X-25M 160 only getting 6.3 on WEI (win 7 64)

[X-Nemesis]

So is this normal? I was expecting to get around 7.3 or higher for this drive so it's making me wonder if there's something wrong? Should I check anything? I'm running in IDE not AHCI but from what I've read around the net that really does not matter. I tried changing to AHCI but then it said my ssd drive is not compatible or something as such.

 

[tecmo34]

So is this normal? I was expecting to get around 7.3 or higher for this drive so it's making me wonder if there's something wrong? Should I check anything? I'm running in IDE not AHCI but from what I've read around the net that really does not matter. I tried changing to AHCI but then it said my ssd drive is not compatible or something as such.

You should receive a higher score. I would verify you have the latest firmware installed (02HD... I believe) and running in AHCI mode. This should make an improvement to your speeds.

If you aren't running the latest firmware, you will want to flash you SSD using the directions provided through Intel.

You can't just switch your BIOS to ACHI with out making some adjustments. You need to follow these steps before switching...
■ Run the Registry Editor (regedit.exe)
■ Navigate to Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
■ Set the "Start" value to 0 (zero)
■ Shut down
■ Start up again, but before Windows boots go into the BIOS and change the disk mode to "AHCI". Save the new BIOS settings and restart so that Windows boots.
■ When Windows starts, it will detect the change, load new disk drivers, and do one more reboot to start up with them.

 

[X-Nemesis]

Ok..so I followed the instructions but I'm still after reboot getting a 6.3 in WEI. Any other suggestions?

 

[tecmo34]

You updated the firmware correct??

 

[X-Nemesis]

Yep...updated to latest.

 

[sub mesa]

Please download AS SSD using google and run the benchmark, then post your result here. It would show you:

- whether you are using msahci driver capable of TRIM
- whether you are using AHCI with NCQ enabled
- whether your partitions are aligned
- sequential performance
- random I/O performance (single queue / multi queue)

 

[X-Nemesis]

By xnemesis at 2010-06-12

 

[sub mesa]

Alright this confirms:

- your SSD is running aligned ("1024K - OK")
- your SSD is running in AHCI/NCQ mode (the 4K-64 read score is higher than 4K)
- your SSD does not show any signs of performance degradation
- your SSD should be able to use TRIM now that you use the Microsoft AHCI driver

So looks perfect to me. Your SSD performance should be great.

 

[tecmo34]

@sub mesa...

Is there something I should be looking at since my 4k-64 read score is lower than 4K? Or is the 160GB version just that much quicker on the write side than the 80GB?? My SSD seems to be running great but I've never heard mention before about "AHCI/NCQ mode (the 4K-64 read score is higher than 4K)" until now.

 

[X-Nemesis]

Thanks...so basically the WEI is bogus then and doesn't reflect any type of real world performance? So managing to get a 7.3 or higher would reflect better performance?

 

[4745454b]

Never trust anything like WEI, 3DMark, etc. Synthetic marks are pointless. Who cares if you score a 7.0, or 16,000 06 marks? What matters is your real performance. I don't know what the transfer rates for your drive is, but 150-200MBps seem good. I think for an Intel X-25 drive they are a touch slow, and your write scores are horrible. (shouldn't they be closer to 40-50MBps?) By all means check your drive out, but don't worry if you score a 6.3 instead of a 9.5. Synthetic marks don't mean crap.

Edit: NM, I didn't scroll far enough up that pic. You have Seq write of 54MBps which is what I was thinking they should be.

 

[Guest]

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/8995/asssdbenchraid0.png

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/8995/asssdbenchraid0.png


can anyone explain to me why the write results about my raid0, with two intel x25-m (80gb each),
seems to be quite slow

 

[X-Nemesis]

Best answer selected by X-Nemesis.

 

[jarchack]

So is this normal? I was expecting to get around 7.3 or higher for this drive so it's making me wonder if there's something wrong? Should I check anything? I'm running in IDE not AHCI but from what I've read around the net that really does not matter. I tried changing to AHCI but then it said my ssd drive is not compatible or something as such.

I gave up on paying any attention to WEI... RAID0 with 2 300 Gig Velociraptors, an OC'd Q9650 at 3.6 Ghz, Radeon 5850 and 8 Gig of Corsair XMS...my score still bytes. Benchmarks are a lousy indicator of real world anything. The term "bogomips" is derived from bogus and benchmarks are at best a general indicator and more of a sales gimmick now than a tool.

 

[4745454b]

I prefer the term "bungholio marks" myself. Though that usually implies running 3DMark.

I just noticed in your quoted part that he says he is using the IDE drivers. He should switch over to the ACHI drivers. Not sure if it will speed things up, but it will enable those new protocols like NCQ, TRIM, etc.

 

[jarchack]

From what I read in CPU Mag ACHI and NCQ do not impact performance much but TRIM most certainly does.

 

[sub mesa]

Without AHCI you do not have NCQ. Without NCQ, modern SSDs are 10 times slower when doing random read I/O. You can test this yourself with AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark; the 4K random 32/64 queue benchmark should be about 10 times higher than the single queue 4K random benchmark. That is because with only a single queue, only one flash channel can be used. As Intel and other SSDs have multiple channels (10 actually) you can unleash their performance by enabling NCQ.

So without NCQ, the SSD is capped to using only one channel when doing random reads. Doesn't count for writes as these are buffered.