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    JJB Tweaks for new SB Thinkpads w/ SSDs

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by pkincy, Jun 20, 2011.

  1. pkincy

    pkincy Notebook Evangelist

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    Has anyone tested the JJB power management tweaks for SSD performance on the new Sandy Bridge Thinkpads?

    They are designed for older chipsets but I would imagine we have the same conservative power settings that rob SSD performance.

    My X220 with factory installed Intel X25-M is a screamer but my W520 with the Crucial SSDs is a bit of a slug. I have done all the other tweaks and the machines are both set up the same way.

    AS SSD performance is about equal but in the real world the W520 is 2-3 times slower on disk intensive tasks as the X220. I suppose some of that could be that I have data and files on one disk and OS and programs on another and rather than going to a different part of the disk as it does on the X220 it has to go through the controller to a second disk on the W520.
     
  2. mrpeaches

    mrpeaches Notebook Consultant

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    I would say that the splitting of files like you mentioned is more than likely your problem re: performance. As far as I have heard, the only performance issue with the w520 and SSDs is the warm boot delay on startup. Still, if you are running two SSDs in RAID it seems odd to have slower performance because of the incredibly fast nature of random access on SSDs, whether going through a RAID controller or not. I would be interested in what you find out about this!
     
  3. pkincy

    pkincy Notebook Evangelist

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    they are not in RAID. Simply 2 drives. One in the optical bay and the other in Drive 0 slot.

    My benchmarks are PCMarkVantage and I suspect that the test is using video, music files and pictures in the same folder as the test, which would all be on the C: drive only.

    In the real world I do have my documents and pictures on the D/E drive in the optical bay.

    BTW, the SSD is faster in the optical bay than in the Drive 0 slot. About 10-15% faster using both CDM and AS SSD.

    Examples from PCMarkVantage: HDD- Win Media Center is 65.44 MB/s on the X220 and 16.73 MB/s on the W520.
    HDD-importing pictures to Win Photo Gallery is 97.94 MB/S on X220 and 14.84 MB/s on the W520.
    HDD-gaming is 130.95 MB/s on the X220 and 51.48 MB/s on the W520 with the C300s
    Windows Contact Searching is 17,617 contacts/s on the X220 and only 6577 contacts/s on the W520.

    Yet the disks themselves benchmark on AS SSD and CDM with virtually identical numbers. All 3 are properly aligned and in Sata 3 controllers.