topic X25-M SSD Performance Question in Archive

X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:29:48 GMT

I recently installed an X25-M SSD in my system and although the Windows Experience Index rates it a 7.7 and CrystalDiskMark shows very good read/write speeds for this drive, I seem to be having issues with it while playing games. While running Fraps in my background I have been experiencing FPS spikes and freezes at certain times on a very non-demanding game that only uses a single core of the processor. I used to run this same game with a Western Digital Caviar Black Sata 6gb/s and had never experienced this kind of shakyness. I have installed the proper drivers for the video card and it just seems convenient that this started occuring when I installed this hard drive into my system.

Specs:

Motherboard: ASUS p7p55d-e

CPU: Intel Core i7 860@ 2.8 GHz

GPU: XFX Radeon HD 4870

RAM: Patriot Sector 5 Series DDR3 4GB

Primary HD: INtel X25-M 80GB (Windows 7 Ultimate)

Secondary HD: Western Digital Caviar Black 640 GB SATAIII (Windows 7 Ultimate, still has an operating system since it used to be my only HD)

I checked the firmware using the firmware upgrade tool and it is up to date. The drive was set in AHCI mode when I installed the operating system because I read about people getting better performance rather than IDE. Any feedback is appreciated.

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:33:40 GMT

I realized I should probably add that although I don't know much about SSD's and what not, I did notice that when I ran HD Tune Pro to test the Read speeds on my X25-M and my WD Caviar Black, although the Read obviously averaged much higher on the Intel X25-M, the WD seemed to be VERY steady with very little variance according to the trend line being drawn, while the Intel X25-M seemed to have a MUCH BIGGER spread having a range of something like 80-100 mb/s. I can provide screenshots to supplement my point if I am being unclear. Thanks Again.

Matt

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:31:02 GMT

This thread might help and the link below.

http://communities.intel.com/message/97036# 97036

http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/x25m/sb/CS-031542.htm

Message was edited by: redux

Edit 2

If you are getting consistent performance with hdd it does not sound like a problem with your system, but a good tool to find out if you have a latency problems is DPC Latency Checker.

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Also are you saying your reads are 80/100mb/s? That sounds wrong. Try running an AS SSD Benchmark and post the results.

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:31:40 GMT

About the read speeds I guess I was being unclear. I was trying to say that in comparison the the WD drive, HD Tune Pro showed a lot of inconsistency (which I called variance) in the read speed showing a range of 80-100 mb/s, Range meaning the difference between the highest and lowest read.

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:43:22 GMT

According to that other thread, a possible solution would be the install the RST drivers, but seeing as I don't have a floppy drive or an external one for that matter I can't really do that at this moment. Assuming there is no way to get around this, is there a possibility that a USB floppy drive would not suffice due to compatibility and an internal floppy would have to be the way to go?

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:50:32 GMT

By default Win 7 installs its own ahci driver. If you want to change that you need to F6 the driver, however there is nothing stopping you installing the RST drivers after Win 7 has installed. i.e you could update the driver on your existing copy of Win 7. Just run the driver package and it will install.

Also check out the Intel thread I linked for other options to trouble shoot.

Regarding the performance if you can run AS SSD Benchmark it will tell if the drive is aligned, what driver you are using, your access times and read/ write performance in random and sequential test patterns, which will enable me to see how your drive is performing.

http://www.alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?cat_id=4

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:31:23 GMT

Thanks for the advice. I understand that I can install the RST drivers, but I don't have a floppy drive to do it with. I guess I was asking if it would be better to buy an internal floppy drive or if an external USB one would suffice. Or, if there were some other way to do this without "slipstreaming" the windows 7 setup disk with the RST drivers supplemented. I'll Supply Screenshots of the AS SSD Benchmark program below:

Interesting how CyrstalDiskMark showed slightly higher results than this program.

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:13:49 GMT

As I mentioned you only need to use a floppy or USB drive if you want to use the F6 method during the OS installation processes to use the latest Intel drive. If you have already installed the system you can update the driver without a floppy or UBB drive by downloading the driver and installing it from your desktop in the operating system environment.

You can find the driver installation package here:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=2101&DwnldID=18859&lang=eng http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=2101&DwnldID=18859&lang=eng

Looking at your results I'd say (by looking at your write speeds) that the drive is slightly degraded, but as you are running the default msahci driver and Win 7 it should be automatically running to trim to get it back to top specs. Weird.

If you have an 80Gb drive your sequential writes should be around 80mb/s. If you have the 160GB drive your writes should be around 100MB/s. Your 4K writes also seem low.

Why not try this: install the latest RST driver. Download Intel SSD toolbox and run a manual trim command. Then retest to see if things have improved.

Toolbox is here:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455

EDIT:

To better answer your question you can get by without a floppy drive, but it can be a pain sometimes unless you make a bootable usb device. Its not necessary to make a bootable device to F6 the drivers as you can simply locate the location of files in the usb device and install from there, but with some firmware updates etc a bootable usb device is needed if you don't have a floppy.

Hope that helps

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:30:26 GMT

I installed the RST drivers from your link and ran the Toolbox SSD Optimizer and the results I got are below. Everything seems just a bit lower except for sequential read and writes. I can see the change from where it had msahci to iaStor, which i assume refers to rapid STORage technology.

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:48:36 GMT

Boy that sucks. Sequential speeds are spot on, but random speeds and access times are off. It's like you're using the JMicron port but that benchmark shows the Intel driver so it can't be. (Worth double checking though. The JMicron SATA port on that board would not perform as well as the Intel SATA ports).

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:25:54 GMT

I took a screenshot of my mobo because I really am not that computer savy. I'm trying to look to see if theres any indication on the board of which ports would be Jmicron and which would be intel. Do you know how to discriminate between the two?

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:39:35 GMT

The blue ones should be the Intel ports. The JMicorn port is the black one marked SATA_E1.

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:43:27 GMT

Yea I just checked the manual to make sure. The ssd is plugged into an intel port for sure.

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:13:16 GMT

Is it odd that the read/write speeds vary in a range from 5-10 mb/s for successive tests in the benchmark program. Should there be a variance like that?

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:37:22 GMT

It's normal that slight variations would occur from benchmark to benchmark but that does not explain your 4k or access times. I don't know what else to suggest other than make sure the motherboard has the latest bios version. You should be getting much better performance on that motherboard.

Hopefully someone else will chip in with some suggestions.

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:59:57 GMT

I really appreciate the help and suggestions thus far. Hope I get some more feedback too

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:03:29 GMT

I'm starting to suspect that the Intel SATA controller is gimped somehow on that motherboard. It seems performance on Intel controllers can vary quite a bit depending how they are integrated on the motherboard. The other SATA ports are actually using a Marvel controller that is SATA III as opposed to SATA II on the Intel controller. The Marvel controller is however not that good performance wise with SSD. It might however be worth giving it a shot if your Intel controller has been gimped….you might just be able to squeeze a bit more out of the SSD.

Below is what I get with a 160GB drive on an Asus Ramp Extreme with ICH9. To be honest in real life applications you should not see a see performance difference between my score and yours.

Name: INTEL SSDSA2M160G2GC

Firmware: 2CV1

Controller: iaStor

Offset: 1024 K - OK

Size: 149.05 GB

Date: 02/08/2010 11:28:28

------------------------------

Sequential:

------------------------------

Read: 252.56 MB/s

Write: 104.72 MB/s

------------------------------

4K:

------------------------------

Read: 21.33 MB/s

Write: 51.20 MB/s

------------------------------

4K-64Threads:

------------------------------

Read: 157.31 MB/s

Write: 66.32 MB/s

------------------------------

Access Times:

------------------------------

Read: 0.078 ms

Write: 0.085 ms

------------------------------

Score:

------------------------------

Write: 128

Total: 437

------------------------------

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:07:46 GMT

I realized that my bios actually was not up to date and although I was hopeful that maybe somehow this could be related to my issues after updating the BIOS there really is no difference according to the benchmark program. You think I should try connecting it to the SATA3 port just for kicks?

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:26:20 GMT

.......or maybe switch the video card to a different pcie lane. A total wild shot. Are you still getting freezes by the way?

Re: X25-M SSD Performance Question

idata — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:35:04 GMT

Yea every now and then I get the freezes and the frame drops are still hapenning. It's just annoying that the performance should be apparently better than the WDC drive, but its almost as though its not as fast during game play. It is faster with loading programs and Boot Up and Shut Down.