Slow SSD?

Scotty123 · 22 Sep 2011 at 20:15

I have the Crucial M4 128gb.

From my reading, it seems I should use the intel sata 2 slots, not the marvel sata 3 on my motherboard (Asus P7P55D-E) as they're rubbish. Running AS SSD benchmark confirms this, I get even worse results if connected to the sata 3 slots. Therefore I've kept it in the sata 2 slots.

Before I updated to firmware 0009 my results were

read write
seq: 264 178
4k: 23 59
4k-64k: 186 142

After I updated

read write
seq: 268 178
4k: 14 65
4k-64k: 185 144

I think I will never get near the stated speeds (550 etc) due to the controllers (correct?). I am wondering though why my 4k read has dropped after the firmware update, it seemed okay before, but now it seems terrible? I expected things to be better or at least the same, not a little worse after the update. :confused:

Thanks!

edit - I do have ACHI enabled.

Surveyor · 22 Sep 2011 at 20:22

No idea why the 4k speeds have dropped but the maximum speed for a SATA2 port is around 280MB/s so you're correct that you won't get anywhere near 550MB/s.

Scotty123 · 22 Sep 2011 at 20:24

No way around making the marvell controller work better, without buying a controller card or new mobo? Seems odd the sata 2 works better than the 3.

Surveyor · 23 Sep 2011 at 00:10

Scotty123 said:
No way around making the marvell controller work better, without buying a controller card or new mobo? Seems odd the sata 2 works better than the 3.

Ensure you have the latest drivers for the Marvell controller and you might see an improvement.

There's no point in buying another motherboard as none of the S1156 chipsets support native SATA 3 ports. They'll all be add on controllers, usually from Marvell.

Likewise the cheap controller cards as they'll use a Marvell controller or similar.

Scotty123 · 23 Sep 2011 at 00:27

It seems I have to enable full sata 3 via 'io level up' on the motherboard, at the cost of the pci-e going to 8x.

It increases the seq read to 320. Still a poor read for 4k at 15 though

.

It's odd I was getting about 23 before the firmware update.

Yes I have the latest windows drivers from the asus website for the controller. Doesn't seem to be any firmware though.

Kirth Gersen · 30 Sep 2011 at 20:13

Surveyor said:
No idea why the 4k speeds have dropped but the maximum speed for a SATA2 port is around 280MB/s so you're correct that you won't get anywhere near 550MB/s.

I wish I had known before I bought mine last week. I've been tearing my hair out trying to get it to go faster, and totally rebuild my software around it too (painful process). At these speeds it only seems marginally faster than the old HDD. I had hoped to get a real jump in performance without shellng out for a SATA 3 mobo, processor, requisite cooler and RAM... :mad:

IvanDobskey · 30 Sep 2011 at 22:08

You won't lose too much in not having SATA III, not in real world usage anyway. Don't pay too much attention to benchmarks and just enjoy a much more responsive system.

Kirth Gersen · 1 Oct 2011 at 13:00

but it doesn't feel that much more responsive. Booting is something like 40 seconds. I'll grant that some applications seem to loader faster. But it doesn't seem particularly whizz fast. Just had the wrong expectations I expect.

My AS SSD is reasonably close to the OPs, but I have a worryingly low 4K-64Thrd Read at only 27 and Write at 82.

The drive is flashed to 0009. The Crucial is in Port 0, and currently I am running ACHI.