Vertex Optimization ... Oi Vey!

the.ronin

the.ronin

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Messages
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Made the plunge into SSD over the weekend with a 60GB Vertex and loving it so far. But I installed it like any other drive – took it out of the box, stuck it in my machine, clean installed Win7 Pro x64, and away I went. I’m very happy with it until I decided to run HDTune ...

hdtunebenchmarkoczverteb.png


This seems to me well below the stated specs – even after discounting for marketing hype.

So I went and searched optimization methods on the OCZ forums and my head nearly exploded. Are these optimizations (drive cleaning pre-install, TRIM, etc etc) really worthwhile in terms of performance gains? Do I really need to start over with a clean install to do some of these?

Some system specs (sans Vertex):

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H (AMD 780G + SB700 Chipset)
AMD Phenom 9950 X4 Black Edition Agena 2.6GHz
XFX GeForce 9400 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2
4x OCZ 2GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
WD Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM
WD Caviar 320GB and WD Caviar 500GB 7,200RPM HDDs for storage
Antec 300 case
 
I just did my install over the weekend with the tweaks on OCZforums and here is my result..

HDTune_Benchmark_OCZ-VERTEX.png
 
Ronin, I'm probably gonna fail you here but....

SSDs seem to go the best when AHCI is enabled on an Intel chipset.

You have an AMD700 SB and generally they are slower with AHCI enabled and I'm not even gonna pretend that I know about installing/enabling it on your MB.

OCZ is recommending the use of the Microsoft driver when an AMD chipset is in the AHCI mode.

If I were you I'd be researching what's needed to do that and go from there.

Hopefully someone else will come along and give you more detailed instructions.
 
Old Hippie, thank you for the heads up on my mobo. I think I might leave it in IDE.

g1xxr3, thanks for sharing your test – wow what a difference from my performance. Mind if I ask which tweaks you are referring to? Was it these? Did you flash to 1.4.1?
 
it is yer sb bro. it is notoriously bad. the amd sb is gonna leave you bonered unless you switch boards. simple as that.
 
Computurd, thanks for the straight advice. After talking to some people, that is what I was getting too.

What spec should I look out for to maximize the speed of my system in general and make full use of my SSD in particular?

Would you (or anyone) be able to recommend a sub-$100 mobo that’s halfway decent?
 
Would you (or anyone) be able to recommend a sub-$100 mobo that’s halfway decent?
Click to expand...

What you're looking for is an Intel based MB with a ICH9R or ICH10R south bridge.

Here's a general idea from Newegg.
 
Thanks again, Old Hippie ... potentially stupid question here – but wouldn’t I need an AMD based mobo for my AMD CPU?
 
the.ronin said:
Thanks again, Old Hippie ... potentially stupid question here – but wouldn’t I need an AMD based mobo for my AMD CPU?
Click to expand...

AFAIK yep, but you only asked about Intel MB cost.

AFAIK, there's no AMD + Intel MBs.
 
yea the amd SB is what sucks, and it will be the same no matter where you go. however you can go with a raid card or something similar. like a host bus adapter. that would give you some great traction. you need to look at something other than hooking your ssd up to your sb, but that doesnt mean that you need a new motherboard. just get a pcie solution. i have an areca 1680-ix for sale :)
 
lol i was j/k about the 1680-ix:rolleyes: total overkill for two devices lol...
however there are plenty of adapters and lots of other options available for yo if yoiu need another way to go without swapping to intel. you cannot just get another board. yoiu have to get another whole chipset. I have known guys who have waited for over a year for amd to fix their sb with a fw release, but it isnt going to happen imo. the hardware cant hang.
 
Thank you for the replies ... at first I thought my mobo was still sata I but it indeed has sata II (3GB/s). The SSD is in slot 0 running in IDE as has been recommended. I also looked into seperate PCI controllers.

It occurred to me that I never installed my mobo chipset drivers. Everything ran fine with the Windows 7 Pro x64 install that I figured why bother. I will first try the latest driver from my mobo site for Win7 x64. I also downloaded the latest SB driver from AMD for Windows 7. Hopefully that will at least get me to break 200.
 
then try running that thar ssd in achi mode. i have also heard of them running better in raid mode even if they arent raided up. however i think that is just cause raid uses achi a version thereof
 
Thanks Computurd ... I'm hoping someone else out there has a similar setup and ran into the same issue with the Vertex and has some advice. I'd try ahci but would prefer something not requiring an OS re-install for now ... but, yeah I'm getting pretty to close to that at this point.

Tried installing the mobo chipset drivers from their site - not much change. Tried installing the AMD SB specific driver from their site - not much change and it looked to be the same install package anyway.

Code: 
--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
      Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

   Sequential Read :  174.842 MB/s
  Sequential Write :  124.923 MB/s
 Random Read 512KB :  128.510 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :  114.477 MB/s
   Random Read 4KB :   14.616 MB/s
  Random Write 4KB :   13.103 MB/s

         Test Size : 100 MB
              Date : 2009/12/15 19:22:59

This friggin blows haha.
 
This friggin blows haha.
Click to expand...

I like your attitude! :D

I wish I could give ya few words of wisdom and make your drive just scream but unfortunately I can't.

I've seen this problem before and while little tweaks may make it a little faster, I have yet to see a different MB chipset match Intel's speed.

It always seemed to me there's @ 20% performance loss.

You're still gonna be fast....just not as fast as possible and you may not even notice it. :)
 
Old Hippie said:
You're still gonna be fast....just not as fast as possible and you may not even notice it. :)
Click to expand...

Oh absolutey ... but cmon you and I know that’s never enough!! :D

So I took the plunge for the first time into overclocking ... and nothing blew up!

Let’s recap ... pre- Phenom 9950 BE overclock stats:

screenshot002f.jpg


And now for the suck ...

hdtunebenchmarkoczverte.jpg


Cranked up CPU multiplier to x15.5 and voltage +0.075 (beyond that, experienced lock ups) ...

screenshot001na.jpg


FINALLY broke 200!!! :D

hdtunebenchmarkoczverte.jpg


But notice the mad spikes ... so ticked up the SB voltage 0.1 ...

hdtunebenchmarkoczverte.jpg


Another step up on the SB voltage didn’t make any difference. So I’m thinking this is the optimal OC to make best use of this SSD.
 
Which firmware are you running? There has been some bitching about 1819 (IIRC OCZ calls this 1.40) lowering performance.

I think you're pretty much there. My 128GB Torqx (crippled with v1819) is getting results just a bit lower than you in HD Tune. Your drive flattens out and averages a couple of MB/sec faster than mine. It's plugged into channel 0 on an ich10r.

How full is your drive? Mine is pretty full.
 
Yup, I’m still running 1.4. I used Wiper.exe – as far as I understand 1.4.1 comes with Garbage Collection (GC) which is really just Wiper just automated. I’m not sure there is necesarrily added functionality is there? Reason I’m avoiding upgrade is the convoluted (flash back to old FW then forward to 1.4.1?!) and destructive flash procedure for 1.4.1.

My Vertex (60GB) is about half full. It’s plugged into SATA2_0 in IDE mode.
 
On the newest amd southbridges (sb750/sb710) sata ahci performance difference is negligible compared to intel core2/i5/i7 southbridges. You might just want to update to a more modern amd mobo, sb710's are the same as the 750 except they lack hardware raid. They come with 785g mobos and the prices for main brand (asus, gigabyte, ect) ones start at 70 bucks.

A 790gx board will run ya 100-120 and it has the sb750 which has hardware raid if you need it. Your on an older AMD mobo where indeed the ahci performance was way below norm, but you do not need to upgrade your entire system to intel to get better performance numbers. The intel ich* chipsets sata controller is still a bit faster, but not enough that its worth upgrading the entire system to get. I just built my boss a 790gx/phenom II x4 based pc with 2 60gb ssd's in raid zero and it gets benchmark numbers you would expect from 2 mlc ssd's in raid 0.

If you step up to a 785g/790gx board youll be getting more than just better hdd numbers too, the chipsets on these boards are far better in performance and stability to the older ones your using!
 
Malakai, thank you for the input.

If I can get a better mobo for $70-$80, I’m on it!

Although I thought I had read that the SB710 is not much different from the SB700 and share the same quirks in regards SSD performance particularly for the Vertex. If in fact the 710 works well, I am willing to sacrifice no RAID since I don’t run that anyway.

Also do you think I would see significant performance gains in AHCI versus IDE? What if I’m running 3 other conventional HDDs – would they suffer in performance?
 
I'm another SSD user on a SB750. My score mainly reflects most reviews other than the fact it's a bit slower where my data is on the drive. When I first got this drive, I put it in as a secondary drive and I stayed at 225MB/s. This test was done with the fastest option, but when I choose the accurate option, there aren't that many dips. I'm also still on the 15.71(1.3 for OCZ) firmware. Still need to make an image of my drive so I can put on the new firmware and finally get automatic TRIM. No more having to use the Wiper.exe program everytime I move a bunch of data. Now to the point of my post, AMD chipsets are not as bad as everyone says when it comes to SSDs. The biggest downside is the write speeds, which from what I can tell is about 15MB/s lower than Intel with sequential write. Random writes seemed to be within 5%. But, RAID0 is completely different. AMD blows hard there.


 
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Sicklown, thanks for sharing the HDTune on the Patriot. Whats its rated read/write? Also do you have one of the Vertex on the SB750?
 
The Vertex and Torqx are very similar. They are both based on the "Barefoot" controller, and as such, have near the same rated speeds. The real difference between the two is the brand and speed of NAND flash used. For the Torqx 64GB model, I believe the rated speed is 220R/135W for a brand new drive.
 
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