Windows 7: new SSD and WEI still only 7.2?

7.9 here with a single M4 256GB.



Possibly how you have the drive hooked up; which sata port, current drivers?, etc........

Yep. And what is your BIOS set to - IDE, AHCI?

Is the SSD aligned properly? (Use something like AS SSD) to check that the SSD is aligned correctly.

ie:
Good


Bad

I have a Crucial Force 3 SATA 6 120 gig and have as little as possible on it except for Windows. On the WEI it reads as 7.8.

In agreement with the previous poster - do you have your drive plugged into a SATA 6 port and are you using a SATA 6 cable. These can make a big difference.

MLG

I tried to set my ASUS board to AHCI but it wouldn't recognize some drives and had trouble booting. I have a SATA 6 SSD, a SATA 6 7200, a SATA 2 SSD and two 7200 SATA 3s.

How do you determine whether the setting should be IDE or AHCI under these "mixed" circumstances?

Thanks

MLG

Yes, you are correct. There's always a trade-off

you know what? i think all the sata ports on my mobo are SATA 3Gb/s connections. is that why my M4 is not as fast as Kipper's M4?

check the snips i'm adding as well. looks to me like all drives are running in IDE. i don't know what AHCI is or why its better for an SSD. would that help speed up my SSD?

Sata 3 GB/s or Sata II would slow it down some as the m4 is a Sata 3 device.

AHCI or Advanced Host Controller Interface adds a few features like Native command queuing (optimizes read/write which gives a little more performance, less wear on the drive - but it's not really a 'night vs day' performance increase. It also allows for hot swapping (unplugging the drive while the PC is on. Not much use if you don't swap drives much )

Bottom line, it would improve performance a little. How much you'd notice is questionable.

But between it being IDE and on a Sata II controller, that's why your score is lower than others.


If you installed the OS while in IDE mode, changing it to AHCI would indeed cause boot failures. You have to 'prep' the system first before changing the BIOS setting. Basically you have to change a few settings in the registry and then change the BIOS.

Are any of your devices IDE? ie Connected with the old flat ribbon cable? If so, you wont be able to switch over to AHCI because those devices need IDE to be seen. Your Optical drive for example.

But since it looks like all your devices are sata 2 at minimum, where did you notice the missing devices if you couldn't boot into the OS?



EDIT:

How to change from IDE to AHCI

AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

thats what i thought. so i guess if i upgraded to the new motherboard i want, which has SATA 6Gb/s connections, that would give me the full speed of the SSD.

I had similar problem, but one i got the ahci solved.. i had score 7.1 on wei, then i updated the (amd)sata sata drivers, and i got score of 7.5 on wei.

p.s. my motherboard has only sata2, so im not using all of the speed of the ssd.

Too many variables to say why WEI reports as it does, unless you were to measure everything it uses to come up with its number. And of course you would have to know what WEI uses to make its calculations.
For example, it reports 7.8 on my M4 64g. Using AHCI.
I have 3Gbps controllers, and using the common benchmark tools used here (Crystal being one) - scores are about 60% of those using an M4 with 6Gbps controllers.
That's seems pretty normal, but the WEI is high compared to some others with M4's.
I don't put much stock into WEI, certainly not enought to upgrade my MB.
Others look at that differently.
Unless a difference is percievable to me in real daily use, I don't care.