OCZ Vertex 3 120GB benchmark scores are low

I have been using this SSD for about three months now. When I installed it I went through all the steps to set it up correctly. I followed unaligned guide which I believe is one of the most used. I think it is Sean SSD something.

Anyhow I have noticed that my benchmark results could be much better compared to other vertex 3 results I have seen around. I am posting a picture of the latest benchmark. I have 8 GB of RAM if that makes any difference. Is there something I can do to improve performance or perhaps my CPU, Intel i3, is the bottleneck? I am not sure how much CPU speed effects SSD performance.

Any feedback or suggestion is highly appreciated. Thank you

 

Wouldn't say it's that bad.

I'm not sure how much you are doing to your SSD, do you write a lot? It tends to wear on the SSD you know.. Also if you feel secure making a backup and maybe making a fresh install might turn the numbers around for you!

But really it's hard to tell why a SSD acts the way it does.

What would help is, did you have fast speeds before? Drivers and new installs might interfere with the write speed.
- Also do notice that OCZ driver takes big performance hits if used very often: When Does The 128 GB Vertex 4 Slow Down? : OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB: Testing Write Performance With Firmware 1.4 (although you have a Vertex 3, this still applies)

 

1) Other V3 results are probably on empty/new/secure erased SSD's that have no O/S, programs and data installed on them (and may even be the higher capacity models which are faster by default...).

2) Your system platform may be causing the SSD to 'score' lower - which i3 do you have exactly (along with which chipset)? For example: all Arrandale based platforms are notoriously bad for low SSD performance (benchmarked and real world use).

3) If you are not running an IB based platform - check out the following thread:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...-intel-series-4-5-965-chipsets-jjb-tweak.html


even though it specifies chipsets in the title - other (newer) chipsets also benefited from the tweaks mentioned in the thread above.


4) You may also try using ThrottleStop 5.00a to see enhanced SSD performance (again; in benchmarks and in real world 'feel').


Hope some of this helps.

 

AS SSD uses incompressible data for it's benchmarking.

The Vertex 3 has the SandForce 2281 controller that does better with compressible data.

The review sites mostly used 240GB Vertex 3 for their reviews that does better than 120GB models plus they mostly used benchmarking program that could be set to 0-Fill 100% compressible data.

Many reviews are also done from another drive that's booted into safe mode and the drive to be benchmarked has no data on it.

Allowing the notebook to idle about 30 minutes before benchmarking may improve scores somewhat so TRIM can work it's magic.

I have a 120GB Vertex 3 MI that I'm using right now in this MSI GT780DX.

You can also try using the newest WHQL Intel RST v11.6.2.1002
intel drivers pour Raid/Sata/Ata/Ahci

Here's my 120GB V3MI used and in use.

 

Thank you for the reply. I always got the same speed more or less. However this is not a clean install but I cloned the image from my HDD. However from what I gathered reading around it should not make too much of a difference. I do not write a lot. It is mostly web browsing, word, excel, the occasional movie and pictures download from my camera. I have the latest firmware. Why would a fresh install make a difference?

 

You can try an app called ForceTrim about 5 minutes before running a benchmark.

ForceTrim.zip

There's a possibility that because you cloned and cloned from a hard drive that doesn't use trim that trim may not be functioning correctly on the SSD.

Clean installs are always best.This way you get a new master boot record and you get to install all the latest versions of drivers,software and utilities.

After I do my clean installs from a USB stick and put in the newest drivers,software,utilitiesand Windows Updates I run the Microsoft WEI to optimize W7 for an SSD.

The only tweak I do is to turn off hibernation that frees up about 12GB of space.

To turn off hibernation run as administrator the command powercfg -h off

EDIT:If you run the Anvil Storage Utilities you can see if the alignment is OK.It's displayed in the lower right corner.

 

You cloned the image from your HDD? Oh... yeah that makes a difference though.

I cannot tell how, since that depends on SO MUCH but cloning a HDD onto a SSD makes a big difference, due to registry changing and how a SSD handles everything opposite to a HDD.
I wont tell you to do a clean install, but if you feel like it, backup everything and do it, it'll make a difference (again cannot tell how much though, maybe it won't do much of a difference).

Try using the program above WhatsThePoint linked

Best of luck Sir Punk!

 

If you run the Windows Experience Index(WEI) what's the hard drive score?

If it's functioning as an SSD it will be 7.?

If it's functioning as a hard drive it will be 5.?

 

it's 7.9. And until I hear a good explanation why a clean install makes an SSD faster compared to a cloning I will have doubts on it. My alignment is OK you can see it from the screenshot.

 

run ATTO/HDtune if you want to be impressed by numbers, AS SSD constantly reports lowest score across all benchmark tools.

and, Those speed look normal for a 120GB sandforce. The chipset power tweak should bring it to desktop level score, but in general you wont notice it.

 

I have a sandy bridge i3 2357, chipset hm65. I will try the tips showed above. And yes, it is true that it depends a lot how the test is done.

 

Your cpu is definitely bottlenecking your SSD.

ThrottleStop will help for sure - how much you 'feel' it helping is the question; but you'll have to decide if the decrease in battery life is worth it for you to keep TS running in the background.