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    L521X Bios and SATA 3 performance?

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by hanime, Jan 9, 2015.

  1. hanime

    hanime Notebook Evangelist

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    I have a 500GB mSATA in my XPS with BIOS A11. The reason I am using the older BIOS is that the latest BIOS, A16, does not seem to support SATA 3. However, has anyone been able to use SATA 3 speeds on other newer BIOS?

    Thanks!
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2015
    hanime, Jan 9, 2015
    #1
  2. cadroguett

    cadroguett Newbie

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    have u tried the a15 bios?
     
    cadroguett, Jan 26, 2015
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  3. Simon Brady

    Simon Brady Newbie

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    A15 seems fine on my L521X running Fedora 20:
    Code: 
    [    1.358776] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 6 ports 6 Gbps 0x7 impl SATA mode
[    1.364432] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xd2717000 port 0xd2717100 irq 27
[    1.364436] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xd2717000 port 0xd2717180 irq 27
[    1.364438] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xd2717000 port 0xd2717200 irq 27
[    1.668450] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[    2.298762] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[    2.299420] ata2.00: ATA-8: SAMSUNG SSD PM830 mSATA 32GB, CXM13D1Q, max UDMA/133
[    2.605401] ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
    But with A16 the throttling is clear to see:
    Code: 
    [    1.358710] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 6 ports 3 Gbps 0x7 impl SATA mode
[    1.364410] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xd2717000 port 0xd2717100 irq 27
[    1.364413] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xd2717000 port 0xd2717180 irq 27
[    1.364416] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xd2717000 port 0xd2717200 irq 27
[    1.671375] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[    2.296688] ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[    2.297214] ata2.00: ATA-8: SAMSUNG SSD PM830 mSATA 32GB, CXM13D1Q, max UDMA/133
[    2.602376] ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
    Do Dell publish BIOS changelogs anywhere? I wondered if the change in A16 could be to work around a chipset erratum, but none of the SATA-related errata in the May 2014 spec update seem to be specific to 6 Gbps operation.
     
    Simon Brady, Jan 27, 2015
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  4. Dmitro_ua

    Dmitro_ua Newbie

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    Hello! How you activated sata 3 for msata ssd?
     
    Dmitro_ua, Jul 12, 2015
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  5. mrputtputt

    mrputtputt Notebook Enthusiast

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    weird... i have a16 and decided to just run on lower sata speeds since the a11 was just too unstable (lots of crashes).

    i have the a16 since last year and frankly, i decided to live with the slower sata speeds which is still faster than the regular hdd speeds.
     
    mrputtputt, Jul 14, 2015
    #5