Show us your SSD performance

[whs]

Now I am really puzzled. After I installed the 90GB OCZ Vertex on my new Sony laptop, I ran 2 measurements.

1. The Atto tool which shows results as one would expect
2. the HD Tune which shows miserable results
3, the WEI shows it as 5.9 whereas one would expect something like 7.6

Unfortunately there is no way to change the BIOS to AHCI. Sony made that impossible. There is some tweak for the BIOS I found on the web, but it looked rather risky. So I do not want to venture into that.

 

[nyyankeefan95]

Besides your OCZ Vertex 2 is their any other drives connected unplug them and run the WEI again. It brought mine from 5.9 to 7.7.

 

[Golden]

Now I am really puzzled. After I installed the 90GB OCZ Vertex on my new Sony laptop, I ran 2 measurements.

1. The Atto tool which shows results as one would expect
2. the HD Tune which shows miserable results

I've seen exactly the same things with my OCZ Vertex 2 60GB (but in my case my WEI was ~7 even though I have two other disks installed).

See here http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/131915-confused-ide-raid.html
Image in Post #1 (HD Tune) and also in Post #6 (AATO)

I think it may be an issue with HDDTune WHS...but I'm not sure. ATTO seems to be the tool to use.

 

[whs]

Besides your OCZ Vertex 2 is their any other drives connected unplug them and run the WEI again. It brought mine from 5.9 to 7.7.

Good deal. Thank you. A rerun brought it up to 7.6. In hindsight I think the 5.9 was still from the original HDD from before I took that out and put the SSD in.

But I am still puzzled about the HD Tune results.

 

[whs]

Now I am really puzzled. After I installed the 90GB OCZ Vertex on my new Sony laptop, I ran 2 measurements.

1. The Atto tool which shows results as one would expect
2. the HD Tune which shows miserable results

I've seen exactly the same things with my OCZ Vertex 2 60GB (but in my case my WEI was ~7 even though I have two other disks installed).

See here http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/131915-confused-ide-raid.html
Image in Post #1 (HD Tune) and also in Post #6 (AATO)

I think it may be an issue with HDDTune WHS...but I'm not sure. ATTO seems to be the tool to use.

I think you are right. Now that I fixed my WEI ( courtesy of nyyankeefan95), I also think that HD Tune is defunct.

 

[Golden]

Now I am really puzzled. After I installed the 90GB OCZ Vertex on my new Sony laptop, I ran 2 measurements.

1. The Atto tool which shows results as one would expect
2. the HD Tune which shows miserable results

I've seen exactly the same things with my OCZ Vertex 2 60GB (but in my case my WEI was ~7 even though I have two other disks installed).

See here http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/131915-confused-ide-raid.html
Image in Post #1 (HD Tune) and also in Post #6 (AATO)

I think it may be an issue with HDDTune WHS...but I'm not sure. ATTO seems to be the tool to use.

I think you are right. Now that I fixed my WEI ( courtesy of nyyankeefan95), I also think that HD Tune is defunct.

Yes, well for OCZ SSD's anyway. Did you see that post my mine with the two images? Almost exactly a mirror image of your results.

 

[whs]

Yeah, now the question is: why does HD Tune show the wrong results.

 

[essenbe]

According to the OCZ forums, OCZ technical support will only use the results from ATTO. AS SSD is a test made specifically for SSDs. However, running too many tests will slow your drive down as they write compressed data to the drive in order to do the tests.

Here is a zip folder for an OCZ winsat test. Unzip and run as admin. you'll get completely different readings.

 

[essenbe]

If it is any help, here are the results of my OCZ Vertex2 90GB.

 

[whs]

Your Atto results are the same as mine. But your HD Tune looks a lot bettter.

 

[Wishmaster]

I think some of it may be becase HDTune is really intended for Spinning drives?
I haven't used it in a long time however, so Im not sure if anything has changed.


I know many people use it for SSDs, but I do recall I reading somewhere it wasn't good to use it as a benchmark for SSDs, rather use ASSSD,CrystalMark, or ATTO.
I can not find that article anywhere now though


I did try it a couple times when I first got my SSDs, and I too got really wierd results. Lots of dips, low overall numbers etc.
But my WEI score was usually where it should have been.

 

[essenbe]

I was trying to show in my posts that 3 tests showed different results. I really don't know which one is more accurate. Mine is in ACHI mode. My only suggestion for you is to go in Device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, find the port your device is connected to. In properties-Advanced settings tab, see if you can make sure the DMA is checked. If you can it is supposed to help. . The idea is supposed to be to get the box above that check box to read ultra DMA Mode 6. I remember that issue from a previous discussion and it helped a lot for others.
I hope this helped. You have certainly helped me several times.

 

[whs]

essenbe, thanks for the detailed help. But mine is already set to 6 port. However, during the investigation I also found out that it is set to Sata AHCI (which I was not sure of before), which is good news. I think I will set the /7 registry to AHCI and see whether that yields an additional improvement.

 

[essenbe]

If you want to download As SSD test, I think you can download it here. That link came from the OCZ forums. But, the point is that in the top lef corner it will tell you your alignment and what controller is controlling the drive. You don't have to run the test if you don't want to. Just make sure the SSD is selected in the top dropdown box.

 

[essenbe]

I'm no expert here, but I was under the impression that if you were already in AHCI mode that the registry was already set. I thought the only reason you needed to set the registry is if you installed in IDE mode and needed to change it to AHCI.

 

[Golden]

I'm no expert here, but I was under the impression that if you were already in AHCI mode that the registry was already set. I thought the only reason you needed to set the registry is if you installed in IDE mode and needed to change it to AHCI.

Thats correct. If you installed in IDE and wanted to change to AHCI, you need to do two things:

1. Change mode in registry
2. Upon reboot, change mode in BIOS

Please review here Guide * Windows 7 Ultimate Tweaks & Utilities * and see 2nd and 3rd last points in this section:

General Windows 7 Performance Tweaks
Make your Windows 7 Faster
​

• Change the Power Plan To Maximum Performance
• Speed Up the Windows 7 Bootup Time
• Change the Number of Processors Used at Boot Up
• How to See What Your Windows 7 Restart Time is
• Disable the Aero Theme on Windows 7
• Disable the Unwanted Visual Effects
• Disable Unwanted Startup Programs
• Disable the Unwanted Services
• Services to Disable
• Disable the User account control (UAC) Feature
• Turn off Unused Windows 7 Features
• Disable the Aero Snap features in Windows 7
• Speed up the Menu Show Delay Time
• Change the Mouse Hover Time before Pop-up Displays
• Speed Up the Shut Down Time
• Change from IDE to AHCI Mode after Installation
• Change from AHCI to IDE Mode after Installation
• Enable RAID Mode after Installation

However, if you installed under AHCI mode in BIOS, then a registry change is not neccessary.

 

[whs]

If you want to download As SSD test, I think you can download it here. That link came from the OCZ forums. But, the point is that in the top lef corner it will tell you your alignment and what controller is controlling the drive. You don't have to run the test if you don't want to. Just make sure the SSD is selected in the top dropdown box.

I had that already, but I hardly ever used it. For checking the alignment I use Diskpart. But thanks anyhow for pointing it out.

 

[Hondajt]

I bought a cheapo $99 SSD as my boot drive for my main computer. It i awesome. Anyone who hasn't tried one, needs to. And $99 for a boot drive this fast, makes it a great value to me.

IDE mode before registry tweak:


AHCI mode after registry tweak:


A noticable difference on the desktop, and a noticable difference on these benchmarks.

For reference, a members 1TB 7200rpm HDD:

 

[whs]

Since we were wondering about the value of AHCI in terms of SSD performance, I have tried out both. First pic shows measurement with "msahci" registry setting at 3 and the second pic shows the setting at 0. There is essentially very little difference. I only noticed the 4K speeds to be interesting. Here you are hung between a rock and a hard place depending whether you write a lot ( e.g. install programs a lot) or read more.

 

[fseal]

How many threads does that test use? AHCI improves threaded performance dramatically and all other performance some but not as noticable.

If that test is not using multiple threads then it may not be reflecing the true difference between IDE and AHCI.

And given that the OS alone may have several hundred threads running (I got over 1k running right now) Having the ability to not be thread locked on all reads and writes is defintely a good thing