How To Improve SSD performance on Intel Series 4, 5 and 965 chipsets (Stamatisx Tweak)

The problem
SSDs display low 4K random reads and writes, low access times and slow performance on Intel Series 5 chipset based laptops.

Comparisons with a different chipset
Hardware used:
SSD - Intel X25-E 64GB
Laptop #1 - Dell Alienware M17x R1, chipset NVIDIA MCP79
Laptop #2 - Dell Alienware M17x R2, chipset Intel PM55

R1 with the Nvidia chipset
______AS SSD______________CMD_______



R2 with Intel chipset
______AS SSD______________CMD_______


Note that the read access times are 2.86x times slower and the write access times are 3.51x times slower on the R2 compared to the R1

Real world performance of the SSD before the tweak

MS Office 2010 Professional Plus
Time to extract:_____ 0 min 44 sec
Time to fully install:___4 min 56 sec
Time to fully uninstall:_2 min 0 sec

Visual Studio Ultimate 2010
Time to install:____16 min 56 sec
Time to uninstall*:_3 min 56 sec

MSE
Scanned Items:_116,810
Time:__________5min 9sec



**Tweak**
For increased SSD performance apply the following two registry changes:

Code:

[B]HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Processor
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm

[/B]Change on both the Start from 3 to [B]4[/B]
Reboot

AFTER THE TWEAK

Real world performance difference

MS Office 2010 Professional Plus
Time to extract:_____ 0 min 43 sec
Time to fully install:___3 min 57 sec
Time to fully uninstall:_0 min 47 sec

Visual Studio Ultimate 2010
Time to install:____7 min 43 sec
Time to uninstall*:_2 min 46 sec

MSE
Scanned Items:_116,819
Time:__________4 min 55 sec


Increased Performance
_______AS SSD____________CDM________




Idle temperatures
___Before tweak________After tweak____



Turbo Boost
___Before tweak_____After tweak____



Notes

• If you have the option to disable the C states from you BIOS there is no need to apply this tweak (verified by user saturnotaku)
• If you have an extreme processor like i7 920XM or i7 940XM you can use the ELEET program in order to bypass the Turbo Boost lock (by user iemie)
• Results will vary according to your CPU, BIOS and SSD

Restore the default settings
To undo the changes, set those two registry values back to default ( 3)

**In case where reverting back to default values didn't work, also apply the following:

Code:

Open the [B]Device Manager [/B]
go to [B]Processors[/B]
uninstall all the CPU icons that appear with the yellow exclamation mark.
right click on the Processors Icon and press "Scan for  hardware changes"
this will reinstall the CPU and you will have  everything back to the way it was

Known Issues

• Increases 2-5 C temperatures, depends on the laptop
• In some laptops it disables Turbo Boost
• Decreases battery life (will vary from laptop to laptop)

For a more detailed analysis visit here:
How To: Improve Low SSD Performance in Intel Series 5 Chipset Environments | StorageReview.com

Thanks and credit to Phil and the rest of the forum members who contributed to this and the original thread.
Thanks and credit to Batboy for linking this to a sticky thread on the Alienware M17x subforum.

If you feel that this tweak does not cover you, don't panic, try JJB's approach.

More Tips
To further improve your SSD's performance and longevity read the following thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...sd-performance-tips-underperforming-ssds.html


**Disclaimer**
Apply any suggested tweaks with caution and on your own responsibility

*** Warning: Crystal Disk Mark with 5 runs of 1000MB file size writes several gigabytes to your SSD. If you set the file size to 3x 50MB you can still measure improvements while causing less wear. ***

 

I only used this line:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm

Change on "Start" from 3 to 4.

 

This tweak yielded significant results for me. Machine stats in my sig. Windows default chipset. First image is after JJB's tweaks. Second image is after the tweak on this page.

 

Thank you Phil for the thread, it is actually a really good thought

Anseio, it's a really nice improvement indeed.

 

hi stamatisx i seem to be having an issue with your tweak. please see:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...es/517934-help-stamatisx-fix.html#post6701356

thanks

 

Check this post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-full-advantage-fast-ssds-12.html#post6667735

 

thanks!
got worried there for a while...

 

Would those correllate to the loss of the TurboBoost functionality?

 

i lost all turbo functionality with the tweak. it did help my momentus xt a bit but the price of losing TB was too big a price to pay.
im not sure if this has affected others with a pm55.

 

Yeah I agree, turbo boost is important. Fortunately this tweak doesn't affect all laptops the same way, I will update the first post eventually for more details

 

its a good tweak though.
easy to use. i just didnt get the way to revert it back since i just heard about it in the xt thread.
it gave me a perceptible boost even on the xt. it did increase my tempsby maybe 1*c but thats nothing. i would have continued using it if not for the tb issue. good thing others can use this without the tb disabling.
i will follow this thread just in case a solution can be found for the ht disabling.

 

Good to know, I will see if other tweaks can be applied in conjunction with this one in order to restore the TB, but I cannot guarantee it.

 

Before


After


Crucial C300 64GB in Acer 1830T

 

Phil that's a significant increase IMO

 

Seems like a big one. Although in real world only installation performance seems to be affected.

WEI went from 7.4 to 7.7

 

That's something that I completely forgot to check before and after the tweak, good catch

 

i have updated the original post with more info concerning this problem and the registry tweak

 

Hi, did anyone try to apply this tweak with Samsung PM800? I wonder if it's worth it since this SSD is slow compared to Intel for example...

 

The 4k speeds are capped at about 13-14 and 23-24 MB/s for reads and writes respectively without the tweak, those Samsungs don't come even close to those numbers...

 

have you noted a significant real world performance increase with this tweak?

 

For what I do, yes I saw an increase, but generally it depends , there are too many variables in the equation you know... not everybody though will see the exact same performance increase

 

Try it then you'll know.

 

im really hoping that the tb issue gets resolved. im planning on getting an ssd q1 2011, hopefully a g3, and may be requiring this tweak to make the most out of it.
with the good results from benches, it would seem reasonable to assume that this would translate into some significant real world gains, even if your uses are not particularly disk intensive.

 

I really hope for this issue to be resolved soon enough and properly.
I would be really disappointed to find out that the next generation will inherit the same low performance as this one.

 

I can tell you too with the P7805, ICH9m and Mushkin Callisto 120GB SF2 drive the tweak matters. I have an OC'd x9100 and it makes no difference under load but there is 2-3C more at idle.

Before............... After...............

 

93 MB/sec 4K random write... how is that possible?

 

Hey TANWare, glad to see that this tweak worked well for you, those 4K writes look really good indeed

 

Two things that jump out at me:

First off, he's measuring with 5 Runs at 1000MB's. And CDM always reports the highest score...

Second, he's only at 23% and 37% filled (possibly hasn't even touched/used all the available nand yet?).

 

Neither of those explain the 93 MB/sec.

 

Maybe it's a misread from the program, I don't think the tweak managed to get those 4k writes that high.
If TANWare could post a new run that would be great

 

lol thats as fast as my sequential write
good job!

 

Just have to laugh a bit with these tweaks (both JJB's and stamatisx's):

I appreciate both of them and +rep to both... but an observation:

The real world performance increases have been shown to be very narrowly focused (but substantial nonetheless).

What is funny is that if you want to make your system respond faster, play it some music (bigger real world difference than both tweaks together make, at 'idle').

 

tilleroftheeart that's a good idea, you can open a new thread that indicates what genre of music increases the 4K random and what increases the sequential. just kiddin...

The concept is to prevent the CPU from idling that much, if you can achieve the same results with an application that plays music in the background and works for you, why not? one suggestion though, run a couple of CPU benchmarks with and without your suggested tweak to see how this affects the system performance overall

 

stamatisx,

no, not interested in benchmarks...

Sorry I picked your thread, but thanks for seeing it as a friendly poke...

I hope to be rebuilding a couple of systems next week - I am definitely going to try your suggestions when I do (in a new thread too).

 

No worries mate, what we try to do here is to get the maximum SSD performance with the minimum impact on CPU performance. I am pretty sure there will be many ways to achieve that, if the one you suggested is working why not you know?

 

does this tweak remove turbo boost? I tried it and there was no more turbo.. does JJB's one remove turbo?

 

The tilleroftheearth music tweak does not remove turbo boost

 

Two downsides of that tweak I can think of really quickly is the load it puts on the CPU (it will take CPU cycles off from other programs) and the fact that it utilizes the SSD or another HDD to read the music file and increase the IO load

 

I was only joking about the music tweak

Sean, afaik stamatis' tweak removes turbo boost. JJB's doesn't.

 

LOL Phil, still, it lets you keep the Turbo Boost so compared to mine people will get better CPU performance

 

music tweak! no tb disabling!
just what ive been looking for lolz

 

I have done several runs and yes 93MBs, here is one run, the first run no others.

 

Wow, the speed is great, do you see the same improvement with any other tweaks?

 

The x9100 overclocked at 3.7Ghz could be part of the explanation maybe

 

When at 2.66 GHz It seems to go down a bit too 90 MBs, I tried this out with ThrottleStop............

Edit 1; CDM at different clocks, at 3.2GHz I noticed slightly better results upping to 1.200 vCore.

Edit 2; is there a difference? Well I can tell you now installs of updates etc. are almost instant but I haven't tried other tweaks yet.............

2.6GHz............. 3.2GHz............ 3.7GHz............

 

yeah I think I guessed right as I had already noticed how fast the x9100 was when overclocked when the multi threaded is not required as it beat my cpu with a big margin in one benchmark
but even at 2.6Ghz your 4k result is still impressive

 

Really impressive 4K numbers indeed, makes you wonder on how many GHz will you hit the SSD's limit

 

but from his post 25 we see that other values are not so high
so it could be a characteristic of his ssd as mushkin use the sandforce SF-1200

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6704054-post25.html

 

yeah, that will vary also from the processes that might run in the background and could possibly utilize the SSD. For more accurate results it would be necessary to run IOmeter, but I don't think there is any reason to do that since the point here is to find out if there is an improvement or not, roughly.

 

there is one reason ... I want the same result