Samsung 830, extremelly poor performance.

[luissantos]

I have a Samsung 830 SSD hooked up to a Dell PERC 6/I controller (http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pvaul/topics/en/us/raid_controller?c=us&l=en&cs=555) using a GreatLink C13214-001 SATA cable.
I have 3 other drives attached to the controller.

I'm aware that the controller is capped at 3 Gb/s but I am getting read/write speeds around 130 MB/s only.

Winsat returns:

> Disk Sequential 64.0 Read 132.31 MB/s 7.0
> Disk Random 16.0 Read 123.94 MB/s 7.3
> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate 1.58 ms/IO 7.4
> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs 10.90 units 7.0
> Responsiveness: Long IOs 4.50 units 7.8
> Responsiveness: Overall 49.01 units 7.0
> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor 0.0
> Disk Sequential 64.0 Write 125.40 MB/s 7.0
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes 0.540 ms 7.9
> Latency: 95th Percentile 0.849 ms 7.9
> Latency: Maximum 60.512 ms 7.8
> Average Read Time with Random Writes 0.480 ms 7.9

SiSoft Sandra returns similar values.

I have TRIM enabled, AHCI enabled, and I have followed all the steps in the performance tweaking guides to no avail (disabling indexing, prefetch/superfectch, defrag, restore, pagefile, etc).

Does anyone have any ideas? I should be getting 2.5-3x faster speeds (3 Gb/s = 375 MB/s - even with some of the bandwith sacrificed I should at least be neighboring 300 MB/s)

 

[RetiredChief]

1) fixed Link: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pvaul/topics/en/us/raid_controller?c=us&l=en&cs=555

2) Mostly likely the chipset. SSDs are known to not work as well on 3rd party controllers. If you notice allmost all published benchmarks are for Intel based chipsets using either the Intel iaSTor or msahci driver.

3) Not faimilar with either benchmark program (Used sandra's program LONG time ago). For SSDs prefer AS SSD. (A) it uses compressed data, thus closer to real life and (B) provides setup info:
.. Make/Model and firmware version.
.. Driver ie msahci, (mine uses iaSTor), or ...... and for pcide will show bad.
.. partition alignment: aligned = Good or not aligned = Bad

Also do not run benchmarks back to back as they will progressively decrease.
Note: trim can show enabled, or you can enable it in registry - That does NOT indicate that the drive is recieving and acting on it.

Also - While that controller is setup as XX GB/s, the real imitation is based on Nr of drives that are sharing the Pci-e bandwith. Not my area of knowledge. So is the card pugged into a x4, x8 slot so someone else can comment on that, and if it is limiting throughput as You have 3 drives connected.

 

[luissantos]

Thank you for the quick reply.

"Winsat" is just standard Windows benching.

The controller is integrated. The ports I'm connecting to are on the actual motherboard (I'm using a Dell Precision T7500 Workstation)

I could purchase a SATA III 6 Gb/s controller and connect it using a PCI-e slot... I actually have a spare x4... but I have yet to find one that hasn't been poorly reviewed. (suggestions welcome, though)

Could the cable be the bottleneck? I don't see any indication anywhere regarding SATA specification.

 

[luissantos]

I have now connected the SSD to one of the SATA ports "reserved" for optical storage and I'm getting 2x faster speeds (260 MB/s)... I guess that would be SATA II.
However, 2 questions:

- Why is SATA II's effective speed 100 MB/s slower than specification? (ie: 3 Gb/s = 375 MB/s)
- Can anyone advise me on purchasing a good PCI-e SATA III controller?

Thanks!

 

[aqe040466]

Samsung 830 series is really made for SATA III(6Gb/s) connection to get the maximum performance. I am using it in SATA III port conncetion and really fast.

 

[kosecki]

Definitely your benchmark results are way to low.

I got Samsung 830 SSD and got issues with it as well. I got SATA 2 (3G) capable mobo and SSD was detected as SATA 1 drive but even though my benchmark results were about 2x better than yours (in read/write operations).

I couldn't find a way to make it working as SATA-2 so I sold this mobo.

It looks like Samsung SSD doesn't work good controllers older than SATA-3 (at least based on your and mine experience)

 

[luissantos]

I'll try a PCI-e SATA III controller, they are pretty cheap, however I'd appreciate some advice in the matter as I've been reading way too many mixed reviews regarding numerous brands.

 

[kosecki]

I'll try a PCI-e SATA III controller, they are pretty cheap, however I'd appreciate some advice in the matter as I've been reading way too many mixed reviews regarding numerous brands.

That was my first idea but I forgot about it very soon because:

1) there was no tests/reviews for this controllers
2) none of the cheap sata controller are able to hande real sata3 speed (according to some forums and internet), the real performance is on a sata1 level
3) recommend controllers were more expensive than new mobo + ram

 

[luissantos]

that's not an alternative for me... I'm on a DELL precision T7500. It is a very expensive server machine. The ECC memory alone is worth more than a mainstream desktop.
PCI-E 2.0 x1 should be able to provide 5Gb/s which is close to SATA III's 6Gb/s, (66% more than SATA II anyway) but I'm more concerned with actual product quality / compatibility... like not getting my SSD recognized or not being able to boot from it, etc

Would be awesome if Toms did a review on these sort of cheap controllers,

 

[RetiredChief]

Some general comments:
1) The SSD would have to be the only drive on a pci-e x 1 slot, otherwise the bandwidth is shared between drives - With multiple drives need x4.
2) The 3rd party controllers used on these cards is generally a marvel, Jmicron, ect chipset. SSDs generally suffer (How much I'm not sure) in terms of performance.
3) You need to verify that the driver used supports trim. Newer SSD have better Garbage collector (CG), but they do not perform as well as when TRIM is also active.
msahci and iaSTor allow trim to be pasted, there are others, but you need to verify. Just because trim is enabled in the registry is NO garentee that the drive is receiving it.

 

[wpcoe]

Some general comments:
1) The SSD would have to be the only drive on a pci-e x 1 slot, otherwise the bandwidth is shared between drives - With multiple drives need x4.

And even then, in a PCIe 2 x1 slot, the maximum theoretical throughput is 500MB/s. Subtract even minimal overhead, and you won't see full performance numbers in benchmarks of most SATA-3 SSDs.

Heaven forbid, if the card or the slot is only PCIe 1.x, the performance would be even worse.

I have a P55A motherboard with the infamous Marvell 88SE9128 chip on it for SATA3, so I bought an inexpensive Orico PCIe 2.0 x1 add-in card with an Asmedia chip. Using Anvil, CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD benchmarks I've never seen >400MB/s read or write for my new Intel 520 120GB SSD. That drive should be showing 500+ for sequential reads/writes on compressible data, but shows less than 80% of that.

Using the PCIe SATA3 card the benchmarks are only slightly higher than using the Intel P55 chipset's SATA2 ports.

 

[luissantos]

I'm getting 260 MB/s... PCI-e 2.0 x1 may not be the fully glorious 6 Gb/s of SATA III, but it's 66% better (in theory), than SATA II's 3 Gb/s, and for 30-40 eur I 'd say that's pretty damn good!... Only problem is that I don't know any models... I want AHCI / TRIM support... I want to be able to boot from the SSD connected to the controller... I want no driver issue... I don't need RAID, I just want to connect a single drive, and I have a x4 slot free, but all x4 controllers I've seen are expensive RAID offerings for multiple drives.

Again, suggestions would be much appreciated!

 

[wpcoe]

I bought an Orico PS3062-2S PCIe card and it does boot into AHCI mode. Of course, Asmedia adds a step in the boot process with its own BIOS initializing and detecting phase -- but luckily it's pretty quick.

I forget just where I found it now -- maybe at station-drivers-com -- but there is an Asmedia AHCI driver you can download, and no, it was not included in the box. The ASAHCI driver improved the speed a little over using the default MSAHCI driver.

I do remember a fandango I did with flashing new Asmedia firmware. The most recent one downgraded the port to SATA-1 (!), and I had to step back through progressively older BIOSes until I found one that restored full SATA-3. (In my haste to flash the firmware, I had failed to note exactly which firmware I had when I started. Doh.)

I think most of the lower-priced PCIe SATA3 cards on newegg.com had Marvell chips. I suspect they would perform about the same as my Asmedia, as they are also PCIE2 x1 cards.

Oh, and yes, you can put an x1 card in an x4 (or x16 or x32) slot -- they are backwards compatible.

 

[Homesteader]

I'm getting 260 MB/s... PCI-e 2.0 x1 may not be the fully glorious 6 Gb/s of SATA III, but it's 66% better (in theory), than SATA II's 3 Gb/s, and for 30-40 eur I 'd say that's pretty damn good!... Only problem is that I don't know any models... I want AHCI / TRIM support... I want to be able to boot from the SSD connected to the controller... I want no driver issue... I don't need RAID, I just want to connect a single drive, and I have a x4 slot free, but all x4 controllers I've seen are expensive RAID offerings for multiple drives.

Again, suggestions would be much appreciated!

I have a T7500 and I'm trying to add a ssd drive. I'm getting really slow speeds right now. I saw your thread and I was curious if you had good luck with the PCI-e card? What card did you buy? Do you think that's the best way to go? Thanks.

 

[ems4567]

I have a Samsung 830 SSD hooked up to a Dell PERC 6/I controller (http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pvaul/topics/en/us/raid_controller?c=us&l=en&cs=555) using a GreatLink C13214-001 SATA cable.
I have 3 other drives attached to the controller.

I'm aware that the controller is capped at 3 Gb/s but I am getting read/write speeds around 130 MB/s only.

Winsat returns: Hola tengo un dell t7500 y quisiera saber la mejor solucion para instalarle un ssd a esta estacion tú lo conseguites, y como lo hiciste?

> Disk Sequential 64.0 Read 132.31 MB/s 7.0
> Disk Random 16.0 Read 123.94 MB/s 7.3
> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate 1.58 ms/IO 7.4
> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs 10.90 units 7.0
> Responsiveness: Long IOs 4.50 units 7.8
> Responsiveness: Overall 49.01 units 7.0
> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor 0.0
> Disk Sequential 64.0 Write 125.40 MB/s 7.0
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes 0.540 ms 7.9
> Latency: 95th Percentile 0.849 ms 7.9
> Latency: Maximum 60.512 ms 7.8
> Average Read Time with Random Writes 0.480 ms 7.9

SiSoft Sandra returns similar values.

I have TRIM enabled, AHCI enabled, and I have followed all the steps in the performance tweaking guides to no avail (disabling indexing, prefetch/superfectch, defrag, restore, pagefile, etc).

Does anyone have any ideas? I should be getting 2.5-3x faster speeds (3 Gb/s = 375 MB/s - even with some of the bandwith sacrificed I should at least be neighboring 300 MB/s)

 

[ems4567]

Hola luissantos tengo un dell t7500 y quisiera saber la mejor solucion para instalarle un ssd a esta estacion tú lo conseguites, y como lo hiciste?