topic Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index in Archive

[Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:41:52 GMT

Hello,

I use the Intel Postville 80GB SSD in a Dell Precision M4400 Laptop with Core2Duo T9600.

The "old" Samsung HDD had an Experience Index of 5.8.

The "new" Intel SSD an Experience Index of 5.9.

The AS SSD Benchmark results are fine with the SSD.

Where ist the Problem?

Best regards

marco

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:53:11 GMT

Try to switch off the Antivirus program, torrent and any other programs what you are running in the background + "Enable write Caching".

Don`t forget to update your AS SSD. The newest version is: 1.4.3645.356.

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:16:37 GMT

Hello,

turning off the antivirus (avira) doesn't make any differences.

Here are the details of the Windows Experience Index:

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:09:56 GMT

Have you enabled AHCI in the BIOS?

Have you enabled the "enable write caching" in the Device Manager?

If you run the latest AS SSD it can tell you is the Offset/Alignment correct on the left side just under the msahci, above the SSD size. It should show 103424 K - OK.

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:35:12 GMT

Yes, AHCI in enabled in Bios and the MSahci drivers are installed.

"enable write caching" is enabled too. (standard value)

The offset/alignment is ok.

Any good advice?

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:59:39 GMT

Do you have "flash cache module" setting in the BIOS? To make faster the HDD. I`ve and I switched it off. (Dell Studio 1545) I`ve no more idea.

(I think you made a clean Win install and not "cloned" (alignment ok).

Message was edited by: Dverez

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:44:34 GMT

Have you simply tried to re-run the WEI a couple of times?

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:27:57 GMT

Have you tried to switch the power option to "High Performance"?

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:26:19 GMT

I solved the problem!

I installed the chipset driver (not ahci) from the Intel Homepage and not from the Dell Homepage.

And now the Experience Index is OK!!!

Best regards

marco

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:45:51 GMT

Your WEI is better but your benchmark results are worse. For one thing, not using the msahci driver means you have to run TRIM from the SSD Toolbox to keep your drive performing like new. The Intel driver at this time does not pass the TRIM command--new firmware is needed from Intel to accomodate drivers other than the msahci from Microsoft in Windows 7.

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:41:15 GMT

You are right, but I only change the chipset driver, not the ahci driver. The ahci Driver ist still msahci.

The weaker results are maybe the tolerance of the benchmark?

So, what is the best configuration at this moment?

- MS chipset driver & MS ahci driver (weaker WEI index)

- Intel chipset driver & Ms ahci driver (possibly weaker SSD Benchmark)

- Intel chipset driver & Intel ahci driver (no automatic TRIM)

best regards

marco

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:13:18 GMT

As you can see, the WEI result does not correlate with your benchmark result. Your poor WEI result may have been because the drive needed to be "TRIMMED" or... I get 7.7 with WEI and use msahci driver.

The best configuration for me is using the msahci driver and have TRIM run without Toolbox. When Intel comes forward with new firmware so that Intel driver passes the TRIM command, then I would switch to Intel driver to see if that makes any difference. You know, benchmark results do not always show benefit in real-life experience.

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:32:25 GMT

I to get a 5.9 score for my 80gb postville gn2 ssd. It started when I upgraded the intel chipset drivers and using the msachi driver. I did not have this problem before as my ssd scored 7.6. I found that installing the intel sata driver brought the score back up to 7.6. Comparing benchmarks between intels driver and microsoft msachi driver gave the same results more or less using AS SSD. So as I want to use automatic trim I have decided to continue using the msachi driver (which gives a 5.9 score) as the score does not reflect the real performance of the SSD.

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:49:50 GMT

I use the msahci driver and get 7.7 in WEI, so I find it odd you have that problem of getting 5.9...

The only difference is I have a 160GB G2 and you have an 80GB G2, assuming you have updated to TRIM firmware.

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:56:14 GMT

Yes I have updated the firmware. the 5.9 score started yesterday after updating the intel chipset drivers. I get the same performance benches from both intel sata and msachi driver . The only difference is that the achi driver scores 5.9 wei and the intel sata driver scored 7.6 wei. It must be a driver problem in the new intel chipset drivers.

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:15:56 GMT

One would think getting same benchmark results would yield same WEI results. However, the two are different tests in that Windows 7 is not testing same way as benchmark tests. If that happened to me, I would be concerned and go with the better WEI score with benchmark results being fairly equal.

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:59:33 GMT

Ok I have sorted it. After checking device manager I saw that the ahci sata controller was on ch 6. My drive was connected to channel 1. So I moved it to channel 6 re-ran the wei and it now scores 7.7 with the msahci driver. Ran some benches and results are down a couple of megabytes with read and writes but I noticed that on AS SSD when it was doing the read / write test the figures were more sustained and I did not have any low drops like before. Excellent.

Re: [Solved] 80GB Postville - Weak Windows 7 Experience Index

idata — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:20:14 GMT

Ok I think I have solved this now. The problem seems to be with windows data store folder. If I run the wei a few times the disk score goes from 7.7 to 5.9 which is what it scores if I re-run it. If I delete the contents of the datastore folder, windows/performance/winsat/datastore, Then re-run the wei the score goes back up to 7.7. I have tried this over and over and the same happens every time. Strange.