OCZ Vertex 2E crystal mark results

funk3h

funk3h

funk3h

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27 Sep 2005
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Hi all

Just finished installing my OCZ vertex 2E 120gb and thought i'd run crystal mark to double check performance. Main reason for doing this is that i used Acronis 2011 to clone my existing win7 partition onto the new drive. I have checked that TRIM is enabled (it is) and AHCI is enabled in bios.

Here are my results over 5 runs

Disk is 67% full

Sequential

read: 221MB/s
write: 62.80MB/s

512K

read: 212.4MB/s
write: 61.75MB/s

4K

read: 16.67MB/s
write: 9.198MB/s

4KQD32

read: 52.48MB/s
write: 17.04MB/s

These results seem a little low to me. Am i running into alignment issues because i cloned an old partition? Or is it just because the disk is quite full?

Cheers!
 
Unless I'm mistaken, AS-SSD tells you if your partition is correctly aligned or not. Alignment in kilobytes should be shown in green with an "OK" after it (or in red if it's not aligned) in the top-left corner.

Also, post an ATTO benchmark.

Lastly, know that incompressible benchmarks (essentially anything but ATTO) will slow the drive down unless you give it time to recover.
 
DragonQ said:
Unless I'm mistaken, AS-SSD tells you if your partition is correctly aligned or not. Alignment in kilobytes should be shown in green with an "OK" after it (or in red if it's not aligned) in the top-left corner.

Also, post an ATTO benchmark.

Lastly, know that incompressible benchmarks (essentially anything but ATTO) will slow the drive down unless you give it time to recover.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I'll download AS-SSD and ATTO now and post results!

Also could you clarify what you mean by "time to recover"? Thanks!
 
Ok, AS-SSD has "31K - BAD" directly directly underneath "msahci" in the top left. I'm guessing this confirms the bad alignment hypothesis.

So, using acronis to clone the partition itself is clearly not the way to go. I have a copy of acronis through work, but i'm no expert in it's use. Is there a way for me to simply backup the contents of my old win7 partition, then restore it into an existing partition on the ssd? I'll boot back into my old win7 install on my original magnetic HD now and remove the existing partition and create a new one.
 
The drive will perform garbage collection when the drive is idle. This is essentially what makes TRIM able to keep the drive at (near) maximum performance. If you don't ever give the drive time to perform this garbage collection, it'll just get slower and slower as more blocks get partially written to.

Usually, a few hours a week at the login screen is plenty.

EDIT: You will get correct alignment using Acronis (2011, maybe 2010 too) if you use the "disk backup" option. You won't if you backup the partition. If the drive is a different model and size though, you probably can't do a disk backup.

What you could do is:

- Secure erase the drive
- Start the Windows 7 installer and tell it to install to the raw drive. Once it's made a partition and formatted it, quit. You now have an aligned partition.
- Restore your backed up partition to the newly created one on your Vertex 2.

Never done that myself but in theory it should work.
 
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DragonQ said:
The drive will perform garbage collection when the drive is idle. This is essentially what makes TRIM able to keep the drive at (near) maximum performance. If you don't ever give the drive time to perform this garbage collection, it'll just get slower and slower as more blocks get partially written to.

Usually, a few hours a week at the login screen is plenty.

EDIT: You will get correct alignment using Acronis (2011, maybe 2010 too) if you use the "disk backup" option. You won't if you backup the partition. If the drive is a different model and size though, you probably can't do a disk backup.

What you could do is:

- Secure erase the drive
- Start the Windows 7 installer and tell it to install to the raw drive. Once it's made a partition and formatted it, quit. You now have an aligned partition.
- Restore your backed up partition to the newly created one on your Vertex 2.

Never done that myself but in theory it should work.
Click to expand...

Seems a total pain in the arse to secure erase. Can you recommend me a program? I remember reading reviews of the drive before buying it in which the ocz toolbox could be used to do things like secure erase the drive, but i cannot find the toolbox to download anywhere at all on the net. What gives?
 
A secure erase is the only way to restore 100% performance. It should always be used before formatting. You can download the OCZ Toolbox here.

You could re-align the partition but I'm not sure what effect that has on the drive's performance - if it all goes wrong you can always secure erase and start again though so it's worth a try. I use "Paragon Alignment Tool".
 
DragonQ said:
A secure erase is the only way to restore 100% performance. It should always be used before formatting. You can download the OCZ Toolbox here.

You could re-align the partition but I'm not sure what effect that has on the drive's performance - if it all goes wrong you can always secure erase and start again though so it's worth a try. I use "Paragon Alignment Tool".
Click to expand...

Cheers for the link - will download now. I didn't mention in the original post that i actually have two of the 120gb drives (cheaper than 1x240), the second of which has a totally empty partition on it. So, for now, i've decided to restore a backup onto that drive (into it's existing partition) then i'll secure erase the other once i've got that installation working. Once i've completed the restore, i'll go back into the win7 recovery console and rebuild the mbr for the second drive.

Thanks again for the help and advice! Will let you know how i get on.
 
Ok, restored a backup to a properly aligned partition on the SSD, and these are my crystal mark results:

fxtfkm.jpg


Defo an improvement, but still significantly shy of some review benchmarks in the write performance. This just because my drive is 67% full? Or because i haven't clean installed? I'm not particularly fussed - the change in real world performance from my original magnetic drive is spectacular - but i would like to understand where the performance is going...
 
Bunyan said:
What sata port are you using?
Click to expand...

4 and 5 at the moment (the bootable drive is on 5, but both score more or less identically on as-ssd and crystal). Mainly this is because i had some hot-swappable slots in the front of my case which were already wired up to sata and power, so i thought i'd use those rather than take the case apart (i have a fan in the side so it can be a bit of a pain. Could this be causing a problem?

EDIT: I'm fairly certain i have all my mobo drivers installed (chipset, sata) but do i perhaps need more hardware specific AHCI drivers? I just let windows install them after enabling it in bios...
 
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If you have confirmed that the partition is aligned this time then there are a few other things to try:

- OCZ recommend using the lowest SATA port number possible (port 0 or 1 preferably). Apparently it can make a big performance difference with some chipsets.
- Try using different AHCI drivers. You haven't specified what motherboard you're using but with modern Intel chipsets, the Rapid Storage Technology drivers usually offer a slight improvement in speeds.

Tip: Do 1-3 100 MB tests when you run Crystal Disk Mark. It won't be quite as accurate but at the moment you're hitting your drive with 5 GB of incompressible data each time you run the test, which will cause it to throttle speeds at some point.

The only value in that Crystal Disk Mark benchmark that is not where it should be is 4k QD32, by the way. Should be nearly twice that value.
 
DragonQ said:
If you have confirmed that the partition is aligned this time then there are a few other things to try:

- OCZ recommend using the lowest SATA port number possible (port 0 or 1 preferably). Apparently it can make a big performance difference with some chipsets.
- Try using different AHCI drivers. You haven't specified what motherboard you're using but with modern Intel chipsets, the Rapid Storage Technology drivers usually offer a slight improvement in speeds.

Tip: Do 1-3 100 MB tests when you run Crystal Disk Mark. It won't be quite as accurate but at the moment you're hitting your drive with 5 GB of incompressible data each time you run the test, which will cause it to throttle speeds at some point.

The only value in that Crystal Disk Mark benchmark that is not where it should be is 4k QD32, by the way. Should be nearly twice that value.
Click to expand...

Thanks again Dragon! I'll take the thing apart and swap the ports over ASAP. My mother board is a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 (one of the first lga1366 mobos - there have been several other ud5 versions/revisions since mine). My southbridge is: Intel ICH10R. Already started doing that with Crystal, but thanks for the tip anyway!

EDIT: in some benchmarks i've seen, the sequential and 512k writes have been up at ~140. Is there a reason i should expect those sorts of results?
 
OK, crystal mark results after swapping the OS drive to SATA 0:

2zf0l0m.jpg


Significant improvement. Running the test over 3 runs @ 100mb instead this time, but i doubt any inaccuracy that would introduce could account for a 20MB/s difference in some scores. Thanks for all the help guys! Nice to have the thing running optimally.
 
With that chipset you should get faster speeds with the Intel RST 10 Series drivers. Might be worth a try but your SSD is running much better now. :)
 
DragonQ said:
With that chipset you should get faster speeds with the Intel RST 10 Series drivers. Might be worth a try but your SSD is running much better now. :)
Click to expand...

I'll give that a try - thanks again dude!

I am confused about the write speeds being somewhat shy of reported review benchmark performance though. For example:

[link didn't work]

Is there a particular reason i'm not hitting these figures? Could the drivers do that for me? Or is this just a limitation of my particular chipset?

EDIT: Ok, that link didn't work. It was just a link to the ***** review. Reported crystal mark write speeds:

seq: 141.5
512k: 139.7
4k: 68.99
4kqd32: 131.6

Significantly higher than my own results in everything other than 4k. Interestingly though, my read speeds are better than theirs in many cases...

EDIT2: LOL. Jesus. Why can't i mention the name of a popular hardware review site begining with an H? They're not a retailer.
 
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Could this be related to allocation size when formatting? I went with the NTFS default, which i think is 4K...
 
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You would need to bench it outside the OS you are using, as this will skew the results.
The OS will still be accessing the drive when benching.
 
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