New SSD slower than expected?

[whoisme555]

I bought an 80 GB vertex 2 SSD a couple weeks ago and it seems to be running slower than I had expected. I have windows 7 installed on it and I have 2 other 1 TB hard drives. I just changed it to ACHI mode in bios but it really doesn't run much faster than my caviar black for some reason.

Using HD tune and a 1MB block size, the vertex 2 is getting an average speed of 139.1 MB/S, minimum 120ish max of 170ish, access time of .2 ms, burst rate of 89.8 MB/s

The caviar black had an average of 89.9, Max of 110.1 decreasing almost linearly to a minimum of 54.8, access time of 12.2 ms, burst rate of 134.4

I was under the impression, however, that the vertex 2 would be an average speed of at least 200+ MB/s, and I've seen plenty of people post those speeds, what kind of tweaks should I be doing to increase the speed of the vertex drive?

Let me add that the drive was set to IDE mode and I changed it to ACHI, downloaded the drivers and restarted less than an hour ago. This benchmark was run 5 minutes ago. Could the TRIM just not have had enough time to kick in and work yet?

 

[tecmo34]

Can you show a screen shot of AS SSD Benchmark to see what controller is installed and if the drive is aligned properly. Also, what is the part number of the OCZ Vertex 2, as the 25 nm do perform less than the previous 34 nm drives.

Also, review this thread from OCZ, which goes into details on TRIM and the effects of running too many benchmarks.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?85029-Understanding-SF1200-drives-TRIM-OP-area-use-and-Life-write-throttle

 

[whoisme555]

Part number is OCZSSD2-2VTX80G, is that 25 nm or 34nm?

 

[tecmo34]

1... Based on your screenshot, you have the 34nm, as the 25nm has an "E" in the last digits.

2... You are still showing in IDE mode, as it shows pciide instead of msachi or the appropriate SATA controller. Have you confirmed you are actually in AHCI.

 

[whoisme555]

I changed the bios setting to AHCI, are there more steps to ensuring it is in AHCI mode?

 

[tecmo34]

What is your motherboard make and model??

 

[whoisme555]

Gigabyte p55a-ud3

 

[tecmo34]

What SATA slot is the SSD installed in?

Either PCH SATA Control Mode needs to be set to AHCI or the GSATA Ctrl Mode needs to be set to AHCI

PCH SATA: Ports SATA2_0, SATA2_1, SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5
GSATA: Ports GSATA3_6 or GSATA3_7

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_ga-p55a-ud3_v2.0_e.pdf

 

[whoisme555]

I think it's the GSATA3_7. I'll try that in a couple minutes and post back and see if that works

 

[tecmo34]

I recommend moving the drive to SATA2_0, since it is a SATA II device and not SATA III, plus you will be able to run off the Intel RST 10 drives versus Marvell's.

 

[whoisme555]

It's only SATA II? It must've been the C300 (my other option) that was SATA III.

How poor are Marvell's drivers compared to Intel's? Moving the drive involves taking out my video card and moving my stuff around because the cable is connected in a very inconvenient place, but if it's worth the change then I will gladly do it.

I changed the controller and it is now significantly faster.

I greatly appreciate all your help so far

 

[tecmo34]

I'm glad you are seeing speeds more to the level you expected

Intel drivers are much better but running through the default "Windows msahci", you wll be fine.

 

[whoisme555]

Best answer selected by whoisme555.

 

[whoisme555]

I'm glad you are seeing speeds more to the level you expected

Intel drivers are much better but running through the default "Windows msahci", you wll be fine.

Well then I'll swap it over a little later, thank you so much, you've been incredibly helpful

 

[vegettonox]

sata 3 is backwards compatible with sata 2 so regardless of the port its not a big issue but i have a gigabyte board with a similar raid setup and the marvel controller showed roughly 50Mbps slower speeds than the similar intel raid controller. I will say this much do not raid high speed ssds on sata 2 connections as you will bottleneck them, i had roughly 280 mbps on a raid until i moved them to the sata 3 ports and raided them my speeds jumped to 550Mbps read and write speeds with write cache on.

 

[whoisme555]

sata 3 is backwards compatible with sata 2 so regardless of the port its not a big issue but i have a gigabyte board with a similar raid setup and the marvel controller showed roughly 50Mbps slower speeds than the similar intel raid controller. I will say this much do not raid high speed ssds on sata 2 connections as you will bottleneck them, i had roughly 280 mbps on a raid until i moved them to the sata 3 ports and raided them my speeds jumped to 550Mbps read and write speeds with write cache on.

Well that's interesting... Within the next few days I'll switch the drive over, I'll post back if there are better results just in case anyone else was curious

 

[whoisme555]

Overclocked my computer, switched the drive to sata II, installed Intel RS 10 drivers and a couple other things. I don't know how much was affected, but there was some increase in speed according to benchmarks. Also, I have a feeling it was the overclock, but it's noticeably faster