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Just installed an X-25m in my Core i7 desktop (Vista 64) and the benchmarks aren't where they should be.
Disabled prefetch/superfetch, disabled indexing/defraging, enabled write-caching and advanced performance, all the usual tweaks but the drive's write performance is about -50% of where it should be along with the read performance being erratic.
Few benchmarks, not sure what I missed:
what do you expect when your using the motherboard to control the SSD. if you want the full speed of the drive you should buy a raid controller.
I'm not using the drive in a raid setup skippy, it's standalone. No reason why the ICH10 can't handle a single SSD (far below bw saturation point).Quote:
Originally Posted by safan80
some setting is off or something funky with the drive. My intel X25m 80gb ssd with core i7 writes 84mb, and that is at default settings, no tweaking of any kind just plug and play into ICH10.
Yeah, your scores are right where I've seen dozens of others online, not sure where mine is having trouble. I doubt it's a bad drive, problems out of the box are more rare with these for the most part.Quote:
Originally Posted by rge
Other owners are saying that I have to wait for the optimization routine in the controller to settle down, but benchmark results like yours are very typical, no matter what the controller is doing.
Frustrating, can't seem to figure out what setting in Vista 64 is having an impact.
Actually, drive doesn't go "faster" with a RAID card, the card and cache just cover up crappy SSD random write performance.Quote:
Originally Posted by safan80
Just did a full format/reinstall of Vista 64. Didn't change anything besides turning off the page file and indexing. Same benchmark scores. Reads seem ok, but the writes are badly off still.
There's write performance issues with most of the SSDs because the lack of onboard cache. why did you think the intel drive would be any different? the old standard hard drive had cache added to them for this very reason of freeze issues while writing. I bet the X-25 doesn't have any onboard cache and that's why there are "problems". look at the spec of the drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820167005Quote:
Originally Posted by Speederlander
Sequential Access - Read Up to 250MB/s
Sequential Access - Write Up to 70MB/s
of course random writes are going to be crap.
you can use a raid controller in pass thru mode that would allow you to use the full speed of the drive without the need to setup a raid array and no the ICH10 can not handle it. If you had done your research you would know that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mako88
In fact the random write problem of current MLC model SSDs is only in part due to the missing cache.. it is also the crappy Jmicron controller that fails badly with writes. The Intel SSDs use a different (better) controller, which is why they shouldn't stutter (and they don't from what I have read and seen so far).
Something is off here, but I can't tell what exactly either :/
I'm not sure what's wrong here either....sustained writes should be 2x that. :confused:
Block size might need tweaking? (or does that not matter with non-RAID?...been a few weeks since I was near a PC :p: )
actually the intel x25M has a 16MB onboard SDRAM@133Mghz cache . You can even see it if you take the drive apart, it's the same chip found in some platter drivesQuote:
Originally Posted by safan80
a friend of mine has two intel drives
they have been steadily getting worse and worse in performance.....he says they are degrading
we are talking mainly benching here. he knows his data and has redone setup from scratch every time for original to recheck figures
they are just getting worse and worse
that is not good from a few months old drives that see an occasional benchmark here and there
it could be that yours was crappy out of the box
i would get RMA if you've spent time to make sure you are doing everything right and definitely dont get the advertised performance
Yikes! :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by dinos22
Could he post that up in some detail. There are a lot of people probably buying this drive who would be well served by knowing this.Quote:
Originally Posted by dinos22
he is just dealing with intel regarding this
once he has clarification i think he'll post some info
i think he just wants to be 100% sure so that he doesnt look like a tool if its some simple user issue lol
I've had mine for a couple months. Write speeds are either faster or the same speed as my western digital perpendicular drive depending on size file, read speeds are over twice as fast. Loads an identical game about 50% faster. No stuttering ever, dont even know what that is. So far I havent seen any degradation in performance either subjectively or in benchmarks. My OS will never see a hard drive again.
For whatever reason, pc mark 5 hard disk performance does decrease slowly over time, just like on regular hard drive, and defragging brings it back to normal, just like on hard drive. Done it twice over 2 months, and it is a repeatable 10% immediate change. (note, I will ignore posts on SSD defragmenting uselessness or the wear level boogeyman...not to mention this drive will be obsolete in a year or two anyways).
ermQuote:
Originally Posted by rge
he was talking about that himself
but his doesnt come back
i'll tell him to defrag the SSD and try lol
Ill definately have to check on my setup once i get established and running again!
The ICH Controllers are pretty good I think.
This pic was from 6 I-rams on an ICH9 P5K deluxe..
With a Q6600 at 3.7-3.8
I feel this speed was only limited by the stripe block size . the higher I made it, the faster the speed, but matrix only went so high.
To the OP, it's been awhile since I have used the ICH and matrix disk manager, but you have selected write back cache in matrix manager? and if it doesnt show for one drive, can you make a one drive raid and then do it?
Also OP Can you disable the X25 cache and just use the ICH write back? just for the heck of it, see what results you get. I have read the cache is not to cache any data, but for the intel drive to store it's on the fly
wear leveling data...
I have two of the x25's myself trying to figure it out, but i am on nvidia 790i
EDIT: BTW the I-rams have no cache.. using only ICH write back.. and they are SATA I 150mb's each max.
Nostromo
Yeah it's strange, I'm wondering now if my benching has influenced the controller routines, meaning I have to wait for the drive to "adjust" back to a higher sustained write level.Quote:
Originally Posted by rge
Even that doesn't make much sense though, the controller isn't going to reduce write performance by 50% no matter what you do to the drive, so I don't hold out much hope there.
I'm thinking it must be something within Vista 64 on an X58 chipset, meaning a feature or setting I somehow left on, or off, that needs to be toggled. It's tough because there are so few people on this platform (ICH10 + Intel SSD), so the knowledge base isn't there yet.
Thanks to everyone offering solutions. Sidenote to safan80, you are beyond clueless about this tech and topic based on your comments. We're talking about dozens of other ICH9 and ICH10 users with the same drive geting 2x the write performance out of the box in NON raid setups. Wake up.
Quick question.
Are you running the ICHxR on IDE ( Legacy Mode ) mode ?
If yes, that's the culprit more than likely ;)
[ I'm not joking, I'm pretty serious about this ;) ]
I tried both IDE and ACHI and the differences were small. I thought for sure that would solve it when I did it, thinking that NCQ was somehow the answer.Quote:
Originally Posted by BenchZowner
Good thought on your part. :up:
There have been reports of SSD Cap-ing with the ICH9R/ICH10R and switching them to RAID Mode ( without setting any RAID arrays if you don't want to create one ) solved the issues.
Remove all the HDDs, let the SSD alone and try RAID Mode.
Will try it tonight, thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by BenchZowner
Strange, I get a BSOD+reboot consistently, as soon as windows begins to load. The Intel raid controller sees the drive correctly, labels it as a Sata-II unit, but then it craps the bed.Quote:
Originally Posted by BenchZowner
My board's BIOS has a legacy-mode disable toggle when a drive is set to IDE, changing it on/off didn't change any of the benchmarks.
In fact it seems that it's now worse than prior, with strange gaps in HD Tune, which means the fresh install didn't do much:
mako88
What is your full system stats? what X58 board, ETC. cards..
nostromo
That's funny the spec sheet does not list any cacheQuote:
Originally Posted by WRC
http://download.intel.com/design/fla...-datasheet.pdf
full site is here
http://www.intel.com/design/flash/na...ream/index.htm
Get into Windows ( with the SATA Configuration set to "AHCI" or "Legacy IDE", the one that lets you boot into windows fine ) and install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager.
Then you can switch the configuration to RAID mode and boot into windows normally.
You might have to install the inf's manually, I don't remember for sure.
Performance drop that eva2000 was talking about has been mentioned in several forums, with x25-m, x25-e and fusionio - identical to the benchmarks posted.
There is a workaround with cancelling and resetting the drives, but it's a PITA
Read these posts for more info and workaround:
http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=82
http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35
http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=59
I had to do some evil reg hacks to my Vista 64 when changing from IDE to RAID, installing the Matrix Manager or the infs is only part of the ordeal. I found instructions somewhere around ehre (they were for AHCI tho) but it really was a pain to figure out :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by BenchZowner
Getting to the point where I want to secure-erase the drive to reset its internal controller to the factory state. I never did write tests on the drive out of the box, it's making me wonder if it's possible a bad unit. Secure-erasing it will should provide the answer as a few others speculated in the thread...any suggestions on a good program?
Looks ok, reads/writes in ATTO still erratic today:
is there a firmware upgrade for the drive? I would call intel just to make sure what they have to say about your issues
Just grasping at straws here..
You have tried other ports, and different SATA cable?
Nostromo
Playing with the intel controller. These pics were all taken about 5 mins apart, and settings are exactly same. Defragging helps pcmark5 scores, but to alter Atto, to however you want it to look, just run small files for few mins (ex. total length very small x 4-5x) to increase 2-32Kb speed ....the controller for write speeds just adapts to what you are doing. Running small then large over several times, can get a good balance of all write speeds. But since the controller adjusts to what you mostly do anyways....
Pic 1 maximizing write speeds at 1024, hosing everything else.
Pic 2 maximizing write speeds at 2-32kb size.
pic 3 maximizing write speeds at 16-64kb size.
Pic 4 maximizing write speeds at 16-128kb size.
Pic 5 maximizing speeds at all kb size (staggering repeated runs)
Interesting, I'm going to play with it as nothing has changed since I started the topic. Woeful write speeds in ATTO and inconsistent read speeds. Short of doing a secure erase and reinstalling everything I've run out of options.Quote:
Originally Posted by rge
It FEELS as fast as ever in real-world usage, but it's likely impossible to perceive the differences in say an SSD with a 100/MBs read speed versus a 200/MBs read speed (in say normal usage, not a big file copy or benchmark).
Thanks for the post. :up:
thiers a lot of tweeks on ocz website from Tony :) works really well !!
esp alignment of the drive before formatting
I'm not really that big of a fan of the Intel SSD drives. Read is good but write performance is on par (actually slower) with the $125-150 drives and there isn't really even that big of a boost from the cache if your using even a $200 a controller with memory. I mean I added up the costs of the 3 drives I ordered and the controller and it came out to like $610 and that will probably give about 400MB/s read 250MB/s write on 192GB worth of SSD. Yet it costs $400 on the low end for 80GB worth of space on the intel.
I wont be going back to HD ever after trying SSD's, including raid. Raid is great for benching but random access times of .1 with >200 read speed makes a much bigger difference in my day to day experience than when i had raid. But no question I will be happier when write speeds catch up to read...my guess in one year or sooner my intel drive will be obsolete and i will be upgrading to larger capacity and faster. Funny I was thinking my raid was a waste compared to my intel ssd...guess it all depends on how you view it and your particular use.
if you have write cache disabled your SSD will bomb everytime.
i dont care what tony said about disabling write cache, if you disable it, the drive will write so slow you'll think your on a floppy drive. (dont take that literally, its not that slow but there is a massive difference)
my own testing of 2 different SSD drives has proven this and i am not sure where tony comes up with disabling write caching helps, it doesnt.
on the ICH 10 controller if you have the Matrix Storage Manager installed it WILL NOT allow you to enable write caching because its a single drive.
i am not sure why the f'ing program does that but on my old DFI X48 my single 1TB drive could not use write caching because the intel matrix storage manager saw it as a single non raid drive and for some reason blocked you from enabling it. while my 3x Raptors in raid0 were allowed to enable Write caching.
using device manager to enable write caching failed also as the ICH10 controller was blocking it.
be aware of this but give it a try.
if you enable the raid controller and do not make the drive a raid drive, windows will freak out because the controller is now a raid controller and not a standard controller. it just makes the drive non raid and bypasses the raid part of the controller (so to speak) and you'll probably get BSOD
personally i would reload windows and start over. enable the raid controller and install Vista. you wont need any special drivers just for reloading Vista see's the ICH10 raid just fine. (since the ICH8R-ICH10R are pretty much the same thing windows has built in drivers, although the ICH10R is better then its predecessors)
What would NCQ even do on an SSD? The whole point of NCQ was to optimize the head path on traditional hard drives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCQ
I vote for block size or offset potentially being an issue.
my bet is on it being a poo-poo drive, RMA time I thinks :(
Yep, there's no other explanation. Even doing the staggered ATTO test mentioned above "fooling" the drive to push max speed at certain MB sizes results in the same strange 35-40MB/s write speed cap. Half of what others have gotten.Quote:
Originally Posted by tiro_uspsss
Mine adapts after 2-3 runs, and it is back to full. If yours doesn't change for better, I would definitely rma it, after trying the wipe it clean, etc first.
And no kidding about disabling write cache being a bad idea...I did just to see it hosed performance, makes mako88 ssd writes look good...I could probably write with pencil and paper faster...wont be using mine with write cache disabled.