Intel X-25m tweaks needed in Vista?

Hey guys So ive been reading up on some of the OCZ reg tweaks for SSD's in vista. And Im not sure which ones are really needed and which ones arent, more specfically I heard that some of the tweaks were to minimalize the stuttering that was occuring on the older SSD's with the Jmicron Controller (non apex or g skill titans) but was wondering if most of these were still needed for the Intel X-25m?

Also with this I know some things like Prefetching and a couple other tweaks should be used as vista does Random IO alot and SSD's dont need these, is there any guidelines or sites I should be reading?

thanks in advance!

I couldnt beleive the size and weight of the SSD...I am a SSD newb:) haha

Needed? No. Recommended? Usually.

Just don't turn on write caching if you don't have UPS. And don't install beta software, it's not worth the risk.

turn off the defragmenting and the superfetcher if your apps are all on the SSD

nothing more really.

Try this http://members.westnet.com.au/elpamy...SSDTweaker.zip

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Originally Posted by suffocatio

Try this http://members.westnet.com.au/elpamy...SSDTweaker.zip

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wouldn't recommend it
this is for the crappy OCZ and other's jmicron inventions!

the intel ssd has 3 years warranty plus enough technology to work on the current OSes as they are

They all benefit as these tweaks just prevent/reduce the OS using the drive like it does a normal hard drive which slows things down on SSD instead of speeding them up.

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Originally Posted by karateo

wouldn't recommend it
this is for the crappy OCZ and other's jmicron inventions!

the intel ssd has 3 years warranty plus enough technology to work on the current OSes as they are

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you obviously do not know much of SSD technology.

I'd like to see what MFT in hardware does on these things :shocked:

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Originally Posted by ewitte

They all benefit as these tweaks just prevent/reduce the OS using the drive like it does a normal hard drive which slows things down on SSD instead of speeding them up.

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disable pagefile? what if he get a bsod? what if he runs programs that need pagefile?
disable superfetcher? is he going to have frequently used stuff ONLY on the ssd?

intel ssds don't need tweaks to work. you only HAVE TO disable defragmenting on the specific drive to reduce wearing.

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Originally Posted by Tony

you obviously do not know much of SSD technology.

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at least i know about it!
I see a whole company (OCZ) trying to figure how they work why should i know? :rofl:

any useful post on the topic now?

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Originally Posted by m^2

Needed? No. Recommended? Usually.

Just don't turn on write caching if you don't have UPS. And don't install beta software, it's not worth the risk.

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Yeah read about write caching I dont know if im going to enable that- dont see much benefit from it.- Plus I overclock my PC so random crashes can and happen from time to time, dont want to risk the whole drive to crapout. I also dont know how useful a UPS would be on a system that draws over 950 Watts from the wall on a 1200 Watt PSU lol.

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Originally Posted by karateo

turn off the defragmenting and the superfetcher if your apps are all on the SSD

nothing more really.

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Yeah ill turn off defrag on the SSD for sure.

On the SSD I will have the OS and main apps like browsers and office, and 1 or 2 games, the rest of my stuff will be on my Velociraptor.

What exactly is the SSD Tweaker executble for?

I read Tony's reg tweaks for SSD's. guess ill try some of em out.

So Superfetching, Prefetch, indexing, but leave pagefiling on? Now under L2 cache what if we have i7? will there be an L3 cache instead?
thanks

Disable write cache on intel SSD??? pic one is enabled, pic 2 is disabled...I will keep write cache enabled on mine. Maybe works on OCZ, not intels, at least not mine...unless there is some other write cache. Windows 7 on mine, superfetch is on manual after install, never runs.

I am using my intel SSD no different than a normal hard drive. In one or two years my write speeds, and probably reads, as well as capacity will be obsolete and I will be upgrading anyways.

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Originally Posted by karateo

disable pagefile? what if he get a bsod? what if he runs programs that need pagefile?
disable superfetcher? is he going to have frequently used stuff ONLY on the ssd?

intel ssds don't need tweaks to work. you only HAVE TO disable defragmenting on the specific drive to reduce wearing.

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I have my pagefile on another drive manually set to 512MB and the paging executive is set to disabled along with the largesystemcache setting set. Also I left superfetch on but turned off PREFETCH. And besides defrag you also want to turn indexing off. Intel has its place but its obviously WAY overpriced and there is only one thing its faster than going against the other brands when properly configured in RAID with a good controller (and still cheaper).

Response to the intel screen shot ;) Make sure at least defrag and indexing are off.

Needed? It depends on how you use your PC........ Recommended? again it depends on how you use your PC, but most of the tweaks would speed up your system.

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Originally Posted by dctokyo

Needed? It depends on how you use your PC........ Recommended? again it depends on how you use your PC, but most of the tweaks would speed up your system.

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Or extend the life. A lot of those tweaks are not even SSD specific. Some of us used a lot of the settings on normal hard drives to speed the system up. Intel or not windows (even 7) is still not configured to properly use SSD out of the box to its most potential.

Lol don't fight guys the whole technology isn't anywhere near perfected yet. In less than 2 years everything out now will look like crap.

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Originally Posted by ewitte

Response to the intel screen shot ;) Make sure at least defrag and indexing are off.

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Is that a single Intel Drive or a different RAID?

Well If I enable Write Cache and get a computer crash or a random PSU shut down, is there a much higher risk rate?

Also for LargeSystemCache, will there be a option for L3 cache for i7 CPUS?

Not a single drive, and given his comment of intel being overpriced, probably raid of OCZ?...but I missed whatever point he was trying to show about write caching if he was responding to me...so have to ask him. Personally I prefer single drives, raid gets corrupted to easy benching cpu, and I dont see benefits of raid with my use as I do with single SSD vs hard drive.

I dont think disabling write cache is going to be an option with intel drive, kills the performance as my post shows...but you will be able to test yourself soon enough.

As for risk of crashing, between running prime, linpack for 24/7 testing and benching for hours and hours over last months, I have had ?100 bsod's and random shut off's and reboots, all with my intel SSD write cache enabled, havent corrupted a thing yet. Usually I will corrupt an OS at some point on hard drive, and I am sure at some point on this SSD, but does not seem to be any more prone than hard drive that I can tell...and when it does, reinstall from image is 5 mins.

Not to mention like i said this drive will be so outdated in a year or 2, I wouldnt care if it worked or not by then...and i doubt the wear level boogey man is going to get me before then.

sounds good! ill try prob most of the Tony's tweaks except for the ram drive stuff, most of it seems good, i never noticed that write caching was on automatically anyways haha. I just got the drive yesterday but have been backing up stuff - gonna connect it tomorrow, really excited.

And yeah I prefer single drives too, I went RAID b4 and never saw much of an increase, that being said I said i would never go SLI and no i have three GPUs haha

I was just saying you need to leave it on especially with a drive that has no internal cache. Even the intels have no cache just a better controller. I'd actually prefer something like vertex over Intel for a single drive with no hardware controller. I'd only spend that kind of money if it were being used on a webserver which is where they would really shine. But then again Kingson is starting to rebrand them at a discount price so even that may be unecessary soon.

Technically you should only lose the changes getting written to the disk at the time of the BSOD. If its a benchmark you don't really care about whats getting written to disk.

Prefetching should be turned off. Prefetch places the bootup items (copy) in a different spot so that it could be loaded quicker sequentially. But that's not necessary with SSDs and adds writes.


Defrag should be turned off. Defrag isn't strictly unnecessary, but the built-in defrag doesn't do it right for SSDs and adds writes.


Superfetch should be left on. Data is read from the disk so that's safe for the SSD. Fast as SSD's are, RAM is still faster.


Page file should be left on unless you can put it on a different drive.


Write cache should be left on unless your system is prone to crashing in the middle of disk activity. If it's your primary workstation, this should not be happening; find and fix the problem. If this is your extreme workstation, then a little disk corruption shouldn't matter.


Indexing is a tossup. Even a SSD is not fast enough to null the need for indexing. Indexing does put a very modest number of writes when it creates and updates the index (in the overall view of things, it's trivial). Reading the index obviously has no penalties and as usual RAM is far faster than even a SSD. Remember, you're not supposed to index everything, only things you want instant-search on.

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Originally Posted by btdvox

sounds good! ill try prob most of the Tony's tweaks except for the ram drive stuff, most of it seems good, i never noticed that write caching was on automatically anyways haha. I just got the drive yesterday but have been backing up stuff - gonna connect it tomorrow, really excited.

And yeah I prefer single drives too, I went RAID b4 and never saw much of an increase, that being said I said i would never go SLI and no i have three GPUs haha

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I tried the ramdrive section in Vista and it just made things less stable.

RAID performance actually dropped on ICH10 but went WAY up on the 2405 (for actual usage). So if you don't have an SSD with cache or a good controller I wouldn't mess with it.

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Originally Posted by ewitte

I was just saying you need to leave it on especially with a drive that has no internal cache. Even the intels have no cache just a better controller. I'd actually prefer something like vertex over Intel for a single drive with no hardware controller. I'd only spend that kind of money if it were being used on a webserver which is where they would really shine. But then again Kingson is starting to rebrand them at a discount price so even that may be unecessary soon.

Technically you should only lose the changes getting written to the disk at the time of the BSOD. If its a benchmark you don't really care about whats getting written to disk.

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Thanks, I looked into the Vertexes but after seeing some numbers and goign on the OCZ forum , they dont seem to sure about some things and makes me kind of anxious.
Plus every review and bench Ive seen the intel SSD blew the others out of the water. It was the main reason I looked into SSD's actually.

Your points about having cache and not having cache vs a good controller is kind of moot as it seems for any reviewer and many users having the Intel drive as a primary OS drive is the only good SSD for that particualr job, It seems every other SSD other than Mtron ones had much worse performances and the APEX/Gskill titan RAID 0 controller seems like a rehash to fix something that was broken. and the Intel drive put those drives to shame too.

Thanks for the advice tho!\

Ok so other than that It seems most people are saying put the page file on my VR drive and keep superfetch on (both the regedit and under services.msc).

Sounds good.

Intel rules iops but that doesn't mean the other drives are bad. I mean 3500 versus less than 100 on a 7200rpm drives is already very noticeable ;) Less noticeable than going from 3500 to the 16000 or so on the intels. You can't go completely off of reviews. Even the cheap stuff can easily be insanely faster than a platter based drive given you tweak things right.

If Intel were the only option for me I would have just waited. I mean Kingston just started selling drives with the same technology and I have the feeling lots of the other companys may license the controller so in less than a year you can probably get the exact same tech for less than $200. Paying $400-500 for an 80GB mlc drive is crazy. If thats the case I may easily talk myself into replacing my array with 3 of them. IDK I never did try an intel drive but its kind of the case of instant versus instant. Everything I click already comes up near instant.

no I get where your coming from, To be honest I was going to go for 2 X 30 GB vertexes, but when the Intel SSD went down to 475 here, It wouldve been the same price as the 2 X 30 GB vertexes so I jumped on it, Id rather have a single drive rather than worry about RAID0 and plus its the Intel SSD and it has 20 GB more for the same price almost.

Intel ssd was 475.00
30 GB OCZ Vertex was about 199.00 X 2

I am at the same position.
I was looking for the cheapest ssds on a hardware controller with cache. But what would i do with them in the future? too restrictive
Then, I decided to go with lot's of mtrons SLC ssds. But again, future proof I will always have to use them in raid mode.
Then, the vertexes, but 1) intel lowered prices and 2) the 60gb size is small for a laptop but the 80gb is Ok.
So from 200 pounds of the vertex i decided to wait 1-2 months and buy the intel mlc which will always be a fast drive and independent of controllers and raid modes.

Don't even mention it's under Intel's known reliability on products.

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Originally Posted by Tony

you obviously do not know much of SSD technology.

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LOL MAN!

How funny you OCZ people are :clap:

Tried to post to this guy here
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...&postcount=160
that Intel SSDs have 3.300 IOPS but then I got this....

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vBulletin Message

You have been banned for the following reason:
1 month holiday for comments on other forums

Date the ban will be lifted: 03-03-2009, 03:00 PM

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Really, OCZ staff, get a life!
It's a chain reaction your ban. Think more next time!

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Originally Posted by karateo

LOL MAN!

How funny you OCZ people are :clap:

Tried to post to this guy here
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...&postcount=160
that Intel SSDs have 3.300 IOPS but then I got this....




Really, OCZ staff, get a life!
It's a chain reaction your ban. Think more next time!

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For comments on other forums? That's just pathetic, OCZ.

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Originally Posted by karateo

Tried to post to this guy here
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...&postcount=160
that Intel SSDs have 3.300 IOPS but then I got this....

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The forum is for discussion of OCZ products, not what this drive or that drive from our competition does or does not do. If you have something contructive to post, then we can talk, if you are not interested in that, then your not going to get the chance to post.

You stated what you were going to post which had nothing to do with the OCZ drive.
That is not an open forum like XS is, it is focused on OCZ products.

discussion continued here
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...06#post3624706

sorry for the forum hijack!

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Originally Posted by ChronoReverse

Prefetching should be turned off. Prefetch places the bootup items (copy) in a different spot so that it could be loaded quicker sequentially. But that's not necessary with SSDs and adds writes.


Defrag should be turned off. Defrag isn't strictly unnecessary, but the built-in defrag doesn't do it right for SSDs and adds writes.


Superfetch should be left on. Data is read from the disk so that's safe for the SSD. Fast as SSD's are, RAM is still faster.


Page file should be left on unless you can put it on a different drive.


Write cache should be left on unless your system is prone to crashing in the middle of disk activity. If it's your primary workstation, this should not be happening; find and fix the problem. If this is your extreme workstation, then a little disk corruption shouldn't matter.


Indexing is a tossup. Even a SSD is not fast enough to null the need for indexing. Indexing does put a very modest number of writes when it creates and updates the index (in the overall view of things, it's trivial). Reading the index obviously has no penalties and as usual RAM is far faster than even a SSD. Remember, you're not supposed to index everything, only things you want instant-search on.

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Thanks for the nice elaboration! I will be sure to use this whenever I finally get an SSD setup.

To each his own on the raid setup I guess. I like having one large drive as well, but my performance addiction has always required a raid setup.

Haha, glad this post is getting alot of insight,

To be honest, it is why i went intel in a second, because they have reliability and a 3 year warranty, plus Ive always bought Intel CPU's. I remember reading the anandtech review back in septemeber and being soo blatently jealous but they were going for 800 bucks then....

I dont think the Intel's are too Overpriced now, comparing to the higher volume vertexes.

Here is a 120 GB OCZ Vertex for 620

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?s...Z%20Technology

and the intel 160GB was going for 820 at NCIX, (I think there out of stock now so prices a bumped up again).

for 200 bucks your getting 40 GB more and the Intel drive. I believe the 250 GB Vertex goes for about 1100 bucks.

Also Thanks for the elaboration also Chrono- really helpful!

Lastly: I really never bought much from OCZ, I bought some RAM from them before and my RAM rebate was declined because of a post office clerical error, and never got solved which kind of bothered me, but I didnt hold it against them. I did find this comment from Tony funny;
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...&postcount=174

but I know Tony has a lot of knowledge and is respected here at XS. But Im sure he knows people on this forum have cash to burn.

Personally I think the Vertexes are overpriced as well seeing as it only cost me about $600 for 192GB of storage AND a RAID controller for the older drives. Adding 32MB cache isn't THAT much money. I mean you can get it on a sub $100 normal drive. It shouldn't triple the price.

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Originally Posted by One_Hertz

For comments on other forums? That's just pathetic, OCZ.

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there was a chance to try vertex ssds but now it's gone!
in addition i will never recommend ocz products again and I have a nice screenshot to show around :ROTF:

finally, i am having trouble looking for that insulting post against tony!
i even PMed him about it :D
i can easily though, find one from tony insulting me! (just scroll upwards)

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...05&postcount=4

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Originally Posted by btdvox

Haha, glad this post is getting alot of insight,

To be honest, it is why i went intel in a second, because they have reliability and a 3 year warranty, plus Ive always bought Intel CPU's. I remember reading the anandtech review back in septemeber and being soo blatently jealous but they were going for 800 bucks then....

I dont think the Intel's are too Overpriced now, comparing to the higher volume vertexes.

Here is a 120 GB OCZ Vertex for 620

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?s...Z%20Technology

and the intel 160GB was going for 820 at NCIX, (I think there out of stock now so prices a bumped up again).

for 200 bucks your getting 40 GB more and the Intel drive. I believe the 250 GB Vertex goes for about 1100 bucks.

Also Thanks for the elaboration also Chrono- really helpful!

Lastly: I really never bought much from OCZ, I bought some RAM from them before and my RAM rebate was declined because of a post office clerical error, and never got solved which kind of bothered me, but I didnt hold it against them. I did find this comment from Tony funny;
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...&postcount=174

but I know Tony has a lot of knowledge and is respected here at XS. But Im sure he knows people on this forum have cash to burn.

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(some people are getting crazy!)

with the intel ssds you will never be wrong
reliability and trust to the manufacturer


so anyone has any results with various tweaks?
any real life experiences?

Actually there are a lot of the intels dying. They work fine for a while and then all of the sudden the iops drops to almost nothing and/or you can not access the drive. Read through the user reviews on Newegg ;) I've seen that a few other places as well.

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Originally Posted by ewitte

Actually there are a lot of the intels dying. They work fine for a while and then all of the sudden the iops drops to almost nothing and/or you can not access the drive. Read through the user reviews on Newegg ;) I've seen that a few other places as well.

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Well,reading the reviews on Newegg ..61 total ,some guys have bought more than 1..lets say round 100 discs from this sample and they have died 2-3 ..this is not a lot of..

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Originally Posted by ewitte

Actually there are a lot of the intels dying. They work fine for a while and then all of the sudden the iops drops to almost nothing and/or you can not access the drive. Read through the user reviews on Newegg ;) I've seen that a few other places as well.

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Yah I dont know why but this whole thread youve just been flaming....

No point in doing so mate, I already bought the intel ssd and have no regrets about it, From any reviewer and user i have seen they have been nothing but happy about them, except for one user who had problems with his RAID card (because there was too much throughput from 4 intel ssds lol)

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Originally Posted by btdvox

Yah I dont know why but this whole thread youve just been flaming....

No point in doing so mate, I already bought the intel ssd and have no regrets about it, From any reviewer and user i have seen they have been nothing but happy about them, except for one user who had problems with his RAID card (because there was too much throughput from 4 intel ssds lol)

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Just a reality check that they really are not that much better ;) People make it out to be the best thing in the world and the only option and thats just not true. I'd actually wait for the better stuff in 1-2 years if Intel was the only option just because they priced themselves out of the market. If your not happy with the other drives for some reason I would wait, basically what I was saying.

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Originally Posted by ewitte

Just a reality check that they really are not that much better ;) People make it out to be the best thing in the world and the only option and thats just not true. I'd actually wait for the better stuff in 1-2 years if Intel was the only option just because they priced themselves out of the market. If your not happy with the other drives for some reason I would wait, basically what I was saying.

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Thats ok, No ones saying that here nor did they ever say that.

When I bought my i7 Proc - I was told the same thing to go for the 920 instead of the EE 965, but I bought the 965 and love it.

I didnt give my reason to wait for the OCZ vertexes because of my own reasons and it seems if I say those reasons I could get banned :P so I wont.


anyways thanks for the help guys!

sorry ..wrong thread...
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...4&postcount=20
..that should go to this ..http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=225167 :)

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Originally Posted by btdvox

Thats ok, No ones saying that here nor did they ever say that.

When I bought my i7 Proc - I was told the same thing to go for the 920 instead of the EE 965, but I bought the 965 and love it.

I didnt give my reason to wait for the OCZ vertexes because of my own reasons and it seems if I say those reasons I could get banned :P so I wont.


anyways thanks for the help guys!

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You got a 965? You also got :bananal:

The Kingston version of the X25-m comes with this advice from their web site Q&A “data caching is limited to the controller for enhanced performance. Disabling Write Cache simply adds latency and provides no significant additional data loss protection.”