SSD Speed Bottlenecks

[VictorLimaMike]

Buenos all

Question, I've revamped our two year old PC hoping to come out with a more capable multi-tasking/multi-media machine but I'm not getting the speeds/responsiveness that I hoped to get after doing a fresh install of W7 Home (64bit).

The computer was originally (still is) an HP Pavilion p6787bc but I wiped the original W7 OS that came with it and installed my own copy of W7. (Again) all the parts are the same only things I've added were an Intel SSD 120GB Cherryville (in AHCI mode) a Phenom II 965 Deneb BE and 16GB of Hyper Blu RAM (1333).

I found an SSD optimization guide online (same one I used for my gaming rig) but I'm not getting the boot speeds or responsiveness I keep reading about. Windows takes ~45 seconds to boot compared to ~15 for my gaming rig (may not apples to apples, sorry). Even opening browsers and office programs there is some noticeable lag.

I've only used about 40GB in the SSD and the firmware is UTD. Could the mobo be the bottleneck or did I miss a step? The specs say the mobo supports SATA I and II, so I'm wondering if that could be the culprit since the SSD is SATA III.

Here are the profiles for each of my machines:

Gaming: http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/4360989
Multitask-er: http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/4676401


Thanks
VLM

P.S. did some price checking and I can't believe this mobo (Foxconn H-RS880-uATX (Aloe) still sells for $90!

 

[ipwn3r456]

Buenos all

Question, I've revamped our two year old PC hoping to come out with a more capable multi-tasking/multi-media machine but I'm not getting the speeds/responsiveness that I hoped to get after doing a fresh install of W7 Home (64bit).

The computer was originally (still is) an HP Pavilion p6787bc but I wiped the original W7 OS that came with it and installed my own copy of W7. (Again) all the parts are the same only things I've added were an Intel SSD 120GB Cherryville (in AHCI mode) a Phenom II 965 Deneb BE and 16GB of Hyper Blu RAM (1333).

I found an SSD optimization guide online (same one I used for my gaming rig) but I'm not getting the boot speeds or responsiveness I keep reading about. Windows takes ~45 seconds to boot compared to ~15 for my gaming rig (may not apples to apples, sorry). Even opening browsers and office programs there is some noticeable lag.

I've only used about 40GB in the SSD and the firmware is UTD. Could the mobo be the bottleneck or did I miss a step? The specs say the mobo supports SATA I and II, so I'm wondering if that could be the culprit since the SSD is SATA III.

Here are the profiles for each of my machines:

Gaming: http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/4360989
Multitask-er: http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/4676401


Thanks
VLM

P.S. did some price checking and I can't believe this mobo (Foxconn H-RS880-uATX (Aloe) still sells for $90!

SATA II ports can only go up to about 250 MB/s read and write speeds (depending on the motherboard and the SSD, can be a little higher or lower). That's 2 times slower than SATA III ports. The Intel 520 (Cherryville) is a SATA III SSD, can go up to 550 MB/s read, and 500 MB/s write. If you put it to a SATA II port, it would be result from 280 MB/s read, and 260 MB/s write. That's why windows load slower.

Btw, nice gaming PC.

 

[VictorLimaMike]

SATA II ports can only go up to about 250 MB/s read and write speeds (depending on the motherboard and the SSD, can be a little higher or lower). That's 2 times slower than SATA III ports. The Intel 520 (Cherryville) is a SATA III SSD, can go up to 550 MB/s read, and 500 MB/s write. If you put it to a SATA II port, it would be result from 280 MB/s read, and 260 MB/s write. That's why windows load slower.

Btw, nice gaming PC.

My gut was right and you just confirmed it...

...I did some digging and I found that they make internal PCIE SATA III Controller Cards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124045

I'm going to see if I can score one this weekend and see if I can't squeeze a bit more performance out this machine.

Btw, nice gaming PC.

Thanks. This was my first build and am really happy how it turned out. I finally bought some zip ties the other day to clean up the cables and it looks a lot better now. This HP that I'm working on now was the original gaming rig, but I pretty much bricked the mobo and it sat for months before I sent it back to HP to have the mobo replaced (thank goodness for warranties everything was covered). Skip a few more months and I'm feeling bad for what I did so though it deserved another go so here I am.

 

[ipwn3r456]

This is a good solution however, this card is only supports bandwidth of PCIE x1 lane. That is 5Gbit/s of bandwidth for PCIE x1, still a little slower than SATA III, which operates at 6Gbit/s. But, it has 2 SATA ports, I don't know if the speed will divide my two for each SATA port. If you plug in the SSD and the speed slows down by two times, if that happens, it will be even slower than your motherboard's SATA II port. If there's a PCIE x4 lane version, that will be different. So, make sure if it works, before you buy it. I am just warning you about it.

 

[VictorLimaMike]

This is a good solution however, this card is only supports bandwidth of PCIE x1 lane. That is 5Gbit/s of bandwidth for PCIE x1, still a little slower than SATA III, which operates at 6Gbit/s. But, it has 2 SATA ports, I don't know if the speed will divide my two for each SATA port. If you plug in the SSD and the speed slows down by two times, if that happens, it will be even slower than your motherboard's SATA II port. If there's a PCIE x4 lane version, that will be different. So, make sure if it works, before you buy it. I am just warning you about it.

Ok so I picked up this card from micro center and a few interesting things happen.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/381020/2_Port_SATA_6Gbps_PCIe_Card

https://www.box.com/s/f89qqc4bpy4n5f118xax (mobo specs)

Install went smooth no issues or having to configure the bios. So upon boot the system displays an message showing that there's a new pcie card, nice right? But not really, becaue this messages shows up during boot, boot time increased from 45 to 52 seconds! :lol:

I suppose at this point I can't be too picky. And for the heck of it I validated the transfer speed and sure enough the transfer rates are faster with this new card.

SATA II (L); SATA III via PCIE card (R)

That said, thanks for the input. I guess the boot time isn't a huge game changer at least I know the SSD is running SATA III speeds. And most likely it's the mobo that's the bottleneck.

VLM

 

[ipwn3r456]

Ok so I picked up this card from micro center and a few interesting things happen.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/381020/2_Port_SATA_6Gbps_PCIe_Card

https://www.box.com/s/f89qqc4bpy4n5f118xax (mobo specs)

Install went smooth no issues or having to configure the bios. So upon boot the system displays an message showing that there's a new pcie card, nice right? But not really, becaue this messages shows up during boot, boot time increased from 45 to 52 seconds! :lol:

I suppose at this point I can't be too picky. And for the heck of it I validated the transfer speed and sure enough the transfer rates are faster with this new card.

SATA II (L); SATA III via PCIE card (R)
http://www.overclock.net/image/id/3410550/width/900/height/900/flags/LL http://www.overclock.net/image/id/3410551/width/900/height/900/flags/LL

That said, thanks for the input. I guess the boot time isn't a huge game changer at least I know the SSD is running SATA III speeds. And most likely it's the mobo that's the bottleneck.

VLM

Well, yeah. There's no PCIE longer than x1 length on the motherboard, so that's the only thing you can do the improve the speed of the SSD. But, 350 MB/s read isn't that bad, I mean, it's still about 3 times faster than a traditional HDD in reads in write speeds. There's nothing you can do now to increase the speed of the SSD even more, unless you are getting a new motherboard, lol. Anyways, enjoy your new SSD speeds.

 

[VictorLimaMike]

Best answer selected by VictorLimaMike.

 

[VictorLimaMike]

Well, yeah. There's no PCIE longer than x1 length on the motherboard, so that's the only thing you can do the improve the speed of the SSD. But, 350 MB/s read isn't that bad, I mean, it's still about 3 times faster than a traditional HDD in reads in write speeds. There's nothing you can do now to increase the speed of the SSD even more, unless you are getting a new motherboard, lol. Anyways, enjoy your new SSD speeds.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. But I learned something new, thanks for the help. -VLM