Crucial M4 128GB SATAII Performance

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Bought an M4 while the price was so good on OcUK! I am getting a new Sandybridge system on Sunday, but thought I'd test my SSD on my current system which only has SATAII.

Firstly, it took around 40 minutes to get the latest firmware, quickly check how to get it on my drive, install the SSD and install Windows 7 (Pro x64, SP1).

I installed GPU drivers, AS SSD Benchmark and SSDLife Pro. After this the used space on the drive was around 23GB.

Boot times:
Samsung F3 1TB
~44s
Crucial M4 128GB
~10s
(from the "Starting Windows" screen to desktop)

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Will add boot time comparison and benchmark comparison later (with my Samsung F3 1TB - it's taking ages on the 4K benchmark being sooo much slower!)

EDIT:

Samsung F3 1TB:
MiXha.jpg

In summary, you may not get the best performance out of SATAII, but you can still drastically reduce boot times, and the general responsiveness of Windows.
 
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Excellent, i get one on monday in RMA. but am using a rampage 2 extreme with an i7920 so no sata3 yet. Still saving up for a proper big upgrade this summer. Rather than small mediocre ones now!
 
Excellent, i get one on monday in RMA. but am using a rampage 2 extreme with an i7920 so no sata3 yet. Still saving up for a proper big upgrade this summer. Rather than small mediocre ones now!

Good plan to wait, SATAII certainly won't be holding you back as far as how fast the system feels :)

Can't wait, ordered one today, should be here Monday :D :D

Good choice, seemed such a good price I couldn't resist :p
 
I never noticed any difference whatsoeve going from SATAII to SATAIII with my M4. Sure, the benchmarks now show 500MB's Read, but overall performance feels the same for everything. SATAIII is overrated and is no reason to change a decent motherboard.

Enjoy your SSD. M4's are great:).
 
I never noticed any difference whatsoeve going from SATAII to SATAIII with my M4. Sure, the benchmarks now show 500MB's Read, but overall performance feels the same for everything. SATAIII is overrated and is no reason to change a decent motherboard.

Enjoy your SSD. M4's are great:).

Yeah I agree completely, I am in no way getting a new system because of SATAIII! Was cheap second hand, and a lot of the parts are for a friends build so thought if I can upgrade to SB in the process, no harm done :)
 
With Windows 7, all updates, antivirus, office 2010, benchmarking programs, Acronis true image, perfect disk, photoshop and quite a few other programs i have only used 20gb

You must be doing something wrong. Follow this guide - http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

Here's my thread on M4 128gb on SATA 2

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18375296

I didnt both getting an adapter card or SATA 3 motherboard/new computer

Sorry perhaps it's unclear, it's probably the pagefile taking up 8GB or so by default. I just wanted to illustrate how much space it takes up with no tweaking, just a fresh install :)

But thanks for the links, will check that out.
 
Dont bother with pagefile or indexing on SSDs. Free up that space

Fair enough, but its best not to suggest losing the page file. Can cause errors, and lack of reports when you get errors caused else where.

Also page file isnt the same as back in early windows days, kinda more useful to have now. But yes move it to another drive.
 
Fair enough, but its best not to suggest losing the page file. Can cause errors, and lack of reports when you get errors caused else where.

Also page file isnt the same as back in early windows days, kinda more useful to have now. But yes move it to another drive.

Fair enough, there's been a few threads on this recently I've noticed.

I really don't need the full 128GB for all my games, as I only play a few. So saving space isn't really an issue for me.
 
Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that
  • Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
  • Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
  • Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.
In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx
 
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Here is my 128GB M4 on a rampage 2 extreme (sataII) just got it today with almost identical scores to you! I also get identical SSD life readings and WEI scores.

as-ssd-benchM4-CT128M4SSD21003201216-48-08.png


This drive has replaced my old 128GB M225

as-ssd-benchCRUCIAL_CT128M221902201.png
 
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