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El Quintron
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join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron

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[Parts Check] PCIe Gen 2 vs. Gen 3 Motherboard setup

(Mods feel free to move this to Hardware Support if you feel it's more appropriate)

I just installed an Intel 520 SSD in my system and moved by Win7/Ubuntu install over to it, and everything looks fine, except now I get a bios message on my P8Z77-V that says gives a SMART status that says

P0: SSD Drive
P1: (next hd in line)

Running PCIe Gen2

Shouldn't it be Gen3?

The SMART status has only been showing since installed the SSD... so I must have reconfigured something....

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu

MVM

None of the output shown has anything to do with SMART. The messages shown indicate a list of devices attached to SATA ports, followed by a message that has nothing to do with drives.

Have you asked Asus what that message means? I can theorise a good 4 or 5 reasons WRT what it refers to, but none of them are conclusive; they're all speculative.

El Quintron
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join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron

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PCIe generation 2 means PCIe 2 correct? (that would be evident but I'm making sure)

I'm fine with it not being a SMART status; I'm just wondering why I'm getting a PCIe 2 Status, I'm at work and I've got the manual for the mobo Open, if you want ask me a couple of questions I can probably answer them from memory... not the be best way to go about troubleshooting but that's all I've got right now
JoelC707
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Lanett, AL

JoelC707

Premium Member

Yeah that's what it corresponds to. Did you put in a sata card by chance? What you've mentioned so far is a mixmatch of information. You mentioned hard drives and SMART data and PCIe 2/3. PCIe 2/3 corresponds to the PCI bus not the sata bus, hard drives, or smart data. I'm thinking it may just be telling you an add-in card is operating in gen 2 mode even though your motherboard may have gen 3 slots. Also, if you did add in a sata card, just because the main x16 slots are gen 3, the others may be gen 2.

El Quintron
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join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron

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I'll boot it again and try and type out an exact status...

My GTX 670, is sitting in the PCIEx16_1 slot, but I have an audio card sitting in a PCI slot... those are the two only PCI/PCIe slots being used so I hope my GTX670 is running on PCIe 3... but I don't know how to tell...

EQ
El Quintron

El Quintron to JoelC707

Premium Member

to JoelC707
said by JoelC707:

Yeah that's what it corresponds to. Did you put in a sata card by chance?

I just put in an eSata card when I installed the SSD, so you're saying the message (running at PCIe 2) is probably related to that?

It would make sense because I'm not really detecting any performance losses on the GPU. (which is the only other think I could think about)

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA

koitsu

MVM

Have you asked Asus what that message means? Their Technical Support folks should absolutely know. Like I said, we can only speculate.

El Quintron
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join:2008-04-28
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El Quintron

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Not yet... I still have to get home, do some more tests (and submit a ticket to them if needed)

This started happening after I put in the eSata card though, so when I if I boot it w/o the eSata card, and it doesn't happen then we might have a winner.

I've also read what eSata is limited to Sata2 (or maybe even Sata1)

I will also post Asus's reply

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu

MVM

If it's only when you have an HBA installed, assuming the card is PCIe, then my guess is it's the UEFI system or BIOS printing a message regarding what negotiated PCIe capabilities it has with that card. But again: this is speculative. Asus will/should know.

The eSATA specification has no bearing on speed -- whatever/whoever told you it was limited to SATA150 or SATA300 is wrong. It only contains descriptions for physical and electrical characteristics.

But eSATA is probably going to go away with the introduction of USB 3.0, as well as the recent extension to USB 3.0 called "SuperSpeed" that permits up to 10gbit transfer rates and is backwards-compatible.

El Quintron
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join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron

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said by koitsu:

But eSATA is probably going to go away with the introduction of USB 3.0, as well as the recent extension to USB 3.0 called "SuperSpeed" that permits up to 10gbit transfer rates and is backwards-compatible.

FWIW:

I find eSata to be extremely termpermental with external drives and I don't think I'll miss it much if it goes away.

I've been fighting with one particular drive right now just to get it to mount with any kind of regularity on Ubuntu and it's driving up the wall, the only reason I'm even bothering is because the drive is USB2/FW400/eSata and eSata is the fastest of the three.