My SSD seems slow, please help!

Ste59w

Ste59w

Ste59w

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25 Jul 2009
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Hey guys,

Just got a Kingston SSD 64gig kit for my pc.

Installed it fine, did a fresh install of windows 7 on my normal HD (some cheap 500gig thing) then cloned the disk onto my SSD as instructed and changed the option in my BIOS to use it as the boot drive.

Problem is my read/write speeds seem extremely slow. Here is a screenshot of my SSD test.



And here is a screenshot of my normal 500gig HD.




As you can see the normal HD actually beats it!!!?!

Any ideas please as i've tried everything i can think of! Im hoping ive missed something simple/obvious :(
 
If i recall those kingstons have quite a slow seq write speed of 50mb~ (hence their price). The seq read speeds are also equivalent to a normal hd, 100mb~
The difference in performance are the access times (<0.5milliseconds vs 9+ of mechanical hds) and the random read/write which are faster on your tests.

Which means any sustained file transfers (large files) may seem slower, but regular every day small file activity will be much faster.

(Any proper hd gurus of the forum can correct me if im wrong :p)
 
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thanks for replies.

Am using CrystalDiskMark 2.2 for tests.

What is this stuttering that you are on about with the Jmicron controller - what does it do and is there a fix?
 
Jmicron controllers are very slow when it comes to writing small random datablocks, this is shown by the 0.18 result you got on 4k random write. There is no easy cure, its simply a very early designed controller.

However read performance is still considerably faster than a magnetic hard disk. Unfortunatly windows does a lot of small random writes which will trash the general day to day performance.

IMHO you have two choices, 1st return the SSD under the distance selling act (if under 7 days since you got it), or 2) buy a hardware raid controller card with a good sized write cache, so the low performance writes are timeshifted until windows is less busy. Just remember that cached writes can be lost if there is a power cut unless the controller card has battery backup and can write the data when power is restored.
 
Thanks for reply.

You say it will trash the day to day performance, you mean actually make my pc run worse than before with a normal HD?

I have actually noticed that playing games seems less smooth and my DVD's appear a bit grainy, could that be attributed to the SSD?
 
It may cause your system to stutter and feel unresponsive yes. Your old school hard disk will have a small memory cache where it can save up a number of writes and dump them to disk in one faster continuous action.

The problem is even playing games, watching DVD's etc, both windows and the applications will sometimes need to write data to the disk, and thats where the Jmicron controller falls over. The limit is how many write operations it can complete in any given period of time.. So if its asked to make a single 100kbyte write it will get the job done nice and quick, but if its asked to make 100 x 1kbyte writes it will take longer and freeze the OS while its doing it. The numbers are just a made up example, but the point is windows and most apps need to write :(

It wont affect the video quality of DVD's, or the graphics quality of games. However it could make games suffer from microfreezes (stutter)
 
Thanks for your help.

Guess would explain the performance loss in some games that i cant quite put my finger on.

Cant believe it is actually causing my pc to be less responsive! :(

Is there anyway around this? Could i put the operating system back on normal HD and my steams folder into SSD for better performance etc or am i on to a loser with this SSD whatever i do with it?

Help is appreciated thankyou!
 
IIRC the Kingston 64GB V drive uses a slightly updated jMicron controller - random write performance still isn't great but it doesn't actually stutter.

Putting your steam folder on it is a pretty good idea, but as a boot drive you might want to get an Intel, Indilinx or Samsung based drive.
 
Zarf said:
IIRC the Kingston 64GB V drive uses a slightly updated jMicron controller - random write performance still isn't great but it doesn't actually stutter.

Putting your steam folder on it is a pretty good idea, but as a boot drive you might want to get an Intel, Indilinx or Samsung based drive.
Click to expand...

I have an -
OS/Apps -60GB Vertex (Single best upgrade ever!)
Games/other app. - 64GB Kingston SSDNow V
Everything else - 750GB Caviar black configuration

The Kingston works good for steam. Have you tried the SSD optimzation tips?
It makes all the difference

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1661
 
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