Can SSD performance be improved on older notebook?

[wpcoe]

I installed a new 256GB Samsung 830 in my Acer Travelmate TM8172T notebook (i3-380UM 1.33Ghz, H55 Express chipset, 8 GB RAM, Win8 Pro) which is SATA2, but it seems slow and benchmarks indicate that it is.

It is aligned and I installed the latest Intel 11.5 drivers. I partitioned for OS and data, but the drive is still about 50% empty (118GB Unallocated). Initially the data partition was not properly aligned, but I fixed that with GParted

In Device Manager > Polices, "Enable write caching on the device" is checked, and "Turn off Windows write-cach buffer flushing..." is unchecked.

Are the lower speeds due to my older system -- e.g. is it something inherent with the low-power mobile i3 CPU and/or the H55 chipset?

I installed Windows 8 Pro on the notebook, a clean install on a bare drive. Would that result in lower speed, vs my desktop computer which still runs Windows 7 Home Premium?

I removed the SSD and put it in my desktop system (see sig) on a SATA-2 port:

Returning the SSD to the Acer notebook:

In particular, I'd like to boost the 4K read/write speed.

AS-SSD Benchmark tests were consistent with the CDM results:

 

[corkyg]

Install Samsung SSD Magician that came with your drive. It will do what it can to optimize, and will also tell you if you are3 on AHCI or not. That may be the problem. What vintage (year) is the Acer?

 

[wpcoe]

I did the SSD Magician tweaks. It's a first generation i3 mobile processor: i3-380UM which the Intel web page says was launched in Q4'10, so I guess I bought it about two years ago. My notebook boots to ACHI by default.

But, apparently there *is* an issue with the Intel Series 5 chipsets and SSDs? I found an article:

How To: Improve Low SSD Performance in Intel Series 5 Chipset Environments

and three looong threads (over 120 pages) on another forum:

Laptops w. Intel Series 5 chipset can not take full advantage of fast SSDs

How To Improve SSD performance on Intel Series 4, 5, 965 Chipsets (JJB Tweak)

How To Improve SSD performance on Intel Series 4, 5 and 965 chipsets (Stamatisx Tweak)

I've only just begun to pore over the information, but made just two Registry tweaks:

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Processor
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm

Change on both the "Start" from 3 to 4"

and look at the change:

I suspect there are consequences for tinkering with the power settings of the CPU. I want to take a closer look at those threads and the article and see what's what, but so far I'm impressed with the results.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

Pretty good improvement.

 

[tweakboy]

Dont worry about mbps ,, that is only for bulk transfers, sata 2 and 3 perform same as far as booting up and launching apps, and opening apps...... whats important is its 0.1ms access time and it is 100x faster then HD. You can run a superspyware scan while you run a registry cleaner and you can still launch apps in 0 seconds and do multiple stuff. That 30mbps doesnt mean much man dont sweat it. Your in good hands. and that noteback got some life in it... its actually usable now. 230mbps doesnt mean its going to access your files and load them or write them faster or slower,, its the latency and fact its on nand flash memory ,, sorta like RAM so it dishes out files fast at once,, boot up times should be amazing,, loading apps, etc etc,, trust me you wouldnt notice difference if it was 260mbps on youru lappy ,, also sata 3.0 isnt going to make your bootup faster or launching apps faster,, its only good for bulk transfers.... gl

 

[hhhd1]

If battery life is important to you then revert the cpu power saving settings back, the performance increase of SSD benchmark is not worth it IMO.

 

[wpcoe]

At the moment, I'm using a hybrid setup recommended on one of the threads. I modified the "High Performance" power setting -- for plugged-in only -- to apply tweaks. When I'm on battery power, I have the original settings and slower SSD speed. When it's plugged in, I get faster SSD performance.

I decided to undo those two Registry tweaks I listed above. They disable the Windows driver for the CPU, so it's running full tilt all the time, even on battery. Besides power issues, it makes things run hot all the time.

I'm still digesting all the ideas, comments, opinions and suggestions on those threads. At first I was surprised that Intel would have an entire chipset series that crippled SSD performance, then I realized that when those chipsets were designed, SSD's weren't the common commodity they are today. I am still surprised I hadn't read about this before. (Or, actually, more likely that I read it but forgot...)