Rampage VI Extreme VROC question to ASUS Customer Support

[birdman941]

I would like to know how this person achieved this with VROC.

http://optane.weebly.com/

Only 3 drives

[Brighttail]

Those look about right for what 3 drives would do. My guess is that people get a little better bump being on the Dimm.2 or using the Hyper x16 as he can get 12 lanes off two slots rather than 3. Either way I'm not sure why you think these numbers are off. The Seq Reads with pure scaling would be about 8150 Mb/s and he had 7900+. I'm more impressed with the 4k numbers. After dropping about 25% with the addition of one drive there was hardly any drop off using the 3rd.

[mikeylam]

Hi Brighttail,

Are you saying that you tested a VROC RAID 0, using the intel RSTe driver (rather than Windows soft RAID under its disk management utility), you still managed over 200MB / s of 4K performance?

I tried multiple times using different version of the RSTe drivers but I couldn’t get it to do much better than 40MB. The only way to get it to do 200MB is to create the RAID under disk management utility instead.

Michael
*

When I tested this with a non-bootable drive, I did see a degradation in 4k use, but NOTHING like you are describing. Like Justin I went from like 350Mb/s to 289ish but nothing like 40.

[mikeylam]

I actually sent that guy an email asking for hints on his setup, but didn’t get much useful information.*

*

I would like to know how this person achieved this with VROC.

http://optane.weebly.com/

Only 3 drives

[Brighttail]

Hi Brighttail,

Are you saying that you tested a VROC RAID 0, using the intel RSTe driver (rather than Windows soft RAID under its disk management utility), you still managed over 200MB / s of 4K performance?

I tried multiple times using different version of the RSTe drivers but I couldn’t get it to do much better than 40MB. The only way to get it to do 200MB is to create the RAID under disk management utility instead.

Michael
*

WIth the Intel drives? No. I did it on two and three SM961s using both VROC as a non-bootable RAID and then through the WIndows RAID. Each time the windows RAID beat the VROC RAID, but I did see on other people testing multiple 900ps on VROC over 200mb/s was doable..

[mikeylam]

On both Tomshardware and PcPer reviews of 900p VROC raid, they both commented a substantially lower 4K performance at low queue depth when using VROC raid. I have also seen similar findings on an intel forum.

So I don’t know what’s wrong here but it really doesn’t seem to work properly, not in my view anyway.
**

WIth the Intel drives? No. I did it on two and three SM961s using both VROC as a non-bootable RAID and then through the WIndows RAID. Each time the windows RAID beat the VROC RAID, but I did see on other people testing multiple 900ps on VROC over 200mb/s was doable..

[Brighttail]

On both Tomshardware and PcPer reviews of 900p VROC raid, they both commented a substantially lower 4K performance at low queue depth when using VROC raid. I have also seen similar findings on an intel forum.

So I don’t know what’s wrong here but it really doesn’t seem to work properly, not in my view anyway.
**

I guess the question is HOW low? Dropping to 40Mb/s, yeah that is low, but going from 300 to 225Mb/s is a drop of about 30% which is about right for any RAID when a second drive is added. The latency of reading/writing to two drives rather than one is going to cause that. Adding a 3rd or 4th drive won't drop it as much as the initial drive.

[mikeylam]

If you look at this chart from Tom’s, the QD1 4K random read IOPs drops to around 1/5 of a single drive’s performance. *

So from 200mb to 40MB/s is about right...

PCPer though reports a less substantial drop from about 86k to around 55k 4K IOPs when they raided the Optane memory modules.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storag...rformance-Focu
*

On both Tomshardware and PcPer reviews of 900p VROC raid, they both commented a substantially lower 4K performance at low queue depth when using VROC raid. I have also seen similar findings on an intel forum.

So I don’t know what’s wrong here but it really doesn’t seem to work properly, not in my view anyway.
**

*

[JustinThyme]

If you look at this chart from Tom’s, the QD1 4K random read IOPs drops to around 1/5 of a single drive’s performance. *

So from 200mb to 40MB/s is about right...

PCPer though reports a less substantial drop from about 86k to around 55k 4K IOPs when they raided the Optane memory modules.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storag...rformance-Focu
*

*

Toms hardware is a source, not an authority. They are not even a good source, many errors in their reporting, testing methods and outcomes. A drop from 200 MBPs to 40 MBPs is not even close to right and points to either a flaw in the testing method or a flaw is the setup. Why do I say this? IM RUNNING VROC ON TWO OPTANE DRIVES RIGHT NOW. This is from experience, not second or 3rd hand knowledge. We are only trying to help you to see as some of us have been hard at this for a few months now and actually own the hardware. You are just a bit late to the party.

[mikeylam]

I am not trying to argue which source is authoritative, that’s why I quote different sources to the extent I can. The only authoritative source in this matter would be Intel but it doesn’t look like they are actively helping. See below thread on the intel forum discussing this matter. Another user raiding 4 Optane modules getting like 37 MB/s. It’s puzzling. If you are getting close to 200MB/s under VROC, then good for you. I can’t get it to work. I think given this issue has been reported elsewhere including the Intel forum, they should address it. It’s not unreasonable for users to expect this to work given the costs of these equipments.

https://communities.intel.com/thread...rt=15&tstart=0

Toms hardware is a source, not an authority. They are not even a good source, many errors in their reporting, testing methods and outcomes. A drop from 200 MBPs to 40 MBPs is not even close to right and points to either a flaw in the testing method or a flaw is the setup. Why do I say this? IM RUNNING VROC ON TWO OPTANE DRIVES RIGHT NOW. This is from experience, not second or 3rd hand knowledge. We are only trying to help you to see as some of us have been hard at this for a few months now and actually own the hardware. You are just a bit late to the party.