Sub-par performance: OCZ SSD on X200

I recently installed an OCZ Vertex 2 90GB drive in my X200, and have certainly seen an increase in performance - way faster booting, programs start faster, faster installing etc.

However, I've been running CrystalMark benchmarking on it (since I've seen it in so many threads), and I just can't seem to get the same level as other people. On a Sequence read, where I should get up to 275mb/s, I consistently get about 150mb/s.

I've tried both with Microsoft chipset drivers and the Intel Rapid Storage driver, and I tried running it in Safemode. The result is always the same, so I'm just wondering if it's a Thinkpad thing? Maybe there's a power management setting or something? I have disabled Defragmentation, prefetch and all that.

 

Sounds like the chipset is limiting you to SATAI speeds (150MB/s).

 

That's what I was suspecting, and something a read about concerning a Dell computer at a different forum. Anyone that can confirm that this is also the case on X200? Maybe I can contact Lenovo about it.

I assume there's nothing that can be done about that? Or?

 

The X200 supports SATAII speeds. It's an issue with the Intel chipset. Read this thread and do one of the two tweaks as suggested at the top of the thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...et-can-not-take-full-advantage-fast-ssds.html

So, yes, you can get the speed you expected by doing one of the tweaks.

 

Post the screenshot of CrystalMark please. I used OCZ Vertex 2 120GB and it worked full speed.

 

Just a wild guess, but are your partitions aligned? IIRC the SF-1200 controller *really* suffers performance-wise when the partitions aren't aligned to page boundaries.

 

Here are my scores:


I haven't tried any of the two suggestions mentioned earlier yet, but I'm also not sure if I have the series 5 chipset?

EDIT! I think my partitions are aligned - I installed Win 7 on it from scratch, formatting the drive during the installation.

 

Novi: In case you didn't notice, I have an X200 as well. Do the two suggestions as posted in the link I posted above, I think you will get much closer to what you're expecting....

 

Hm odd... this is mine, when I had OCZ Vertex 2 on X200:



Did you install all the latest drivers from Lenovo? Also, maybe you're using different settings... here's mine for when you do the benchmark with all zeroes:

 

Oh, yeah the data being written matters. A lot.

The SandForce controller employs compression to boost its transfer speeds. Data that's highly compressible (such as all zeros) will show off this trick. Data that can't be compressed (such as random data) will show the drive's true read/write speeds, which will be considerably slower.

 

Depending what do you mean by true. Real data is often compressible.

 

Pedant.

I guess "raw" might have been a clearer term to use. I meant "true" in the sense that benchmarking with random data will reveal the speed at which the controller is actually capable of transferring the bits themselves, rather than a (lossless) representation thereof.

I'm a bit sour on SandForce because of my experience with two of their drives dying shortly after purchase -- but I think the technology itself is really cool. The compression thing is quite clever indeed, and they've clearly got some bright engineers working or them. (The only other SSD controllers that I've seen do anything wildly innovative are Intel's and -- shockingly enough -- Western Digital's).

 

I did the first tweak (two registry edits), which didn't give any increase in performance. I am a little reluctant to doing the second one, since it seems to heat up the processor a lot. Getting that last bit of SSD performance is not more important than the X200 running stable and using less power.

I just feel like it needs more than a tweak to increase performance with some 80% or so...

EDIT: I just ran ATTO Disk Benchmark, and did see read speed at 275mb/s and write at 265mb/s. Apparently that's the benchmark OCZ is referring to.

 

Yeah, then it's probably fine. I think Crystal Disk Mark is a little weird and inconsistent. For example, your drive scores much better on write tests than mine. ^^

 

Yea, I'm gonna settle with the way it is The real/life performance is satisfactory to me, so that's really all that matters!