SSD woes =[

Trunk_z · 31 Jul 2010 at 22:23

[Solved] SSD woes =[

Hey hey,

Been a lurker for ages. I think, honestly I tried the same user/pass for every other website and it worked, so I guess I must have signed up and just forgot!

Anyhow, I was wondering if anyone had some advice for an SSD I've just bought. I purchased the Crucial C300 128GB - already has the latest firmware and everything.

Problem is, I'm only getting about 120MB/s in sequential reads (just one of the statistics picked from AS SSD, the rest are just as low), in comparison to most people getting over 300.

My motherboard is an Asus P5N-E SLI, which uses (I think) the nForce 650i SLI chipset. I believe it is SATAII as well.

From what I've read from other sources, the nForce boards do not support AHCI, and the nForce drivers do not pass on TRIM commands, apparently changing the drivers to the default MS ones allow TRIM commands to be passed through though.
So, as the chipset doesn't support AHCI, I'm assuming that the drive is running in IDE, could this be the reason for the low performance?

If so, would purchasing a PCI-E controller card get around this problem, as I guess it would use it's own chipset?

Regards,
Chris

Zarf · 31 Jul 2010 at 22:54

An PCI-E controller card should get around whatever issue it is, and as a bonus you could get a SATA-III controller and see the full potential of your drive (~350MB/s sequential Reads, SATA-II tops out around 260). AHCI support is needed too if you want good performance at high queue depths.

Otherwise it looks to me like your drive is stuck in SATA-I mode, have a detailed look through your motherboard BIOS settings.

Trunk_z · 31 Jul 2010 at 23:11

Thanks for the reply!

Looking around the BIOS was my first place I looked (overclocked this machine enough to be very familiar with it) and no AHCI options are there.

The controller card could then be better than my motherboard supporting AHCI in the first place.
I have even found a controller card that should do the job (and support RAID0, which I want to move to eventually): http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-004-SR&tool=3
But according to the review, it requires a PCI-E 2.0 slot, and AFAIK my motherboard doesn't have that. Still researching that point though...

Trunk_z · 31 Jul 2010 at 23:49

Update:

Apparently, nForce chipsets didn't support PCIe 2.0 until the 700 series, meaning that the controller card would only be operating at 1.0 speeds. And according to the review of that controller card, he didn't have the full potential of the card until it was running in a PCIe slot - makes sense, as PCIe 2.0 has higher bandwidth etc...

So, I think my motherboard might be outdated in that case =[

Zarf · 1 Aug 2010 at 04:26

This card would do the job, i's x4 lanes rather than x1, so even on PCI-E 1.0 it will have enough bandwidth.

although it list some specific compatible motherboards i see no reason why it wouldn't work in yours so long as you have a spare x4 or better slot.

Trunk_z · 1 Aug 2010 at 09:31

Zarf said:
This card would do the job, i's x4 lanes rather than x1, so even on PCI-E 1.0 it will have enough bandwidth.

although it list some specific compatible motherboards i see no reason why it wouldn't work in yours so long as you have a spare x4 or better slot.

Thanks for the reply =]

I did see that card, but from what I could find out, I don't think it supports RAID. Which although I'm not using at the moment (and with the cost of SSDs, might not be using for a while). Although I suppose I could always create a software RAID when the time comes?

I think this picture demonstrates it: http://linuxtidbits.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/pci-express-slots.gif

I think it shows that the x4 card (which will be put into a spare x16 slot) should then have a bandwidth of up to 800MB/s, more than enough for SATA3 600 MB/s(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_Revision_3.0_.28SATA_6_Gb.2Fs.29)

So, the Asus card should be able to run at full speed, even on my PCIe 1.0 slots according to that information. I know that's what was said in the post, I just wanted to double check by doing my own research, so that I understand the ins and outs of whats going on =]

Zarf · 1 Aug 2010 at 13:40

You could create a software RAID in windows, but you wouldn't be able to boot from it.
Running RAID0 SSD's myself I can say that they don't feel significantly faster than a single SSD.

Trunk_z · 1 Aug 2010 at 19:09

I did wonder how I would manage to boot if I already needed Windows running for the raid.

Spent 1/2 hour or so scouring the interwebs for a different controller card which: supported raid; wasn't pcie x1 (don't think they have the bandwidth for raid); is SATA3.
Apparently, there isn't one.

I'll probably end up getting the Asus card, and upgrade my motherboard at some point in the future. My old E2180 wont take much more overclocking!

Thanks for all of your help =]
Chris

Trunk_z · 5 Aug 2010 at 18:07

Just to update:

The Asus card arrived today (was going to order it from OCUK, but found an unopened one for 1/2 the price on eBay!). So I put it in and..... nothing =[

After some fiddling in the bios, it turns out that it won't work on my motherboard unless the built in SATA was disabled. So, I disabled it. And it all worked fine.

I was concerned that putting the Asus card into the spare x16 slot would reduce my GFX bandwidth, as when both slots are occupied it drops them down to 2x 8x. However, it didn't seem to make my GTX260 any worse - the benchmarks are roundabout where they used to be.

So now the SSD gets a WEI of 7.9 and speeds of:

AS SSD
Read Write
Sequential 345.07 128.73
4k 27.92 55.66
4k-64Thrd 130.84 97.64
Access time 0.14 0.87
Score 193 166
459

So there we go, on the negative I lose 1 of my 3 HDDs (which I'll put into another machine somewhere), but gain lots of benchmark performance. I've not spent long enough on it to see if there is any real world performance increase, but it looks promising so far =]

Strepsils · 5 Aug 2010 at 18:25

Trunk_z said:
Just to update:

The Asus card arrived today (was going to order it from OCUK, but found an unopened one for 1/2 the price on eBay!). So I put it in and..... nothing =[

After some fiddling in the bios, it turns out that it won't work on my motherboard unless the built in SATA was disabled. So, I disabled it. And it all worked fine.

I was concerned that putting the Asus card into the spare x16 slot would reduce my GFX bandwidth, as when both slots are occupied it drops them down to 2x 8x. However, it didn't seem to make my GTX260 any worse - the benchmarks are roundabout where they used to be.

So now the SSD gets a WEI of 7.9 and speeds of:

AS SSD
Read Write
Sequential 345.07 128.73
4k 27.92 55.66
4k-64Thrd 130.84 97.64
Access time 0.14 0.87
Score 193 166
459

So there we go, on the negative I lose 1 of my 3 HDDs (which I'll put into another machine somewhere), but gain lots of benchmark performance. I've not spent long enough on it to see if there is any real world performance increase, but it looks promising so far =]

At least a happy ending