X25-M SSD Performance Question

[idata]

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.

[idata]

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

[idata]

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.

[idata]

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.

[idata]

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?