WEI for SSD goes from 7.9 to 7.2 when RAM is doubled?!

[Atarian]

About a year ago I installed a Crucial M500 and my HDD WEI went from 5.4 to 7.9.

Yesterday I upgraded from 8GB (4x2) to 16GB (4x4) and of course Windows recognized the change so I re-ran the assessment. Memory speed went up a couple tenths but HDD went from 7.9 to 7.0. Rebooted and ran again, and the HDD speed is now at 7.2.

Anyone find this odd?

Thanks!

HPE-510t Core i7 2600
16GB
Win7 HP
GeForce GT640

 

[MilesAhead]

Are you sure it didn't set up a page file on the SSD?

 

[Atarian]

I would assume it's there, but wouldn't have been there before? I am not at home right now - I'm on a work computer so I can't check.

The additional RAM was literally the only change:
I ran WEI assessment with the 8GB (it did not change).
Powered down and installed RAM.
Rebooted and ran WEI assessment - HDD = 7.0
Rebooted and ran WEI assessment several times - HDD = 7.2

There's very little running in the background - I think I'm at 42 processes while sitting idle at the desktop. The SSD is about half full, it has Windows, Office 2013, and a few dozen other programs. Al the rest are on the drive that came with the computer, a Hitachi 7200 RPM Deskstar, I believe.

Would switching the RAM have caused Windows to move the page file automatically? At this point I can't remember if I moved it to the Deskstar when I put in the SSD so again, I'll have to check when I get home.

Is there a reason I'd want the page file on the (much slower) Deskstar vice the SSD? I don't see it being used a lot in most cases. Or at all?

Thanks for the reply.

 

[MilesAhead]

I don't have my system on an SSD. From what I've seen people posting I don't think they would run any page unless they ran programs that use huge data sets. Perhaps someone with first hand experience will chime in.

 

[rvcjew]

Could be a page file. I personally do not use them and did not have any issue till yesterday when I put over 200 photos at 1200 dpi in photoshop at once.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Wouldn't the increase in RAM by default cause an increase in the size of the page file, or at least the maximum allowable?

I don't know if that would necessarily cause a change in the WEI score.

Have you always had a Windows-controlled page file size?

You might compare page file sizes: set to 8 GB manually and run WEI. Then set to 16 GB manually and re-run WEI to see if it changes.

 

[Atarian]

The page file was set to 'system managed' and was 16GB. I set it manually to none, and then to 8GB, and then 16GB with no change in the HDD WEI rating.

Since it doesn't seem to act any slower and benches the same with HD Tune I guess this will be just one of those weird things that happens...

Right now with just IE and task manager open, TM reports:

Physical Memory (MB)
Total 16366
Cached 1098
Available 14123
Free 13133

I'm back to a fixed 8GB page file which I may reset to none.

 

[LMiller7]

The WEI doesn't really mean very much. How can you distill the many performance characteristics of a modern computer down to a few easily understood numbers? The WEI is an attempt to do this difficult task but it is far from perfect. I am sure that many members of this forum have seen odd behavior in WEI. The details of what parameters are considered and how they interact are largely undocumented. I am sure there is a reasonable explanation but without access to the Windows source code, the ability to understand it, and the considerable time to analyze it we can only guess. And such guesses are often wrong.

I am quite certain that this is just a case of off behavior of WEI, not an actual drop in disk performance.

 

[carwiz]

It most likely has nothing to do with memory. When was the last time you ran WEI? SSDs will loose speed over time simply because the used cells take longer to write. SSDs will always try to write to fresh (unused) cells first so the when a drive is new, it's at it's peek performance. As files get added and deleted, those cells aren't used again until the unused cells are used up. This is part of "wear leveling". When the used but open cell is needed, it takes two I/O cycles to write the data to the cell. Once to clear the cell and once to write the data. On top of that time, the file segments or blocks of cells become scattered all over the disk and take longer to address. But it's still faster than any HDD. The only way to get back to a 7.9 rating is to install a new SSD.

My SSD has dropped over time. It started out as a 7.9 and has dropped .1-.2 every time WEI has run over the last two years even though it's four years old. (Didn't change the first two years.) It's down to 7.4 now and I haven't changed the hardware configuration since it was built.

Added:
Now don't your wish you hadn't run all those benchmarks.

 

[AddRAM]

You don`t need a page file with 16 GB of memory, disable the page file and re run WEI.

I don`t see why a page file would have any bearing on your ssd score.

The only thing that should affect it is the speed of the port it`s connected to.

My Crucial M550 in my Gateway gets a 7.8 because it only has 3 Gbps ports.