INTEL X25-m G2 80 GB not so good performance :/

[mattijs123]

Hi all,

got myself a new computer (core I3 2.9 running at 3.5 - msi H55 E33 - 4GB kingston 7-7-20 INTEL SSD ...)
I was expecting alot from going SSD (otherwise i wouldn't have taken the costly plunge) but i am quite underwhelmed.
I was basicly expecting programs to not even show their splash screens and boot up instantaneously. That us NOT the case.
System boot up etc aren't that fast either.

I benched the SSD with HDtune among others and learned that the performance is what it is due to the lack of AHCI and NCQ.

Sadly my mobo does not support AHCI (with the current bios..and bios upgrades don't mention it). It's hard to find out if the H55 bridge does. Some articles say it does not eventhough there is a AHCI driver for an ASROCK H55 board AND the intel matrix storage documents say something about NCQ being of interest to H55 owners with 1 drive???

ANYWAYS...a couple of questions:

- should i upgrade the intel SSD's firmware? (didn't the magical firmware upgrade cause performance increase AND drives getting bricked???)

- How do you know when WIN7 effectively sees the drive as an SSD and performs the TRIM command...i can't find a hint anywhere and in properties the disc is called a disc drive..which it isn't i guess?

- Do i have to turn off the SWAP FILE on the SSD????

- IS turning on ahci (ncq - CAN you have one without the other and which one do you need then for perfomance) the holy
grail in SSD usage and would i be able to get a PCI-e RAID card that is both BOOTABLE and enables AHCI so i can be happy
and go on with my life

 

[sub mesa]

If you do not use AHCI, you are using "IDE Emulation" mode which does not support any of the newer technologies, including command queueing. This can indeed lower performance.

But, i am puzzled why you did not post a benchmark here; if your problem is low performance; id like to see that with my own eyes and judge whether thats true or not. What other benchmarks did you run? What makes you think the drive is underperforming?

 

[mattijs123]

i would have have uploaded benches if i had webspace to put pictures in...currently i don't have any and was in a hurry...

Will upload later if i have the time.

Did change the INTEL firmware but that didn't seem to change anything.


BTW...i 've read that win7 automaticly dissables defragmenting...it still does defragment the drive if i make it do it...is that a bad sign. I haven't as of yet seen any indication that win7 effectively treats this drive as an SSD. How can you tell?

 

[geofelt]

The TRIM command tells the drive to make parts of the drive available for new data without having to read it first. Otherwise, a read/rewrite cycle is needed.

The sata port must be enabled with AHCI for windows-7 to load it's own drivers and pass on the trim command during normal operation. If sata is set to raid which is a superset of AHCI, then the drivers will be the intel chipset drivers which currently do not support trim.

You can download the intel SSD toolbox and run a utility that frees up space on a scheduled basis.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455

I find it hard to believe that your motherboard does not let you set the sata mode to AHCI. Look some more.
I just did a gigabyte H55 motherboard which allowed AHCI.

 

[geofelt]

Windows-7 detects a SSD by it's fast response time. Device notifications have proved unreliable. It will then disable defragmentation which is useless & harmful to a SSD. You can also disable defrag yourself to be certain that it does not run.