficiency, personally i havent tested, and i want to but they didnt release a miniITX version =(, in case you want to read more, MSI introduces new ECO Series Motherboards Doing more with less, i leave you a couple of their boards that had hit retail,

MSI B85M Eco LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
MSI H97M Eco LGA 1150 Intel H97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
Thomas wrote:If I understand this correct "Integrated Graphics all haswell (none E) will support intels built in iGPU on their chips" - then I have to get a CPU with integrated graphics?
Most 1150 haswell chips come with iGPU, just different ones in terms of how capable they are, i believe there are the following, HD5200/5000/4600/4400 and Intel HD. i7 usually come with 4600, the 5000 series you can find in low power mobile cpus mostly, the lower end intel hd are on the celerons and pentiums, i3/i5 have different depending on the model. But for basic tasks even the ones on the celerons can do most of what we need on the usual day to day basis, but depending on your needs you might benefit for a higher end, for example if you going to use QuickSync where you use intel igpu to encode.
Thomas wrote:EDIT: The only reason for comparing the Core i7 2760 and FX8320, is that I have access to a laptop with this particular i7, and thus rin my beloved NX2 on that. So the comparision is only for getting an idea of what I can expect with CPU power like the Core i7 2760 ;-)
Establish how much cpu power you need, specially if you will benefit from hyperthreading, most people dont, but some do into encoding or editing, but in my experience hypertheraded cpus run hotter on load, so something to keep in mind, specially to check if you need it or not.

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Re: SSD bottleneck - new mobo, SATA controller or wait?

Post by quest_for_silence » Fri Sep 12, 2014 6:38 am

Thomas wrote:EDIT: The only reason for comparing the Core i7 2760 and FX8320, is that I have access to a laptop with this particular i7, and thus rin my beloved NX2 on that. So the comparision is only for getting an idea of what I can expect with CPU power like the Core i7 2760 ;-)
If it's possible, enter the laptop bios and disable the HyperThreading, then repeat your test with NX2: IMHO it could be interesting sharing the relevant details.

About the FX-8320, the newer FX-8370E should be a bit better.

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