SATA3 6Gbps SSD Speed- I feel it's below what I should expect

mcdeviant

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Feb 19, 2015
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Hi!

I run an ASUS P7P55D-E motherboard. 16GB RAM (4x4), i5 750, HD6970.

I bought a Corsair Force 3 SATA 3 6Gb/s drive a couple of years ago. I was lazy, just plugged it in, and assumed it was fine since it installed Windows 7, booted up and played my games.

Then I decided my system was showing its age, so I started trying to squeeze the components for more power- I overclocked the CPU to 4.01GHz (stable for a month now), learned how to do the GPU via Catalyst CC, and then tested the SSD. It only got around 150MB/s in the peak test (Sequential read on Crystal Disk Mark).

I then spent several days doing the following and testing after each:

- Updated BIOS firmware.
- Checked BIOS, found it was on IDE, switched to AHCI and reinstalled Windows.
- Updated all Windows updates, tested. It went up to 250MB/s, but I now think this is just from being a clean install.
- Installed Corsair SSD toolbox and updated the firmware of the drive.
- Updated drivers for the SATA controllers, chipset, pretty much everything except some of the crapware like Turbo and monitoring tools.
- Replaced the cable with a new SATA 3 6G cable.
- Tried the other gray SATA3 6G port.
- Disabled AHCI for IDE for all other drives, just in case, then restored them to AHCI.
- Checked the registry key commonly suggested as a fix, three times (after changes)- it's on 0.
- Checked in Device Manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, the AHCI device, Details, Service- msahci confirms it's on AHCI.

After each of these is usually a couple of reboots and several tests. I've attached one each from Crystal, ATTO, and AS. Around 200 in CDM and AS are normal, and the one time I tested in ATTO, it maxed out around 350, while others say they get up to 500MB/s in ATTO.

If anyone has any suggestions to improve these speeds, I'd love to give them a try! Thanks in advance!

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Storage
Intel® P55 Express Chipset built-in
6 xSATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
Intel Matrix Storage Technology Support RAID 0,1,5,10
JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller
1 xUltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices
1 xSATA 3Gb/s port (black)
JMicron® JMB322 (Drive Xpert Technology) :
- 2 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports (navy blue and gray)
- Supports EZ Backup and SuperSpeed functions
*Drive Xpert function is available only when the hard disk drives are set as data drives.

your ports are all sata2 (3gbps). that's the upper limit of the sata 2 3gbps ports (around 200-300mb/s). check it in each of the ports but the intel ones should work best...

in either case, you cannot go over 3000/8 = ~max 350MB/s same way as sata3 is limited to around 500-600mb/s
 


I'm not sure where you got this info, but there are two gray sata 3 ports. To get the 6g out of them, you need to dedicate the io level up feature to sata 6G either in bios or via the button on the motherboard (alternative modes are boost pcie from 8x to 16x or boost io on USB 3 ports).

I have it it set to sata 3 6G, it verifies this every boot.
Thanks for giving it a go though.
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From the Web page http://www.asus.com/nz/Motherboards/P7P55DE/

True SATA 6Gb/s Support

Supporting next-generation Serial ATA (SATA) storage interface with onboard Marvell® controller, this motherboard delivers up to 6.0Gbps data transfer rates. Additionally, get enhanced scalability, faster data retrieval, double the bandwidth of current bus systems.
 
your OS is on the SSD, right? so, the only lines you should really care about on CrystalDiskMark and similar benchmarks are the 4k and 4kQD32, and maybe 512k. the sequential is purely academic and has almost no bearing on your actual use of the SSD.

the 4k line looks ok. the 4kQD32 is ok but maybe a bit low (my Force3 does 50/300)

if you really care about irrelevant numbers, then do a full format (NOT quick-format) of your SSD, 4096 allocation size, NTFS. reinstall Win, and check your numbers again.

again, this is purely academic and totally irrelevant in the real world. it's called being a measurbator.
 
Your benchmark results are normal.

Your motherboard does not have any Intel 6Gb/s SATA ports. The 6Gb/s SATA ports are from Marvell.

The Marvell SATA controller your motherboard uses has a data bandwidth of PCIe x1 at 5Gb/s (500MB/s).
The controller was designed when 1st generation 3Gb/s SSDs were released in 2008. It can't handle the speeds of current generation 6Gb/s SSDs.


 


yep, right you are, for some reason google thought it was looking for the evo:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P7P55D_EVO/specifications/

yes, in this case the grey ports should be 6gbps, closer to 500'ish MB/sec but as said above that's not always so simple. still i imagine everything is quite a bit faster compared to using a hdd, so these theoretical high speeds you shouldn't worry so much, instead enjoy your pc.
 


if you really care about irrelevant numbers, then do a full format (NOT quick-format) of your SSD, 4096 allocation size, NTFS. reinstall Win, and check your numbers again.


i say "irrelevant numbers" because the 500MB/s is the sequential read/write, which are only comparable to copying a single large file like a movie or an ISO. totally irrelevant in every other system file.
 
Thanks giantbucket. I've already reinstalled my machine, and I do installs on a daily basis, so it's no hassle to do it again. The number may not mean much to most, but when it comes down to the question of who's way is better between myself and my users, a benchmark test will give a definitive answer in a quantifiable measure, and what you've suggested should allow me to configure their new machines in a way that looks faster on paper (which is what the non-technical bosses will notice the most). It wont make a difference to myself, but should satisfy my concerns. I'll test it out during the week, thanks again!