SSD show low performance

[livermore]

I bought a Samsung 840 EVO120Gb which is showing a very disappointing performance.

My system is the following:

Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Asus P7P55 WS
GSkill 12gb
Intel i5 760 2.8Ghz
4x Nvidia Quadro NVS 290

From images I've seen over the net of this SSD, the performance is always above the 400's Mb.
Is this poor performance related to the fact my mobo is SATA 2?

I updated its firmware to the latest one, EXT0CB6Q.
My mobo bios and drivers are also updated to latest ones, which are from 2011.

 

[pbcopter]

To get the maximum speed from an SSD (SATA III), you will need a SATA III controller on the motherboard.

Your speed seems ok for a SATA II system.

 

[livermore]

To get the maximum speed from an SSD (SATA III), you will need a SATA III controller on the motherboard.

Your speed seems ok for a SATA II system.

Many thanks

 

[logicearth]

SATA 2 is about 3gb/s (that is gigabits not gigabytes, lower case b.) While SATA 3 is around 6gb/s. So when you translate those speeds in MegaBytes they are about 400MB/s to 800MB/s roughly, not counting overhead.


In other words you are at the theoretically limit of SATA 2 right now.

 

[dsperber]

Did you install Samsung Magician? Very very worthwhile to improve performance.

Did you leave the Magician-recommended amount of space unallocated for "over-provisioning? I know that seems wasteful when it's only 120GB, but it's under 10% and it improves performance.

Did you enable the Magician-facilitated "rapid mode", which makes use of available RAM (you have 12GB, so there should be plenty available for Magician) which also improves performance?

Did you install Windows from scratch onto the new SSD, or did you clone your existing spinner onto the SSD using Samsung software or something else?

If you simply transferred your existing installed Windows over to the SSD, did you then let Magician make its recommended performance tweaks to your Windows system (which was originally installed when you had a spinner, but which deserves some tweaks for SSD)?

As has already been discussed, you have a SATA-II motherboard which of course starts off slower than SATA-III, and you also have a "modest" CPU. So your expectations have to be modified accordingly. What was your equivalent benchmark performance before you upgraded to SSD, when you were still using a spinner? That's really what you should compare to, to see if your improvement is satisfactory.

 

[livermore]

Did you install Samsung Magician? Very very worthwhile to improve performance.

Did you leave the Magician-recommended amount of space unallocated for "over-provisioning? I know that seems wasteful when it's only 120GB, but it's under 10% and it improves performance.

Did you enable the Magician-facilitated "rapid mode", which makes use of available RAM (you have 12GB, so there should be plenty available for Magician) which also improves performance?

Did you install Windows from scratch onto the new SSD, or did you clone your existing spinner onto the SSD using Samsung software or something else?

If you simply transferred your existing installed Windows over to the SSD, did you then let Magician make its recommended performance tweaks to your Windows system (which was originally installed when you had a spinner, but which deserves some tweaks for SSD)?

As has already been discussed, you have a SATA-II motherboard which of course starts off slower than SATA-III, and you also have a "modest" CPU. So your expectations have to be modified accordingly. What was your equivalent benchmark performance before you upgraded to SSD, when you were still using a spinner? That's really what you should compare to, to see if your improvement is satisfactory.

I didn't install Magician so before answer anything else, i'm going to install it.

Regarding expectations I knew I would not get the 400Mb but I thought that at least the new drive would surpass the OCZ but for what I remember, the OCZ had similar performance.
So in terms of SSD technology one could say that it did not improve that much. The advancement was in fact in the SATA connection that double the bandwidth

I'll report back after install Magician

Thanks

 

[livermore]

So after installing it and activate the rapid mode the performance got a bit more difficult to read

I installed Windows from scrach

 

[dsperber]

What's hard to read?

Your CrystalDiskMark test results are HUGELY IMPROVED from what your first screenshot showed. GIGANTIC improvement, I would say.

Here are the test results from my own Lenovo W530 (i7-3740QM, 8GB PC3-12800 800Mhz memory), with 512GB Samsung 840 Pro, on SATA-III controller:

My results are better than yours, but that's to be expected as my SSD is on a SATA-III controller, and it's for an 840 Pro rather than and 840 EVO. But I'd still say your results are excellent now that you have RapidMode enabled via Samsung Magician. It's using your GSkill RAM memory as intermediate cache buffer for the SSD.

Even more remarkable are your Magician Benchmark performance results for your 840 Evo. I don't quite understand how those numbers could be so high. Here's my own similar test results, which seem to be a fair amount lower than yours:

I'd say now that you're running with Samsung Magician and RapidMode enabled, you're doing just fine even only through SATA-II connection. Quite surprising, actually.

 

[livermore]

My initial dificulty was really believing what I was seeing.
Starting from a reading of 271mb to 425mb just by activating rapid mode was something amazing.

Many thanks for you advise in installing Magician.