Poor performance with SSD - Samsung 840 Pro

JDahl · Jan 19, 2015

Hey all,

Using Samsung's magician software, the benchmarks are not coming anywhere near the optimal performance the sequential read is exceeding the recommended (558 MB/s), but the sequential write is below (296 MB/s), and the Random Read/Write are way below (64071/21525).

I've followed just about every guide I can. AHCI is enabled, its pluggged into a STATA 6 port, it has been optimized through the software, trim is enabled, etc.

Performance did improve after I removed some Steam Games since the drive was +/- 98% full, but shouldn't I expect better performance?

Over multiple benchmarks, I have seen each catagory fall ridiculously low. Reads were down in the 100 MB/s, and sequential and Random writes are always the worst performer.

Any thoughts?

Darkbreeze · Jan 19, 2015

I'm assuming you've already installed the performance patch for the 840 EVO?

Edit: Nevermind. I thought it was an EVO, not a Pro.

I'd still see if there was a firmware update available though.

Did you check the drive alignment?

http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-sure-your-partitions-are-correctly-aligned-for-optimal-solid-state-drive-performance

ko888 · Jan 19, 2015

What is the brand and model of the motherboard?

Which motherboard SATA port is the SSD connected to?

Darkbreeze · Jan 19, 2015

Ah, yeah, Maybe it's on an ASmedia header instead of a native header. Good call.

ko888 · Jan 19, 2015

Could also be JMicron or Marvell.

The best/fastest is Intel's native SATA3 controller built into Intel's own chipsets.

Darkbreeze · Jan 20, 2015

The ASMedia controllers are especially slow though if I recall. Correct me if I'm wrong. Perhaps the others are as well.

JDahl · Jan 20, 2015

Darkbreeze,

Correct, it is not the EVO. I have the most recent firmware installed. I did not check the drive alignment, and I am not really sure what this is. However, after reading the article, it appears to be an issue with migration is used to set up the SSD. I did a fresh install about a year ago. However, this is the 1st time I ran a Benchmark test on it, so...

After going from an HDD as a boot drive, to an SSD, it was blazing fast. But thought I would run a Benchmark to see. And I got poor results.

Darkbreeze :

JDahl · Jan 20, 2015

Ko888,

I have the ASUS p8p67 LE. Right now it is plugged into SATA6G_2 port. My board has two intel SATA6 ports, I've tried both. One was quicker than the other, and I've stuck with the one that is faster.

I've never had it plugged into the Marvel Controller.

ko888 :

Palorim12 · Jan 20, 2015

Could be that you are/were +/- 98% full capacity. SSDs get slower the less free space they have.

JDahl · Jan 20, 2015

Palorim,

I freed up +/- 30 gigs of room. The speeds did increase from absolutely abysmal, to just okay. The write performance is still 50% of what Samsung magician claims it could be. Prior to freeing up space, the write performance ranged anywhere from 80 MB/s to just over 200 MB/s I've never got it greater than 300 MB/s.

What else could it be? Or some drives just faster than others? What other issues could possibly causing this?

Palorim12 :

Darkbreeze · Jan 20, 2015

You might go to the manufacturers website page for your motherboard and make certain there are no storage controller drivers available that are newer than what you currently have installed. If so, I'd install any new drivers listed there or go into device manager and manually update any relevant or remarked device drivers by right clicking and selecting update drivers then automatically update.

ko888 · Jan 20, 2015

JDahl :

You're using the Intel SATA 6 Gbps controller port so that's ideal.

Have you run TRIM (i.e. Performance Optimization in Samsung Magician) after removing those games?

Another performance enhancing option is to enable Over Provisioning.

JDahl · Jan 20, 2015

I did run trim again. I checked my board's manufacturers website for drivers, also checked my device manager, looks like everything is updated.

Last benchmark I did I got sequential read/write of 543/373, and Random read/write of 85407/27324.

It's better than it was, but should I expect results greater than that? Samsung's own software is claiming my Sequential/Random write could be up to 520/90000. I am falling pretty short of that (373/27324).

ko888 :

ko888 · Jan 20, 2015

JDahl :

I did run trim again. I checked my board's manufacturers website for drivers, also checked my device manager, looks like everything is updated.

Last benchmark I did I got sequential read/write of 543/373, and Random read/write of 85407/27324.

It's better than it was, but should I expect results greater than that? Samsung's own software is claiming my Sequential/Random write could be up to 520/90000. I am falling pretty short of that (373/27324).

ko888 :

On my Samsung 840 PRO Series 256GB, with 62% of the total space used, I'm getting:

Sequential Read (MB/s): 556
Sequential Write (MB/s): 523

Random Read (IOPS): 74014
Random Write (IOPS): 73325

Your Random Read is better than mine.

When my SSD was new and with pretty much only Windows installed the Random Read was in the 96000 range and the Random Write was in the 90000 range.

mad-max79 · Jan 21, 2015

Did you update Windows Experience Index after cloning?
Did you use Samsung Magician Tools to improve performance? If not don't do it for now.

JDahl · Jan 21, 2015

Hey all,

Well, I fixed it. I had to manually do it, but I updated AHCI driver, and that seemed to fix it. After doing that, I get the following results:

Sequential Read (MB/s): 557
Sequential Write (MB/s): 480

Random Read (IOPS): 97817
Random Write (IOPS): 76713

MUCH, better, than before. I don't know why, but trying to automatically update the driver in the Device Manager wasn't working. What worked was DL'ing Intel Driver Update program from their website, and that program was able to find (for some reason it didn't find it when I ran it a week ago!).

So anyways, we will consider this thread solved. In the end, it appeared to be a combination of things. Deleting programs thus increasing capacity helped a little, disabling System restore helped a little, but replacing the Driver resulted in the biggest increase in performance.

So.. thanks!

Darkbreeze · Jan 21, 2015

Nice. Glad to see you got it corrected.

Poor performance with SSD - Samsung 840 Pro

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