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]

Loading times should be much faster with SSD because its mostly reads when the game loads. You won't see much difference in game play however. The significantly faster access times are the real benefit of SDD, which is why opening apps and boot times are so much faster.

[idata]

Now that I have been paying more close attention, the frame drops and freezing haven't really occured the past 2 days, or at least the frame drops have been much less noticeable. The driver fix could have fixed the stability issue without showing much improvement in the benchmark program I guess.

[idata]

Well at least the freeze problem has gone by the sounds of it. A pre sp1 update has just come up that gives a performance boost for Win 7 DirectX 11 graphics platforms by the way. Maybe that can help some more.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Pre-SP1-Performance-Boost-for-Windows-7-DirectX-11-Graphics-Platform-... http://news.softpedia.com/news/Pre-SP1-Performance-Boost-for-Windows-7-DirectX-11-Graphics-Platform-...

Are you using the PCIe x1 slot for anything? If so try taking the card out to see what that does. (Most likely nothing but worth a check)

I'd also be inclined to check out the Marvel controller performance. Typically it is not as good as an Intel controller, but as your Intel controller seems to be somehow gimped it might be worth a try to see if performance goes up.

[idata]

The performance from the marvell controller was noticeably worse. The write speeds were around 60-65 mb/s after a few tests and the reads were near half the reads under the intel controller. I don't know if that performance boost would help considering my graphics card is a hd 4 series. Is there more to it regarding that update?

[idata]

hmmm I am sitting here wondering what is wrong with my install, I'd be thrilled to see the windows performance score of 7.7. just installed windows 7 on the x-25 80GB SSD and my socre is 5.9..

What gives?