Performance Issues...

I have a Crucial M4. For a long time since I've gotten it, windows has booted very quickly and my PC has worked well. Lately though, I've had issues with windows booting slowly and functioning slowly from then on. Sometimes it will boot quickly and normally and all programs including Chrome and games like Skyrim function perfectly and seamlessly, and other times it boots extremely slowly and Chrome lags and Skyrim's framerate drops immensely. I've tried reinstalling clean windows several times and did a secure erase recently and it still slows down eventually. I did a ramtest and it showed no errors and I just did a benchmark:



The last thing I can think of is that my SSD is failing... Could this be the issue?

 

might be optimus settings,

 

Optimus? I have an AMD card, like it says in my sig, so it's not that

 

How much space is left on your ssd?

 

I have 87/120gb free

 

Meaning 87 full? But when a ssd gets full it starts to slow done but to just affect the write speeds is a little odd.

 

Have you checked your SSD's health in CrystalDiskMark or similar? Maybe check if it reports any bad blocks besides factory bad blocks.

Is your SSD partition aligned. If you used the Windows 7 or 8 installer it probably is, but you can check with AS SSD benchmark program. You don't have to run the actual benchmark, just open the program and it will tell you GOOD or BAD in the top left corner. Also which SATA driver are you using? AS SSD will tell you that in the top left corner as well.

Another thing you can try is to reseat the drive by removing it and installing it again. In my previous laptop, the SSD I installed managed to slip away and half unplug itself which gave me BSODs.

 

87 gb free. Also, here is my AS SSD screenshot: View attachment 114599

And here is my extended SMART test:



It says no errors... What else could be causing my performance problems?

 

If you use CrystalDiskInfo the SMART atrributes should be labeled more correctly. Any difference if you install the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver?

 

The performance of the SSD looks about right.

 

Performance
Sustained Sequential Read
Up to 500MBps (SATA 6Gbs); 265MBps (SATA 3Gbs)

Sustained Sequential Write
Up to 175MBps (SATA 6Gbps)
4KB Random Read
Up to 45,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write
Up to 35,000 IOPS
MTBF
1,200,000 hours

Meaker is right.. lol

 

If it's not the SSD, what could be causing my performance loss? For example, I tried rolling back the AMD drivers, and when I was going through the AMD install center process, by the time I did "custom install", selected the items to install and hit "next", installation took about 10-15 minutes! That's multiple times what it used to take...

 

It is the SSD. You bought a crappy SSD.

 

Maybe try go into Intel RST options-> Performance tab-> disable Link Power Management. That used to be a thing a few years ago.

 

I recently had some more experience with this issue... I thought "maybe it is the ram..." so I took the OEM 8gb out of my other laptop and put it back in this, and boom! it ran fast and smooth. For several startups, it ran like new. Today though, it decided to be very slow again. I haven't installed anything or changed any settings. I decided to try a WEI test and everything got in the 7's except for Processor Speed, which is a 4.5!!!! Is my CPU failing?

 

It's fine, still far better than any mech HDD. It's an average SSD and that is good enough for most folks.

 

Any thoughts on the processor issue? Like I've said before, sometimes the laptop boots up perfectly and fast, and others, it just lags and boots slowly and performs slowly...

 

Have you logged frequency/load level/temperature graphs of the cpu from a program like xtu to see what is going on?

 

I just ran a 5 minute CPU stress test in XTU. CPU went up to 100% the whole time, Frequency stayed at 0GHz the whole time and Temperature did not go above 80C. The computer is in one of it's good moods at startup today. When it wants to be stupid, I'll do another stress test