Slow SSD speeds = What could I be missing??

NTJedi

NTJedi

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 23, 2006
Messages
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What could I be missing??

My SSD drive is showing slower speeds than what should be arriving. According to the benchmark tool AS-SSD-Benchmark-[Guru3D.com] my SSD drive only has 75MB read speeds and 65MB write speeds. The box reads the drive should be around 555MB read speeds and 495MB write speeds. The BIOS and motherboard drivers don't have any improvements for SSD drives.

Environment:

Drive = Corsair SSD ForceGT Sata3 on Port1
Motherboard = M3A78-EMH HDMI
BIOS: BIOS Date: 03/11/08 09:53:13 Ver: 05.01
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.101209-1647)
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Memory: 3072MB RAM

Update:
I swtiched the BIOS from SATA to AHCI, yet this causes my system to boot with a bluescreen error 7B. I tried Microsofts article yet it returns a message saying it doesn't apply to my system. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976


Any advice is greatly appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Well for starters, that board doesn't support SATA 3, so right off the bat you aren't going to get the rated speeds (and to be honest, I'm not even sure it supports SATA 3Gb as opposed to first generation SATA 1.5Gb). Also, the Force GTs are Sandforce drives, so the advertised numbers are inflated because they take into account the drive's built-in compression, which in real world use doesn't produce nearly such good numbers. Can you post a screenshot of your AS-SSD run? Does that board support AHCI, and if so, are you in AHCI mode?

Bottom line, I'm not positive the results you are getting are out of line for that motherboard - but you will still get the performance benefits from the good SSD random performance (which is where the big gains are anyway).
 
NTJedi said:
What could I be missing??

My SSD drive is showing slower speeds than what should be arriving. According to the benchmark tool AS-SSD-Benchmark-[Guru3D.com] my SSD drive only has 75MB read speeds and 65MB write speeds. The box reads the drive should be around 555MB read speeds and 495MB write speeds. The BIOS and motherboard drivers don't have any improvements for SSD drives.

Environment:

Drive = Corsair SSD ForceGT Sata3 on Port1
Motherboard = M3A78-EMH HDMI
BIOS: BIOS Date: 03/11/08 09:53:13 Ver: 05.01
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.101209-1647)
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Memory: 3072MB RAM

Update:
I swtiched the BIOS from SATA to AHCI, yet this causes my system to boot with a bluescreen error 7B. I tried Microsofts article yet it returns a message saying it doesn't apply to my system. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976


Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

the bluescreen is because you don't have the ahci boot driver installed. Try this to fix that:

First make sure you have the latest intel ahci drivers installed.
Disable AHCI in BIOS; turn HDD configuration to IDE or SATA or Compatibility, whatever it is called in your BIOS and reboot normally.
Click Start, type regedit in the Search box, and then press ENTER.
Locate the following registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
Reboot your computer and boot into BIOS setup
Reenable AHCI.

As for the speeds, can you post a screencap both from AS SSD and HD Tune (specifically looking to see if you have a sawtooth pattern on hdtune).
 
AHCI has to be turned on before you install the OS. It's possible to get the drivers installed after the fact, just a PITA.

You didn't clone an old HD to the new SSD by chance did you?
 
Benchmark tests are still running. Thanks for the fast responses... here's the answers:

ANSWERS:
1} The BIOS supports AHCI, RAID and IDE

2} The following registry key does not exist:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
**Any method of installing the ahci boot driver so it resides in the registry?

3} No cloning or ghosting was done on the SSD drive. The WinXP installation was done while BIOS was configured as IDE... I hope a workaround exists because reinstalling all the applications and configuration takes two days.
 
If you can reinstall without too much trouble, I would set it to AHCI and reinstall (there are additional benefits to a straight win7 AHCI install for SSD optimizations if you are planning on moving from XP anytime soon). If you can't, then we can step you though the driver install and changes.
 
A Windows7 clean install would be best for an SSD, though XP can be done if need be.

Windows7 knows what an SSD is and sets certain things specially for it, XP has no clue what an SSD is and might need additional tweaking (never done it so I'll leave that to those who have).
 
Depending on the trouble involved it's probably faster for me to proceed with the driver installation and changes. I found the following article online:

AHCI mode after installing WindowsXP: http://forums.pcper.com/showpost.php?p=4125801&postcount=1

However my CPU is not Intel... so I'm thinking it may not work. Advice?

I will definitely have Windows7 installed later so my system can dual-boot between WindowsXP and Windows7. I want both of the operating systems for my system.
 
You'll have to find the AHCI driver for your controller for XP, as XP doesn't have native drivers like Win 7 does (which is why those registry tweaks don't work). You should be able to find the drivers, and then try to google a procedure to force the installation of the drivers into an existing WinXP install. Hint, it's a lot harder on XP than it is on Win 7, so if you plan on going Win 7 at some point, maybe just make that switch now instead.
 
NTJedi said:
Depending on the trouble involved it's probably faster for me to proceed with the driver installation and changes. I found the following article online:

AHCI mode after installing WindowsXP: http://forums.pcper.com/showpost.php?p=4125801&postcount=1

However my CPU is not Intel... so I'm thinking it may not work. Advice?

I will definitely have Windows7 installed later so my system can dual-boot between WindowsXP and Windows7. I want both of the operating systems for my system.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I do not know which driver pack has the proper drivers for your AMD board, possibly someone else can chime in with that. Unless you have something specific that will not run at all in Win7, I would abandon XP and go to 7 asap.
 
I will see if I can locate the drivers... I plan to have both WindowsXP and Windows7 on the same machine. I enjoy the benefits of two operating systems on one machine. Thanks again to everyone for the replies.
 
AHCI can give a nice boost to SSD performance.

Also, AS-SSD benchmark, from my experience, gives non-real world benchmarks. It uses SSD compression based benchmarks which are very fake. SSD benchmarks that use non-compressed algorythms, such as CrsystalDiskMark, give much more accurate, real world benchmarks. This is why some benchmark tools show throughput nearly twice as the other; compression.

Also keep in mind that XP does not support TRIM/Garbage Collection. That means your going to have slower write speeds over time because the SSD is not being instructed to delete/reset the blocks when data is 'deleted'. Windows 7 is the only Windows OS to support TRIM. Running XP and 7 on the drive at the same time doesn't help because anything deleted while you are on XP will not be TRIM'd. You will have to use manual garbage collection utilities to keep your SSD at maximum write performance if you are using XP/Vista.
 
I have this SSD too and your benchmark numbers are way off. Even on SATA 2.0 I get 227MB seq read and 97 Seq write with as-ssd.
 
Also, AS-SSD benchmark, from my experience, gives non-real world benchmarks. It uses SSD compression based benchmarks which are very fake.
Click to expand...
I've always considered it as being a more realistic representation of an SSDs performance.
 
XP on an SSD isn't that hard, SSDs are older than Seven ! As for trim, I thought Vista supported it too.

I cloned my old XP on an SSD back in the day, because for me the whole point of an SSD was to get a faster computer without changing anything else (and installing my OS like I like takes forever, in fact it's never quite finished). By the way, if you clone it the right way, you get a fully defragmented OS on your SSD, that's even better than what a fresh install gets you.

Now, dealing with alignment was really a pain, since common softwares at the time were oblivious to it. And a misaligned drive will lose a lot in random performance (but not that much in sequential, so you still have another problem).

As for AHCI, it's simple enough to solve if you have a secondary SATA controller, but it seems it's not the case for you. Maybe a PCI/PCIe SATA controller handy ?
 
You want to get the drivers from AMD, just lookup the AMD780G chipset. I remember it being a very large download. I've put SSDs into AMD790GX boards in the past and they can run very close to SATA 3Gbps speeds, 270ish I think. Both use the same SB700 southbridge so SATA performance should be somewhere near the same. You will want AHCI enabled, IDE mode on these chipsets seems to be very slow in my experience.
 
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