Poor SSD Drive performance

[xfx]

Hi,

I have a Kingston SV200S3128G SDD drive and, although it is faster than any of my other mechanical drives, I feel it is still a tad slow compared to other drives I've seen.

Also, I'm getting a weird result when running Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test program as it shows that the drive's can write faster than it can read, which makes no sense.

The drive is connected to an on-board Marvell 91xx controller (6Gb)

The motherboard is an Asus Rampage Extreme III

And, I'm running Windows 7 x64

I have tried both, the default Windows' drivers for the controller as those provided at Asus' web site.

Anyone has any idea of what may be happening?

[Aletheia]

Did you try a different test? Just to double check, try:

Crystal Disk Mark 3

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

BTW, I also have Kingston SSD V+200 60GB for my eee1000HA and it is so much faster than the HDD! My netbook (W7, 2GB Ram) is now usable! :)

[xfx]

Thanks for the link Aletheia.

Well, you could say it gives "better" results but I was expecting a better reading performance.

[Abyssus]

Make to Enable AHCI SATA mode in the UEFI/BIOS and use the native intel or amd SATA 6Gb/s ports. Dont use Marvell.

[xfx]

AHCI mode is already enabled, however, the only 6gb SATA port on the motherboard is through the Marvell.

[scorpian007]

The Marvell ports are rubbish. I tried my Samsung 830 drive on the Marvell ports on my motherboard and got barely above my native SATA2 speeds.

[xfx]

I have been reading some posts at oher forums and it looks like the problem is that the controller is connected via PCI-e 1X, instead of PCI-e 2X.

So, I guess there's nothing that can be done...

I will, however, try the SATA3 ports from the Intel controller. Although they are only 3Gb, some say have seen a considerable improvement.

I'll post back with some results tomorrow.

[Abyssus]

You could try a firmware update?

http://www.kingston....G_128G_e120506a

Also this peson had the same drive and a firmware fixed the speed issue

http://www.overclock...d-write-problem

[xfx]

You could try a firmware update?

I did check that the same day I noticed the performance issue, but my drive doesn't have the "E111008a" code printed on the label, on mine it sais "E120506a" so I guess it doesn't need the update...

[tsupersonic]

Looks normal to me... What kind of results were you expecting, and how does this compare the to reviews of your drive on similar setups?

[xfx]

Well, my main concern was seeing that write speed was faster than the read speed but, it appears that after doing some more reasearch you are right: those values appear to fall inside the average for other owners of that particular Kingston drive.

I guess I was expecting/hoping to see ~350/400MB/s reading speed, seeing that the write speed was ~200/MBs

--------------------

Here're the results from Winsat which look quite similar to other users' benchmarks (a bit slower, though):

> Disk Sequential 64.0 Read 222.76 MB/s 7.4

> Disk Random 16.0 Read 140.85 MB/s 7.4

> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate 0.69 ms/IO 7.9

> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs 8.71 units 7.4

> Responsiveness: Long IOs 2.00 units 7.9

> Responsiveness: Overall 17.38 units 7.8

> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor 0.0

> Disk Sequential 64.0 Write 214.60 MB/s 7.4

> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes 0.508 ms 7.9

> Latency: 95th Percentile 2.183 ms 7.5

> Latency: Maximum 18.907 ms 7.9

> Average Read Time with Random Writes 0.446 ms 7.9

[xendrome]

Well, my main concern was seeing that write speed was faster than the read speed but, it appears that after doing some more reasearch you are right: those values appear to fall inside the average for other owners of that particular Kingston drive.

I guess I was expecting/hoping to see ~350/400MB/s reading speed, seeing that the write speed was ~200/MBs

How old is it? Return it? Get something else, like a Crucial M4?

[xfx]

How old is it? Return it? Get something else, like a Crucial M4?

It's brand new. I can't. Don't have the money. :D

[Wakers]

That's normal. Speeds also decrease quite sharply once they get past half full too.

Also, advertised speeds that they sell at are only achievable in specific benchmarks and don't reflect real-life speeds, which is a giant con if you ask me.