SSD Performance on HP ProBook 6475b (AMD Controller)

I just installed brand new OCZ Vertex 4 SSD Drive [VTX4-25SAT3-128G], firmware 1.5. While I should get over 300MB/s easily on SATA 3 interface, I never got more than 120-130MB/s. I went through many driver/registry/bios settings to determine what can cause the bottleneck on my HP ProBook 6475b, but no luck so far. I messed up my registry settings as well few times, and had to revert to old settings to get rid of bluescreens.

- Read/Write speed is at 120MB/s level which is great, by way to low for SATA-3 an my expectations from Vertex 4 SSD.
- I modified the registry setings for AHCI (corrently amd_sata, amd_xata, msahci are set to "Start"=0)
- I installed latest AMD drivers for SATA controller
- I checked in Bios that AHCI is enabled for my drive
- I confirmed that AMD A70M is supporting SATA-3
- I confirmed the controller status in hardware information tool (NCQ, TRIM enabled)

What can be a root cause of such a slow transfer rates? I'm seeing duplkicated services for amd sata controler in registry (amd_sata and amdsata), many pages are saying about changing the iaStorV, iaStor, atapi, pciide to "Start"=0, but I don't think setting all of them like that is a good idea. What else should I check? Did anyone here had similar issue?

LINK TO SOME VALUABLE SCREENSHOTS: SSD Drive - Imgur

 

What O/S are you using? Is the O/S and drivers up to date (on otherwise unrelated devices, like sound and video, for example).

Is this a clean install? No 'tweaks' should be needed at all...

With such a small SSD - I would not expect much more performance myself (tested as a fully installed O/S drive...).


The only other thing to try is to test with compressible data - this will increase the 'score' for you.

 

I have that same laptop. Let me check performance, although I did confirm the mSATA was SATA III.

 

@tilleroftheearth This is Windows 7 Enterprise, drivers are up to date - this is the first thing I did. I also updated BIOS today and confirmed HDD is using the latest Firmware. This is a corporate PC, so the OS Image may be modified, I was worried the most about BitLocker and McAfee causing the issues. On thursday I'm going to meet with one of the collegues that has the same PC to compare the settings/drivers

@HTWingNut - I'm looking forward to see your test results, my take is that this is the OS/drivers setup that is causing the bottleneck. I came to the point where only amd_sata & amd_xata services are set with "Start" = 0, but still no change. When time allows, I'll try to switch back to msahci and see if there is any change.

 

Corporate huh? The land where security and stability take Major precedence over performance...


Yeah - it's that killer combo: BitLocker and McAfee taking their toll on the 'score'.

Unless you can change or suggest changing the standard corporate O/S image - there is nothing to be done here...

 

@tilleroftheearth - I'd totally agree with you that the corporate OS image is a bottleneck here but unfortunately I got to know, that on the same OS Image, my friend from work is getting 450 MB/s transfers (also Vertex 4 128GB SSD). The only difference is that he has HP 6455b and I have HP 6475b. The specs of both PCs are not really so much different so if he gets such results, sth else is slowing up the drive. I’m going to meet with him on Thursday, to confirm:

• What drivers for SATA controller he is using
• What settings for SATA controller are in his BIOS
• What settings for driver services in registry he has
• What UDMA Mode/SATA standard HD Tune Shows

Any suggestion what OS/registry settings I should compare?

 

It may be the chipset then?

Or a setting in McAfee?

As a test, see if you can disable the A/V temporarily and see if it improves things.


Also - try it in Safe Mode too.

 

Its way too low even for several bottlenecks I can think of.
Try setting your machine to "High performance" and see how much of an improvement there is.
Alternatively, check if your OS is aligned properly, this can be the cause of significant slowdowns.

Bitlocker does take its toll on performance but it should not be to the extent that you drop to 130mb/s vs a potential 400+ mb/s, Unless your CPU was significantly bottlenecking the on the fly encrypt/decrypt opterations (I would only expect this from like an Atom CPU).

My last thought is that you got a bad drive.

 

its a 128Gb drive, and its small for an SSD, I think its worth trying to remove bit locker (fast decrypt for 128G SSD) and run the benchmarks again before resetting bitlocker(if you can)

 

also check with the disk policy