SSD not improving load times?

[Dario D.]

Well, my brother's SSD adventures continue.

Any ideas why no programs (in Win 7) are loading faster? All the benchmarks are on-target, but Win 7 won't boot any faster (45 seconds), nor will any giant graphics/office apps load any faster. (certainly nothing like 2:20 in this video) We DID note, however, that a gargantuan, uncompressed HD video (14gb for 90 seconds) played a lot smoother when running off the SSD... but that's the only improvement my brother has EVER seen, anywhere.

Is something being missed here? We switched to AHCI mode yesterday [/pain], but same story.

Here's what's in the comp:
Crucial SSD (averages 220mbps read)
Core i7 920
ASRock Mobo
4gb DDR3 1600
Everything's using SATAII. No controller card, if that makes any difference. There's a secondary spinning hard drive plugged in as well (SATA 1, I think).

 

[tiraides]

The Windows Index Score is a horrible barometer for the SSD's overall performance. (Actually, 7.1 is a good score in Windows 7, but it doesn't give you the whole picture.)

Download and install HD Tune and post a screenshot of the completed test here.

 

[doz]

Have you checked Windows Event Viewer to see if you have any conflicts slowing down your boot-up? Whether you have a SSD or not, problems loading can slow it down considerably.

 

[Dario D.]

Download and install HD Tune and post a screenshot of the completed test here.

Have you checked Windows Event Viewer to see if you have any conflicts slowing down your boot-up?

Hmm, what am I looking for, exactly?

 

[engiNURD]

... Any ideas why no programs (in Win 7) are loading faster? All the benchmarks are on-target, but Win 7 won't load any faster (45 seconds), nor will any giant graphics/office apps. (certainly nothing like 2:20 in this video) ...

I'm sorry, but I'm confused. Are you asking why a single SSD isn't performing as good as 24x SSDs in RAID0? The answer is simple:
24x SSD in RAID0: 2GB/s bandwidth
Single Crucial Indilinx-based SSD: 213MB/s

If you want more of a WOW factor with Indilinx SSDs, you'll need two of them in RAID0. http://ssd.alphaq.org

Or are you asking why is it not any faster than a mechanical drive? If this is your question, which mechanical drive did you install Windows 7 onto for comparison?

 

[doz]

You are looking for any items loading during boot-up that are slow. It will generaly give you it in MS, which just convert to seconds. If you find something taking a bit longer to load (15-20 seconds maybe), there might be an issue and itll tell you what it is.

 

[Dario D.]

Or are you asking why is it not any faster than a mechanical drive?

This. The previous build was Vista/7 running on spinning drives, and while the speeds of each app opening weren't recorded on paper, they certainly aren't 100% faster now (or even 50%... MAYBE 25%, but my brother didn't pay $400 for 128gb for a 25% load-time improvement)

You are looking for any items loading during boot-up that are slow.

Sorry, I meant where do you find the items related to bootup in the Event Viewer? Is there a special section (like under "Applications and.../Microsoft/Windows" or something) that focuses on boot items, or do you just pay close attention to the event times? (then again, there are still so many sections...)

 

[engiNURD]

This. The previous build was Vista/7 running on spinning drives, and while the speeds of each app opening weren't recorded on paper, they certainly aren't 100% faster now (or even 50%... MAYBE 25%, but my brother didn't pay $400 for 128gb for a 25% load-time improvement) ...

25% load time improvement is pretty good for only $400. By that math, he'd only have to spend $1600 for instantaneous load times, which isn't going to happen. He didn't spend enough money for 100% speed increase -- he'd need to spend $20K, as in that Samsung video review. Some things may or may not have a 50% increase with a single indilinx drive, but from that screenshot, the drive is performing as expected. Unless you have some actual timings to compare and contrast with, I'm not so sure the drive or the OS is to blame here.

Personally, I was not wow'd by my move from a cav.blue640 to a vraptor300, nor was I impressed going from my vraptor to a single vertex30; but when I threw two of those vertex drives in RAID0, I did notice a huge improvement in load times and boot time -- but this is all subjective (you may not notice the same things i notice). http://ssd.alphaq.org

 

[doz]

To get to Event viewer, right click on My Computer > Properties > Performance Information and Tools > Advanced Tools > View Performance Details in Event Log

Itll give you all the issues on startup and shutdown you are having. See if you have anything in RED X, usually the most critical issues.

 

[GotNoRice]

Wow that samsung video is amazing, they show off how fast an SSD is by bragging about how fast it can defrag...

An SSD isn't going to shine in most situations where you are just loading one game or program and that data is loaded in contiguous blocks. Where an SSD shines is when you have multiple things all hitting the drive at the same time. Mechanical drives get seemingly exponentially slower as more things access it simultaneously, SSD's do not.

Take an MMO like World of Warcraft for example. There are no loading screens just flying around the main world, you are loading everything on the fly as you move around. If you enter a crowded city for example, you are going to be loading EVERYTHING at the exact same time. On a mechanical drive you will see this represented as considerable stuttering and pausing as the drive attempts to catch up. At best, you'll have textures still loading after you've already been standing there for 30+ seconds.

On an SSD it's all just smooth and fluid.

 

[Dario D.]

Thanks, all.
So, would it make more sense to return the SSD, and use that $400 to do RAID with several Samsung Spinpoint F3's? (or something smaller+faster?)

Btw, I timed a 4gb folder-copy operation, from one drive to itself (using a folder containing 885 files, and 389 folders), and the Samsung EcoGreen F2 1.5tb ($100) did it 10 seconds faster than the Crucial M225 128gb SSD... and the EcoGreen was on a MUCH slower computer. (6400+ vs Core i7 920, both 4gb RAM, Win7)

Samsung: 49.4 seconds
Crucial SSD: 60.8 seconds

This is fuzzy benchmark, and it doesn't cover everything a hard drive does, but still... what a sad thing to see. I'm ashamed of HDD makers.

 

[Jon55]

An SSD isn't going to shine in most situations where you are just loading one game or program and that data is loaded in contiguous blocks. Where an SSD shines is when you have multiple things all hitting the drive at the same time. Mechanical drives get seemingly exponentially slower as more things access it simultaneously, SSD's do not.

Take an MMO like World of Warcraft for example. There are no loading screens just flying around the main world, you are loading everything on the fly as you move around. If you enter a crowded city for example, you are going to be loading EVERYTHING at the exact same time. On a mechanical drive you will see this represented as considerable stuttering and pausing as the drive attempts to catch up. At best, you'll have textures still loading after you've already been standing there for 30+ seconds.

On an SSD it's all just smooth and fluid.

Huh, interesting. I wasn't aware of that, I just assumed that SSD's were always faster. But it makes sense. So for MMO's, SSD's are awesome hands down?

 

[GotNoRice]

Samsung: 49.4 seconds
Crucial SSD: 60.8 seconds

This is fuzzy benchmark, and it doesn't cover everything a hard drive does, but still... what a sad thing to see. I'm ashamed of HDD makers.

I think the biggest issue you are having is your expectations. Your test singled out what might be one of the worst-cast scenarios to compare. You are copying files contiguously and are also limited by the write speed of the drive.

Most SSD's are still considerably slower when it comes to write speed than read speed, typically no faster than a mechanical drive, especially when you are talking about large contiguous writes. That should not matter however since post people aren't limited in terms of performance when they are writing to the drive. Even then, an SSD still has numerous advantages when it comes to writes, namely when you are writing multiple small files at the same time. Your file copy operation may have had small files in it but the nature of that sort of operation will involve copying one file after another, not simultaneously. Not to mention that the cache on the mechanical drive would probably come into play a bit more than it would in most normal situations.

If you want a test that will show off the capabilities of the SSD vs. a Mechanical drive, try copying several files at the same time.

Huh, interesting. I wasn't aware of that, I just assumed that SSD's were always faster. But it makes sense. So for MMO's, SSD's are awesome hands down?

Well My SSD for example has ~262MB/sec reads, and you would need at least two drives in raid-0 to achieve that using mechanical drives, so in that sense it is fast, but since raid-0 is common and not even particularly expensive, that is not an SSD's biggest highlight.

MMO's have always had disk usage patterns that are pretty intense compared to most other games. That is why World of Warcraft was always one of the few games that offered better performance using workstation/server SCSI drives than most consumer drives, even including the raptor, and also why playing on a laptop with a smaller, slower 2.5" drive typically gave a noticeably worse game-play experience.

 

[DarrisBard]

Btw, I timed a 4gb folder-copy operation, from one drive to itself (using a folder containing 885 files, and 389 folders

If you want a test that will show off the capabilities of the SSD vs. a Mechanical drive, try copying several files at the same time.

I'm following along because I'm interested in SSD's even if right now they are too expensive for me. I'm a little confused by these quotes and some clarification would help. Wasn't the test copying many files at once, i.e. several files at the same time?

 

[engiNURD]

Thanks, all.
So, would it make more sense to return the SSD, and use that $400 to do RAID with several Samsung Spinpoint F3's? (or something smaller+faster?) ...

If you want faster sequential write speeds, it would make more sense to return the 120GB SSD and replace it with 2x 60GB SSDs in RAID0. That would definitely outperform two F3's in RAID0.

I'm following along because I'm interested in SSD's even if right now they are too expensive for me. I'm a little confused by these quotes and some clarification would help. Wasn't the test copying many files at once, i.e. several files at the same time?

No, the test was a simple copy and paste, whereby the OS copies one file/folder after another. If you were to copy and paste several files and folders so that several copies are going on simultaneously, that would be faster with an SSD because it can handle many more I/O operations per second. An SSD not only finds files faster than mechanical drives, it reads them faster as well. However, when copying files to itself, you'll be limited by its write speeds, which are not much faster than newer HDDs, for large sequential writes.

Single OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD
http://alphaq.org/enginurd/hdd/ATTO-F_Benchmark_OCZ-VERTEX_v1.10.PNG
http://alphaq.org/enginurd/hdd/HDTune_Random_Access_OCZ-VERTEX_R_v1.10.png

Single Samsung F3 500GB HDD
http://alphaq.org/enginurd/hdd/ATTO_Benchmark_SAMSUNG_HD502HJ.png
http://alphaq.org/enginurd/hdd/HDTune_Random_Access_R_SAMSUNG_HD502HJ.png

Dual OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD's in RAID0 - 60GB total
http://alphaq.org/enginurd/hdd/ATTO-F_Benchmark_RAID0_OCZ-VERTEX_v1.10.PNG
http://alphaq.org/enginurd/hdd/HDTune_Random_Access_Intel___Raid_0_Volume_VERTEX_R.png

 

[dvsman]

Write caching enabled? You can check from the device manager. For my RAID 0 SSD setup, I've also enabled write back caching from the intel storage matrix console and that sped things up a bit but that's not applicable for single drive setups.

FWIW

 

[Dario D.]

Single-drive as in anything that isn't RAID, you mean? I have multiple drives, but they're running independently of each other.

 

[engiNURD]

Yah, it won't help you. I don't even think its an option without a RAID array.

 

[Dario D.]

Ah, ok, thanks. (and to everyone else)

 

[osalcido]

I would definitely see about updating chipset drivers.. I've always had problems with AsRock boards and shipped drivers.