Intel 510 SSD Seen as 3Gbs Drive

[idata]

I just built a system on an Asus P8Z68 Deluxe motherboard that includes two Intel 510 256Gb drives. One is drive C and the other is drive D on ports 0 and 1 respectively of the Intel controller. I am not using the Marvell controller. I was dissapointed in the Primary Drive WEI score so I opened the Intel RST Management panel and noticed the C drive is reporting a SATA Transfer Rate of 3Gbs while the D drive is reporting a 6Gbs transfer rate. The only difference between the two drives is the C drive is running the PWG2 firmware while the other one is running the PWG4 firmware. Does anyone have any thoughts on what may be holding this drive back?

[idata]

I will share anything I find out.

[idata]

One new tidbit ... Last night before I went to bed RST reported drive C to have a 6Gbs transfer rate. This morning RST reported the same drive having a 3Gbs transfer rate. I had not rebooted the system between times nor did the system sleep.

[idata]

Hmm that's a curious one. I haven't found my system doing that. I remember being told by Intel that the tool only reports the situation that exists at startup so that if anything changed post-startup it wouldn't show the change. If your RST has changed its information without a reboot/restart then it means Intel were wrong about that.

I was also wondering if your drives have the same difference in speeds that mine have. One runs at 430mb/s and the other 370mb/s as in the picture I posted above. I used CrystalDiskMark benchmark software (which is free) to get these figures. If you have time could you check your speeds too? I have a feeling the different firmware is behind this.

[idata]

It just occurred to me that it is Tuesday and Microsoft may have pushed some patches that could have rebooted the system in the middle of the night. I'll chec on that when I get home. I haven't run any benchmarks but I'll look into that as well.

[idata]

I validated that my system did NOT reboot over night. So, sometime between the time I went to bed last night and woke this morning the transfer rate on Port 0 drive C dropped from 6Gbs to 3Gbs as reported by RST. The following are Crystal Disk Mark results for both drives before and after a power off/on:

Drive C RST reporting 3Gbs before power cycle:

Drive D RST reporting 6Gbs before power cycle:

Drive C RST reporting 6Gbs after power cycle:

Drive D RST reporting 6Gbs after power cycle:

I have yet to call Intel. Do they have a presence here?