• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

ssd slow perfomance on writes

P

pr1970

n00b
Joined
Apr 28, 2013
Messages
13
Hi All

Noticing that i`m getting slowdowns on my pc and i ran an as ssd benchmark and some of the writes look a bit on the low side compared to other benchmarks with a similar setup, almost half the speed. I`ve tried different drivers, safe mode, a second installation of windows but it always gives similar results.
Any ideas? Thanks

https://www.dropbox.com/s/urofnpgbhw2faj5/as-ssd-bench.png
as-ssd-bench.png


CPU Brand Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Motherboard Model: ASUS P8P67 PRO
Motherboard Chipset: Intel P67 (Cougar Point) [B3]
4 x 4096 MB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM Kingston 9905403-400.A00LF ----------
nVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 (GF100/D12U)

Crucial SSD 128gb C300-CTFDDAC128MAG
2 x WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0
 
Last edited:
wow, you need to edit that some to make it easier to read :p

Specs according to Crucial for C300
Sustained Sequential Read
355MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s)
265MB/sec (SATA 3Gb/s)
Sustained Sequential Write
140MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s)
140MB/sec (SATA 3Gb/s)

now then do you have the newest firmware for the controller, was the drive formatted in 4k sector, and is the drive in AHCI, as well this is a sata III drive which if used in a Sata II port can prevent the drive from working at its rated speeds.

try this one as well
http://www.hdtune.com/
 
Last edited:
Apologies, have edited it.

I have the latest AHCI drivers (and tried windows 7 default drivers), bios is up to date and set to AHCI and the SSD is in Port 1 6gb SATA III and the 2 x WDC drivers are in ports 4 & 5 and SATA II.
I`ve disabled a marvell controller and tried disconnecting the WDC drives in case there was a conflict but no difference.

Heres HDTune 2.55 benchmark.
original


Thanks
 
typo on that, crucial my bad...

http://bcchardware.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8837&Itemid=40&limitstart=5
you are within the place it should be, from what I recall P67 sata 6 had first gen controllers so they do not get the speed they should have,
IO meter 233.93mb/sec in a "blank" state
read of 346 mb/sec write of 127mb/sec

according to HDtune you average 231 so that is very close to what it should be doing, though it definitely seems you are getting performance of sata 2 instead of sata 3 going by the "specs", again first gen controller from what I recall, either that AS SSD bench is flawed or HDtune is, the only other thing you could possibly do is flash the newest firmware for the controller.
http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx

I do not think it matters if you chose the 1.8inch or 2.5inch C300 though I could be wrong. Do make sure there is nothing you want to "lose" just in case the flash does not go the way it should, it could be an issue with P67, do recall some folks not liking the performance they got from SSD on P67 and even am3/am3+ different controllers on the motherboard act differently, Jmicron, Marvell, Intel all do act differently depending.

Wish I could help more, but it seems results are in line with where they should be, just a tad slower, the only other thing I can see is if it is using an older firmware for the drive itself.
 
Thanks. I have had the latest firmware for that ssd for quite a while so its not that.
i think i`ll give the marvell controller a go as its rated as sata 3 6gb/s. It never use to be that good but perhaps the later drivers have improved.

What kind of speed differences are there between the 1st generation and latest generations sata controllers , any idea? I wonder if its worth upgrading my main board, they dont cost that much. One of the reasons are i`m getting some strange slowdowns occuring, ie mouse stuttering about when alot of cpu & hd usuage. Not sure whats causing it but i`m getting near the point of changing components to cure it.
 
you will see a pretty large difference in read speeds based on specs, but virtually no difference in writes, that is limited by the drive itself.

I am not sure the % difference to tell you the honest truth, for drives that are not really saturating sata 2 speeds I think the difference was ~3% average on mechanical drives, with SSD it is much larger.

Truly is hard to say, but first generation sata 3 controllers(Intel) had some overhead attached to the speeds they were capable of, the newest boards using the newest controllers from all the makers do tend to perform as advertised instead of sometimes yes and sometimes no, again hard to say, I just recall on thread in the past with first gen/second gen controllers having issues, P67/H67 had a major recall for bugs in sata II, but sata III were just not always operating at the speeds they should have been, I believe Asus decided to use their own controller choice due to this.

The issues with mouse and such is hard to say, you are not the first to complain about this very issue from various motherboards using P67 chipset. It could be the controller you have attached the SSD on, I.e Marvell, Etron, Intel etc, they all have their own quirks, and not all play nicely with all drives, not sure why, most forums recommend running the SSD off of the Intel controller and not the marvell one though.
 
ok thanks for that.

I did try some things, ie the marvell controller which was a bit slower and also putting the drive on the sata II controller. But again similar speeds to the marvell.

I will have a look at replacing the mainboard I think, I`m having a few issues with screen corruptions on very rare occasions and the mouse issue so I think i`ll just buy a new mainboard. Any recommendations? Dont think i`ll go with ASUS again.Was looking an Intel Z77 board ie ASRock Z77 Pro3 to replace this with.

Thanks again
 
hey not a problem, how full is your SSD btw, constant benchmark, to full without TRIM being enabled etc is going to affect performance.

Asus makes and markets some of the best products out there, I most certainly would not be putting my money in an Asrock that's for sure, I base that on multiple friends having nothing but issues with them over many generations both Intel as well as AMD, I have used Asus period for many generations for Video cards, and sound card recently, I will not touch anything else then Asus for motherboards though, they are top ranked for many reasons, but hey, if you want to go ASrock, Gigabyte or one of the others, that's your choice.

The board I would recommend if you do not mind spending a bit
Asus P8Z68-V, P8Z68-V Pro, P8Z77-V Premium
if you want to save a few $ but still have an great board
P8Z77-V LX2, P8Z77-V LX, P8Z77 -V LK, MSI Z77A-GD65

I would recommend if you really want to do a "new" build, wait till Intel releases Haswell CPU which is just a very short time away, it will be using a new socket apparently LGA 1150 8 series for motherboard, which means you will not be able to take your current cpu and use it in them, they will have a pretty nice performance increase, power reduction. If you decide to keep using what you have and just update it, then likely you will be able to get current motherboards a little less, Z77 is fine but Z68 is just as good by all means
 
Last edited:
My ssd is pretty full at the moment, about 85%. Think it needs clearing out for better performance?

With the motherboards, are you saying the Z68 is a better option? or go with the newer Z77 boards? I`m really after something that isnt too expensive, hence why I picked the Asrock or perhaps Gigabyte. I dont need loads of features like wifi/bluetooth, or connections just 3-4 SATA and about the same USB 3.0 ports will do.

Thanks again
 
well you always want a little space left, I have a 60 gb 56 gb usable space, I try my best to leave about 14gb unused and its does very well for its speed. I believe most will say from 12-20% free is ample as this will allow the drive to do what it needs to do, and keep its performance and life much longer.

Z68/Z77 are very very similar. Generally if you have Z68 don't bother, new build go Z77, Z68 is compatible with Z77 was built for Ivy Bridge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=163772
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/311815-30-tomshardware
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1646045

Here is another one I noticed last night, no frills, overclockable and clean design, not to mention a decent cost ~$115 http://www.eteknix.com/asus-z77-a-z77-motherboard-review/ Asus Z77-A there is less costly then this I believe the LX2 is one of them. Just showing you some choices is all.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1039859808#post1039859808 Asrock. 2 friends of mine had something similar happen, one was with sata ports literally hanging from the board in the retail sealed box of his AM3+ Asrock board 990 extreme 3(fought tooth and nail with Asrock and newegg for return RMA they blamed on him of course)

The other Intel ASRock Z68 pro GEN3 he had the socket itself not mounted to the board properly, he did not noticed it until he took the cooler off as it would not powerup, he says the socket came right off with the cpu cooler, again he was also blamed saying he must have torqued or twisted the board the wrong way or applied far to much pressure to the socket. Gigabyte, MSI if you don't want Asus, I would not go Asrock if it were me, they might have good reviews, but I think general user opinion overall is less then happy with them.
 
Again too pricey where i am i`m afraid, over double the price of that gigabyte board for those MSI boards which is a shame. Think i may go for the gigabyte , it has all the features I need really.

Thanks
 
that's a shame :p, that gigabyte board is nice enough, similar Bios layout to my Asus M5A99X EVO am3+ board, very easy to use in advanced/standard mode, everything is quite easy to find, very solid overclocker as well it seems.

Where do you plan on ordering it from?
 
I`ve asked a local shop if they can get it in, then let them build it for me. That way if its not working they can sort it out. I know the owner so he`ll do it for nothing which is handy :)

Thanks for the help.
 
not a problem, glad I could help best I could.

While you have the chance try cleaning as much as you can off the SSD, best you could do if possible is a clean sweep of it to bring it back to factory defaults if possible.
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-S...300-to-factory-otherwise-I-have-to/td-p/30762

something I noticed in here is turn off write cache on the drive properties tab for the drive in question, maybe this will help?
 
something I noticed in here is turn off write cache on the drive properties tab for the drive in question
Click to expand...

Finally someone has a good idea but doesn't know how to implement it.

The write cache should be enabled (ON) for the best performance.

Read a little about it here.

SATA3 is not going to help and the specs because, like most places, they list the best speeds regardless of the size.

AND ,as everyone knows, the larger drives have the faster speeds.

Treasure those drives because they maybe the best ever manfgd.

The C300s had the larger (34nm) die size which should equate to a longer life and an excellent controller.

I run RAID0 3x300GB C300s thru an LSI 9240-4i on a P6T MB and couldn't be happier.
 
Thanks will look into wiping it and starting over.
I tried turning off write cache but it just halved the write speeds again. Felt like I was running a normal hard drive not an ssd, ah well.
 
it had been recommended on the link to try turning it off, for me it makes 0 difference on or off. Not sure what else I could recommend for fixes. You are using current Firmware, you tried different ports, you use AHCI, tried on/off write cache, only thing is a newer board that uses a native new gen controller.

Write cache from my understanding definitely helps mechanical drives, but should make virtually no difference as it caches the writes to volatile memory(RAM) instead of directly to the drive, maybe the controller on the C300 just cannot keep up to the commands therefore is slower with it off then on, with my Agility 3 it makes 0 difference I have tested numerous different settings myself just to see differences have had this drive I believe for 1-1.5 years, most of the recommended settings write cache, superfetch, prefetch, 4k blocks etc make very small differences, though they are definitely different drives that's for sure.

A large enough paging file can help all around performance though will not help the SSD much(from what I have noticed) but will most certainly help the mechanical when they are being used.

Sata 3/6gbps apparently will help, if you take specs at face value there is a fairly large difference in reading couple that with the write cache in theory it should me a noticeable difference, though the writes in this case will limit what the drive will be doing anyways 140MB/sec is the limit anyways, so ~130 would be average I gather.

Well hope all gets sorted out for you pr1970 and end up very happy with your new motherboard/performance, keep us updated :)
 
it had been recommended on the link to try turning it off, for me it makes 0 difference on or off.
Click to expand...
That's just plain unusual.

If there's any reason for the discrepancy my first thought would be the Agility 3.

OCZ played many tricks with it's SSDs and consumers and the compression techniques of that SandForce controller probably has something to do with it.

Read a little about it here.

Like I said before, the C300 series is a great drive and built like a tank.
 
I have a quick question relating to this.

If SSDs must erase data a block at a time. How are block sizes determined?
 
Last edited:
If SSDs must erase data a block at a time. How are block sizes determined?
Click to expand...
Seems like the manfgs use the size of the drive to determine the block size.

There's more info here.
 
Old Hippie said:
Treasure those drives because they maybe the best ever manfgd.

The C300s had the larger (34nm) die size which should equate to a longer life and an excellent controller.
Click to expand...


Does this mean in general that a C3 is preferred to have over the M4? When I bought my M4 I really never could determine if it was supposed to be a better drive then the C3. In the end I made the assumption that the M4 was probably better because 4 is a bigger number than 3 and in the world of CPUs and videocards, bigger numbers mean better.
 
Old Hippie said:
Seems like the manfgs use the size of the drive to determine the block size.

There's more info here.
Click to expand...
Hmm, I'm wondering if you set your file system cluster size to be equal to the block size, if it would help with write application. If your size on disk is larger than the file then you're hurting the SSD because more data is being written than you have to.
 
The drive has to write and erase in a certain way. It's not really related to the file system. It can optimize things, like the Sandforce controller that will compress everything to minimize writes.
 
pr1970 said:
Hi All

Noticing that i`m getting slowdowns on my pc and i ran an as ssd benchmark and some of the writes look a bit on the low side compared to other benchmarks with a similar setup, almost half the speed. I`ve tried different drivers, safe mode, a second installation of windows but it always gives similar results.
Any ideas? Thanks

https://www.dropbox.com/s/urofnpgbhw2faj5/as-ssd-bench.png
as-ssd-bench.png


CPU Brand Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Motherboard Model: ASUS P8P67 PRO
Motherboard Chipset: Intel P67 (Cougar Point) [B3]
4 x 4096 MB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM Kingston 9905403-400.A00LF ----------
nVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 (GF100/D12U)

Crucial SSD 128gb C300-CTFDDAC128MAG
2 x WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0
Click to expand...

SSD free space would really matter for beter performances. Try to run the benchmark tool after loading your SSD with different data ratio. I too had the same kind of confusion earlier & now very much sure that the OP on the SSD really does matter. Also, as some SSDs have their native TRIM funcationality enabled you can run your benchmark tool with TRIM enabled or disabled. I feel very fortunate to have used Intel 520 SSD which is good in every aspect. I suggest my tech folks to have a look at this white paper - http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/technology-briefs/ssd-520-tech-brief.pdf
 
Does this mean in general that a C3 is preferred to have over the M4?
Click to expand...
Not really.

While the C4 series has newer tech, that doesn't necessarily mean it's better.

The C3s has a larger die size (34nm vs 25nm) which should equate to longer life.

There's a few comparison numbers here.

The whole thing is just a matter of opinion but it did take awhile before the C300s came down in price.
 
Aesma said:
Block and page sizes are a property of the NAND chips.
Click to expand...

Cool.

Then I guess the block size is variable on the drive's capacity like it says here...
At the time of this writing, (May 14, 2012) SSD block sizes for cRIO controllers range from 16 KB to 1 MB depending on the size of the SSD, with larger drives having larger block sizes
Click to expand...

Nice to know. :)
 
Well it's a strange way to put it, what matters are the NAND chips. You can get several SSD capacities with the same chips in different numbers, and the block size will be the same. The controller can't do anything about it.

For example Intel/Micron chips :

50nm 16Gbit/die 4KB/page 128 pages/block => 512KB blocks
34nm 32Gbit/die 4KB/page 128 pages/block => 512KB blocks
25nm 64Gbit/die 8KB/page 256 pages/block => 2MB blocks
20nm 64Gbit/die 8KB/page 256 pages/block => 2MB blocks
20nm 128Gbit/die 16KB/page 512 pages/block => 8MB blocks

Those latest ones allow "cheap" 960GB SSDs, at the cost of being relatively unreliable at the chip level, but the controller deals with it.
 
Well it's a strange way to put it, what matters are the NAND chips. You can get several SSD capacities with the same chips in different numbers, and the block size will be the same. The controller can't do anything about it.
Click to expand...
I just didn't know how to express it.

Do any consumer SSDs use 34nm size?

I thought they all went to 25nm.
 
ZodaEX said:
My 40gb vertex 2 has 34nm nand.
Click to expand...
I don't think any newer SSDs use 34nm dies.

One of the reasons I'm keeping my 3 256GB Crucial SSDs.

I really don't expect to use the drives 'till the "end" but I do think that I'll get better performance for a longer time.

Now that we've FUBARED this thread we outta just exit semi-gracefully.....although it's probably too late. LOL!
 
the thing they recommend for most SSD is 4096 allocation size(4k) when formatting the fresh drive, this can make a very large performance difference in nearly every drive except for the oldest ones and of course AHCI. 25nm and below flash definitely has a shorter lifespan but there is also the side that they can use more NAND for overhead as well as fancy tricks at the controller level to make sure the data is written only when it has to. Fact is most users simply will not tap the drive unless running the crap out of it without leaving any space for TRIM etc to do its thing so the P/E cycles only mean so much in the average consumers hands, the speed, cost, capacity etc of the newer drive vs the older longer lifetime(usually slower) drives more then make up for it 9/10

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/M4-vs-C300/td-p/44608
 
This is where common sense comes into play.

The C300s are great drives but at the time when I purchased mine (2010 -2011) it didn't get along very well with Intel's TRIM.

To alleviate that and increase the 4K-64Thrd and 4K specs I purchased 3x256GB units and an LSI 9260-4i for SATA3 needs.

I'm only using @ 60 - 70GB of the 715GB available which makes TRIM unnecessary and cranks the 4K-64Thrd up to @ 484 MB/s read or write and the small files is where the computer get a work-out. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top