Intel SSD not performing, what did I do wrong?

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mcg75

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May 1, 2008
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I just did a fresh install of Win7 on my new 80gig x-25m from Newegg.

I made sure to switch to achi before the install and let win7 look after the rest.

Transfer rates in HDtune are a max of 180-185mbs. Windows experience index is a 5.9

Defragmenter is off. I disabled pagefile and it didn't help.

I downloaded the ssd tweaker program and ran it. No change in speed.

Motherboard is a Gigabyte p55a-ud3

Appreciate any help.
 
Solution
sub mesa
It is as if your Intel drive is used a bit already.

However, i cannot see anything really wrong. But the 4K random read scores should be about 20% higher.

You could try a secure erase and see if that changes things. What is your CPU? Can you enter BIOS and check for setting "C3 power saving" for your CPU and disable it if you can?
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Make sure the chipset you are using for the sata port is not jmicron. Jmicron will hender speeds. p55's dont have a southbridge so dont be confused by that, just put the ssd in any other sata port besides the jmicron controlled one.
 
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1) what port did you connect your SSD to?
2) is the SSD running in AHCI mode with NCQ available? This is a BIOS setting.
3) did you check for alignment with AS SSD? Google on this app if you haven't used it yet.
4) can you post a screenshot of HDTune + AS SSD + CrystalDiskMark here? That would tell if your SSD is having performance issues or not.
 
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The SSD was in port 4. I switched to port 0 with no change.
 
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The SSD was on port 4, now it's on port 0.
AS SSD says alignment ok.
SSD is running in AHCI mode

Here are the screenshots.

2142750770088776978S600x600Q85.jpg


2334311330088776978S600x600Q85.jpg


2515535260088776978S600x600Q85.jpg
 
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It is as if your Intel drive is used a bit already.

However, i cannot see anything really wrong. But the 4K random read scores should be about 20% higher.

You could try a secure erase and see if that changes things. What is your CPU? Can you enter BIOS and check for setting "C3 power saving" for your CPU and disable it if you can?
 
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Solution
I don't know about the technical specifics, someone else surely does, but if you don't enable pagefile you will get low access results. I set it at 400 mb and my wei went from 5.9 to 7.6. Try it yourself both ways.
 
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The Windows Experience Index (WEI) score is not an accurate representation of performance. I/O performance can hardly be reduced to a single number.

WEI will put a limit on the score if it is not an SSD, capping it to 5.9. This all indicates the number is pretty artificial and not representative of actual performance.

I recommend AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark.
 
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Yeah I had heard that before so I used sandra and HDTune too and verified that the read times were much higher with a page file than without. Also, I read on the windows 7 forum that you should use a page file with an SSD. I let the system manage it for my slow hd but set it at custom and 400/400. When page file is on the the read times are about 260/mbs with it off it was about 180/mbs. Again, not really sure why.

I followed most of the recommendations in this link
 
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Page files are hardly used, and thus will not influence performance.

If you run a 64-bit OS with 4GB or more RAM, you may opt to totally disable the swap, or reduce it to 32MB. Your system will run just fine without swap.

Swap also should not alter any I/O performance. The only effect is can have is drastically lower I/O performance when it is swapping (i.e. actually writing/reading to/from that swapfile).

Also, Windows 7 runs pretty well on SSDs out of the box; i wouldn't change any deep system settings as they can have the opposite effect. The link you gave me sounds reasonable, though. But you should not need to apply any 'tweaks' - though moving the My Documents or profile folder to a HDD instead might make sense.
 
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Thanks for the correction. It was something that bothered me when I set mine up (the seemingly low access times) so I thought I'd pass along what seemed to work for me. I was pretty careful in trying to figure out what change might have a result but I'll bow to superior knowledge.
 
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Well SSDs are kind of tricky to benchmark; they don't give always the same results; they can fluctuate depending on various factors. That becomes a problem when you want to compare performance.

So you may have enabled your swap, then ran the test again and got fluctuating results.

Either way, regardless of benchmarks i would focus on 'emotionally perceived' performance; your general feeling of having a system that 'instantly' responds to you. If that feeling is about right, i would care less about fluctuating benchmark results.

Ultimately, what is going to matter? I would say, not experiencing any delay attributed to the SSD's performance. In other words; no more 99% IOWAIT (a condition where the CPU is doing nothing because it has to wait on the HDD all the time).
 
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I "found" the problem thanks to you wanting me to look at the cpu in bios.

The cpu is I7-860 running at 2.8ghz. I was using Gigabyte's Smart Quickboost to overclock to 3.3ghz on the old drive.
I used Smartboost to return to "stock" mode before installing the SSD. For some reason, it did not take properly.

The cpu was being listed as always running in 2.93ghz turbo mode in bios.

I downloaded Smartboost again and overclocked to 3.3ghz like it was before and boom, my speed is there.

235mbs average in HD tune, 7.8 in Windows experience index. All the numbers in the other benchmarks
went up some as well.

Thank you.
 
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