SSD Help. Please?

Hey guys!
I just bought a OCZ solid 3 SSD ( 60 GB ) and installed it last night. I ran a few tests; Write speeds on DxTory and then ran crystal mark to see my read/write speeds. BUT this is what i saw, 121 mb/s write and 150 mb/s read speeds. I bought this SSD because it was advertised to have a 400 mb/s write!! This is my first SSD and YES it IS connected to a 6 GB/s port with a 6GB/s sata cable. I am new on SSDs so please tell me if i did something wrong.

System Specs.
i7 980x
16 GB RAM
2x GTX 480 SLI
ASUS P6T7 WS SuperComputer



Can you please help me out Im truly stuck on this!

Could you give us the exact product name? It would really help narrow down and diagnose the problem. The most similar drive I could find was this one.

Sure, It is a OCZ, SOLID 3 Sandforce driven 2.5" solid state drive

Ah, sorry about that. Then it would be this one? I've never used Crystal Mark before. Have you tried using a different program? Although it's unlikely, the software could be measuring wrong. Until we find the problem, it's worth a shot. Try Parkdale.
Parkdale - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Downloads

Thanks!! I ran the program and it recorded a 302.5 mb/s write and 400 mb/s read! thats a significant improvment. Thanks for linking me, but one more thing, is there a way to get to a magical 450 mb/s ( what its rated at ) or is that just a maximum that OCZ put on the label and is hard to achieve in practice?
Thanks again!

i nother thing mate is chak that your in AHCI and not in IDE

I suppose you are using the SSD for the OS. In that case, the R/W speeds are pretty insignificant for performance. Reason is that the OS uses very small blocks of 4K and 8K and those maximum speeds are for large blocks. Plus the OS does not R/W a lot of data.

The OS performance will come from the access time. That is usually around 0.1ms versus 15ms for a spinning disk. Here is an Atto measurement of one of my SSDs that will show you the different speeds at different block sizes.

Oh thanks! I was considering using my SSD for my OS but decided not to, I can wait for my computer to load, its not that slow anyways! my real need for a SSD was for screen recoding/game recording as well as its sturdiness and reliabiltiy. Previously I would not have been able to record game footage or screen footage since my hard drive wouldn't be able to write fast enough ( @60 fps, 1 second is nearly 110 mb! ), but I then saw the wirte speeds of an SSD and was immediatley attracted . Thank you all for your help I think I have solved my problem!

Thanks again,
Josh

For your purposes the only things you really need to do is make sure the controller is set to ahci and make sure the SSD is properly aligned.