SSD read speed slow

Gixer · 16 Sep 2010 at 19:25

I've just finished my new build have it all formatted etc but I'm thinking I must have not enabled something in BIOS or missed a driver or something similar. My SSD is only reading at 135mb/s when it should be up over 250mb/s. I'm clueless as to why this is like this though. I've been reading about ACHI but it has me a little bit perplexed to be honest.

Spec is:
Asus Rampage II Extreme
OCZ Vertex 180gb SSD
6gb Corsair ram

There is nothing in device manager that is saying not installed etc. One thing that is Odd is I'm sure the SSD is saying its transfering using UDMA, is that right? sounds like what old HDDs used.

Cheers

Duke · 16 Sep 2010 at 19:31

First thing to do is to enable AHCI. Read the link below as you need to make a small change using reg edit, otherwise Windows won't start up once you change (although it should if you changed it back to IDE setting).

http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/

The option to change to AHCI should be quite easy to find in the BIOS.

Gixer · 16 Sep 2010 at 19:36

Hi Duke, thanks for the fast response. I've done that and now im up to 155mb/s write. Thought that was going to solve the issue but obivously not. Just need to find that last 95mb/s of write speed now!

Gixer · 16 Sep 2010 at 19:40

It appears that in device manager all of my drives are listed under an ATA Channel *

I'm assuming as long as my SSD is showing in one of these it will be slow?

Gixer · 16 Sep 2010 at 19:47

Under Disk Drives in device management my SSD is written like so OCZ-VERTEX2E ATA Device. I take it as its saying ATA that is bad? What should it say? is it an easy fix?

Broken Hope · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:01

Post a picture of your device manager, though the drive name is part of the firmware so doesn't really matter what it says.

Also post an ATTO bench.

Finally update your AHCI drivers

http://www.station-drivers.com/tele...t_9.6.5.1001full(www.station-drivers.com).exe

Gixer · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:23

Hi broken, I'll get to the posting my device manager in a moment as I have no ftp to upload to my webspace (cant even remember my webaddress its been that long since i used it). Thanks for those drivers, I could only find the rst drivers that use the f6 method to install.

I've not got atto, I'm using crystaldiskmark at the moment. I'll get that pic up asap.

Cheers

Gixer · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:27

I'll write what I have quickly:

Disk Drives:
OCZ-VERTEX2
ST3500418AS
WDC WD2500PD-00FZB1

IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers:
ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 1
Intel(R) ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller
Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller

Hopefully thats clear enough.

Cheers

Beans on toast Dave · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:28

Broken Hope said:
Post a picture of your device manager, though the drive name is part of the firmware so doesn't really matter what it says.

Also post an ATTO bench.

Finally update your AHCI drivers

http://www.station-drivers.com/tele...t_9.6.5.1001full(www.station-drivers.com).exe

are those drivers for all ssds? will they improve a crucial c300?

Broken Hope · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:32

challengedavid said:
are those drivers for all ssds? will they improve a crucial c300?

They are drivers for Intel chipset AHCI, so if you have an Intel chipset on your motherboard you can install them.

Broken Hope · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:33

Gixer said:
I'll write what I have quickly:

Disk Drives:
OCZ-VERTEX2
ST3500418AS
WDC WD2500PD-00FZB1

IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers:
ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 1
Intel(R) ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller
Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller

Hopefully thats clear enough.

Cheers

That looks okay, make sure your SSD is on port 0 or 1 of your motherboard, if your SSD is showing up under any of those ATA channels then it's not on the Intel controller which will hurt your performance.

Gixer · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:52

I did a driver update on the 'standard AHCI 1.0 serial ata controller' and that has now changed to 'Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller'

My SSD is plugged into port 1 which is the first port on the mobo. The SSD isnt showing up on any of the ATA channels, in fact nothing is now!!

Speeds are still low, first number is read speed second is write

Seq 156.5mb/s 132.4mb/s
512k 150.7mb/s 130.2mb/s
4k 22.19mb/s 99.28mb/s
4k QD32 87.95mb/s 121.1mb/s

I'm wondering if I didnt do something in the correct order on install? The whole SSD setup is new to me. I thought getting a stable overclock would be the tricky bit, not getting the SSD to read at the right speed.

thanks for the help so far, much appreciated!

Broken Hope · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:58

Those speeds look fine for CDM on a Sandforce based drive, Sandforce based controllers rely on data being able to be compressed in order to write less to the drive and thus increasing the speed of the drive, if the data isn't able to be compressed much then the performance is much lower.

I'm almost certain that if you use this program to bench then your numbers will look much nicer.

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1749/ATTO_Disk_Benchmark_v2.46.html

Gixer · 16 Sep 2010 at 21:20

Why didnt I get Atto to start with. The results in that are on par if not above a lot of those I found in the SSD benchmark thread

I still find it odd that other people with an OCZ SSD can use crystaldrivemark and I cant. Weird, still at least I know its not underperforming now! I'll use Atto from now on.

Thanks for all the help guys.

Edit: Just tried out AS SSD for a laugh and that says I only hit 150mb/s too. Still find it odd........