Installing an SSD? tips/tricks/benchmarks

ok it now seems like your speeds. Thus i tried on default windows drivers. with do the same with IRST later

 

60gb vertex II Single drive

 

Curious, what percentage of your drive is full now faiz23?

EDIT: I see it, thanks. Been using mainly ATTO on OCZ's advice...

 

Hey everyone,

I just got an intel X25-M SSD and these are my speeds...



Do these speed look right for a Intel G2 SSD? For some odd reason the WEI score for hard drive only shows 5.9

EDIT: ok so i installed the Intel rapid storage tech driver and now my WEI score is at 7.5

but are the speeds normal for this SSD?

 

is this run with IRST or without? they are a little low....

The group on the left is my Intel G2 80GB

 

Scook... are you allowing any recovery time between runs for the drives? I keep hearing this is a good idea, do you this at all or just run back to back?

 

Hmm, I think I may have benched too much and need a secure erase. My Seq read speeds have droped to around 380-390MB/s. I created an image, and am going to secure erase and retry the same image. If that doesn't work, then I think it's because CCleaner may have wiped something from my registry So I guess I'll find out on monday afternoon When I get some time.

 

I also noticed a sizeable drop on my sequential numbers. Think it is due to drive use? If so that is depressing as they have only been installed about a month. Never saw any slow down like that on my intels, think it is due to the lack of trim on the raid array?

And those tests of mine were back to back.

 

I think it might be due to use, I noticed that if I went from 0fill to 1fill it caused a drop. My guess is because of the change? reimaged and noticed that the "write-back cache" somehow became disabled. Then on the fresh image, numbers were back up, till I tried a 50MB 1fill rather then 0fill. Then when i did a 0 fill numbers were half on Seq read. So I did a 1000MB 0fill run, and that got the numbers back up. Maybe it's because the drive recognizes the 1's has to work around them?

EDIT: Not sure what it is, but it's only my Seq Reads that have droped the remaining seven catagories remain the same. The seq reads droped250MB/s. Tommorrow I'll try another image and see if that corrects it.

 

I've always been a gamer at heart, and enjoy gaming....oh the memories of Quake II when I upgraded my Video card *hahah that's what I called it back then, I know its called GPU now* and I've always wanted an Alienware for top gaming..... I plan on getting one soon hopefully an M18x or later....but I must get this question straightened out once and for all please.

What is the story with SSDs? I understand a couple things about them. They are fast, yes, really fast to LOAD up your programs, such as booting Windows quickly, starting a program quickly, etc...great....

What I don't understand is, once that program is booted from the SSD, let's say, Cyrsis for example. Now, once Crysis is loaded, will it play faster, smoother, less lag than it will play on an regular hard drive with 7200 RPM? I thought I understood the SSD only boots it up, and once it starts its up to the GPU's power to run the game smoothly.

Obviously, then why get an SSD if it won't matter how it runs the game. Since regular hard drives are cheaper you can get a 1T hard drive than a 1T SSD which you'll have to sell a kidney or liver to get, lol, j/k. But seriously... so why really get an SSD for gaming...does it make the difference?

Note: I thought this question is best suited for the Alienware threads since you guys are the hard core gamers.

KJ

 

It wont improve in-game gaming performance, booting up and loading it is x10 faster.

 

SSD will be good to cut down load times, and write times when you need to read or write things to the SSD, but thats about it. It won't increase your FPS in a game. That is soley dependant on the GPU. SSDs are not really targeted toward gamers, but to all users as everyone hates waiting on load times. I'd never go back to a mechanical HDD for my boot drive now that I've used an SSD, especially now that I've used them in RAID 0

 

Just as I thought I really do appreciate a simple answer. Thanks john2000 and DR650SE Personally, I don't mind waiting 10 or 30 seconds to load Windows or a game. It matters to me to have much more storage on the laptop, 1 to 2 TB will hold more games, more fun, but a bit wait time. I'll compromise.... Well, I do hope in the near future to join the Alienware people. Everyone is very helpful. Thanks again.


KJ

 

Since most games are on Steam you an go the route I did, Now I have an SSD RAID 0 setup, and a 1TB HDD for storage Works quite well.

 

This is not always true, games that may do a lot of random reads etc can experience hitching due to disk hits; it's been shown SSD's can help with this, so it's true in certain cases. Re-spawning in games is one example where it can help.

It's somewhat like how 8GB can help certain games, not all, but some will benefit and a few a lot.

 

ATTO and IOMeter...

 

quite some time has passed

ATTO is already there.. do you really need the IOmeter tests ?

 

I only mention it because for some folks with SandForce controllers it is recommended by OCZ... for instance they recommend ATTO over CrystalDiskInfo and mention using IOMeter as well, though that doesn't apply in your case. I presume others with Sandforce controllers are going to peruse this thread for info which is why I mention it... pay it forward right

 

I'd appreciate any tips or guidance on installing my two SSD's in RAID 0. The SSD's I own are: Intel 80 GB X25M Mainstream SATA II Solid-State Drive

 

well i wouldn't suggest raid0 ...because of the lack of trim... ever think of using one as a boot drive + apps you want to run quick, and having a HDD as a media/storage drive?

 

you could put two ssds in raid and still have trim if they are both kingston + series drives, with garbage collection built-in.

 

Bookmark this post. I made a link to all the threads and tweaks I followed as well as posted before and after results of my performance increase. I too am running SSD RAID 0 with 2x160GB Intel X25-M SSDs. The differance is that the R2 had some 4K SSD issues, the R3 maynot, but these may still increase performance. Not sure how much exactly will apply to you.

 

they are intel gen 1's... so.. i wouldn't..

@ DR65ose: How they running? Maintaining speed ok?

 

Internal GC can mitigate this largely on almost all controllers now

 

ah ok so even intel's old g1 supports this?

anyways on a relative note, at least the r3 has Samsung's BEAST 470 ssds in it

 

I do not know if the intel drives have GC or not, DR650SE is the person I would ask. I know for a fact that indilinx barefoot and sandforce sf-1200 drives have it. I think the Samsungs might as well

 

As far as I know, every current SSD out there has ITGC.

More info here.

 

Awesome thanks! I've bookmarked it and I'll let you know how it works out.

 

Thanks for your help Stereo. Can you confirm that my SSD's are in fact Gen 1? Below is a link to them from New Egg, my understanding was that they were Gen 2 and given its product number with a G2 in it I always believed it was.

Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH080 G2R5 2.5" 80GB

Newegg.com - Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH080G2R5 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

That is a Gen 2 drive.

 

Here is great wall of bench. Bask in its glory. All done on my desktop with i7 965 and x58 chipset (ICH10R southbridge - same as the M17x R2)

First, I present to you the single drive numbers


And now, a Raid 0 stripe size shootout! The 128KB stripe size was used to show the effect of setting the write-back caches . Otherwise these tests were all done under IDENTICAL test conditions.

 

Those benchmarks rock! ...

 

As I am thinking of getting an m11x (which i've said like how many times now?) I might put in an SSD and see how it fairs: is there any good brands I would look out for?

 

yo, hello from whirlpool.

i got myself a kingston vseries 128gb for $170 from newegg rebate sale.

it seems ocz mite have the better read/write speeds but for $/gb iv found the kingston value series to hold the most value.

 

and hello to you too LOL

for me a 128gb drive just doesn't cut it as I want to have a good amount of space to store my 720p mkvs AND for some games. so if i get one i might just partition it straight down the middle so the OS+Games get 111 and my mkvs get 111 also.

EDIT: I am looking at this one....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227544

and the AU prices for it are just has terrible as for the m11x.

 

nice drive. yes aussie prices are ridiculous. lucky im going to states in a couple of days. grab all my gear while im there.

 

some AU stores are selling them for between 6-800 AUD locally and that's just not acceptable. even though I have to go through a middleman like I do with PriceUSA(.com.au), even with their $15 AUD fee that SSD nets me only $500 AUD including postage via USPS....maybe even less because it's not even one-quarter of a pound in weight (don't know the metric equiv...didn't do any conversion).

So maybe in late feb I'll get an m11x as I am still saving to go to the US.

 

Dang Scook, those are nice numbers! So what do you recommend for stripe size? 128k? Are you still running 16K on your notebook? Also did you notice that a single threaded load on the CPU helped like I did on the 920XM?

 

I am just going to keep it at 128KB stripe I think. The gain in 4K numbers is not good enough to justify chopping down the sequential stuff imho. And this is in my desktop, the laptop is a single SSD and a storage drive. I did see wPrime helping some.

And for those who do not understand software RAID (what Intel uses) watch your CPU usage during the 4k tests haha - it added like 20% utilization to mine. Just because ICH10R supports RAID does not make it a hardware RAID controller

 

People with SSD's don't store large media content (e.g. video files, pictures, , etc) on their SSD's. They use the SSD for OS + apps + games. Those types of applications are the ones with load times, so they will benefit from SSD's.

People with SSD's store large media content on a separate external USB mechanical hard drive. The storage is abundant, cheap, and fast enough for that type of content. Something like a 720p MKV will not benefit at all from SSD speeds (a video file will play identically well, regardless of whether it is playing from a mechanical hard drive or an SSD).

 

Nice, I might have to re-image this evening and see what kind of numbers a 128K stripe size would give me.

 

I am just wondering what the heck was causing my sequential numbers to be so low! The seq. read was less than 500 MB/s before I re-built the array for this last battery of tests. Currently my system image is on the 80GB Intel G2 so I can change the RAID as needed for tests. Going between the 2 does not take long anyways hehe (like 5 minutes to image the drive)

It also just occurred to me, the need for wPrime is probably to up the clock speed for the software RAID performance since turbo boost gives you a NICE boost for single threaded apps (around 15% usage )

 

YOu know I bet your right on the clock speed. I don't know why I never thought about it, actually probably because I didn't give the software aspect of it much thought. I think I will re-image. Not doing much else. Do you wipe the drives between imaging?

 

Na I am lazy haha. I did not even use HDDerase or any of that stuff....so if anything you could say that my drives are "degraded" and could even be faster lol

Although the numbers are in line with what I would expect (the single drive run I did - no reference for the Raid and clearly something is sketchy as I am well past SATA II spec haha) so I assume they are not that "dirty"

And like I said for the software aspect of it, just watch the CPU usage sky rocket during the 4k tests haha, that is when there is the most CPU overhead needed (just like 64 byte packets in Ethernet tests - that is what I do all day so easy comparison for me haha)

 

Hmm, For some reason I can't get CDM to read anything over about 420MB/s on Seq Reads. When I did it with out Writeback cache, i had a Seq write of 650MB/s. All of a sudden it drops off. This is after a secure erase/re-image. Booted in a nice 12 sec though. I'm going to rewipe/re-image and try again. I didn't see much improvement over the 4K stripe though. Well in Atto I did, but I lost some in the smaller write regions. Not sure if it's worth it or not. Wish I could figure out why my writes drop off.

I'm thinking I might have to just call Intel and ask for an RMA. Be nice to start with a new set of fresh drives.

 

hmmm....ok, what about Seagate's hybrid drives?

 

loving my intel x25-m

 

If your looking around the 256gb range, the crucial c300 is probably the best in terms of read/write operations and speed is also very good, only down fall to it is it has higher power consumption than most ssd's so you actually might see a drop between your regular hdd and the c300. OCZ, inte, gskill are good brands, as long as it has the newest sandforcer driver you'll be fine

 

i have to agree... and remember with ssd's if you don't have trim, you don't want to fill the thing up a lot past let's say 75-80% (or so i've heard, something about the way the blocks are filled and are rewritten). for my desktop i try not to even go past 60% fullness (i got a really small ssd just for boot and application load times). i have an external hard drive that i use with my laptop (don't have ssd currently but thinking about getting a 120 gb eventually)... but if money isn't a priority, then i guess go willy nilly lols

 

I 2nd that the C300 is an awesome drive, I have 2 of them and they are by far the quickest 2.5 SSD out there. Also there Sata III.