Intel X25-M/G2 02HA Setting Up/SB750 performance issues

[Nvidia256]

There seems to be allot of confusion around the Net about these drives in relation to performance and chipsets/settings etc...

Recently I purchased a New 80gb X25-m G2 02HA firmware drive. I plan to Install Win 7 on it.

My motherboard is an AM3 with the SB750 Chipset. Word is that the ATI's native SB750 drivers are not up to par in terms of reaching Max performance on the Intel SSD. OCZ and other manufactures recommend the *Microsoft AHCI* drivers for the SB750 rather the the AMD ones for better performance.

I am totally lost here, as there seems to be so many little different conflicting reports on what firmware to use etc... here is a list of points I hope somebody can clarify

-My drive came manufactured with Firmware 02HA(trim Support), should I update to Firmware 02HD(will this yield better performance)

-What SouthBridge Drivers Should I use for the my SB750, ATI or Microsoft

-What Speeds Should I be looking to Achieve when benchmarking the Drive in order to
determine if it's running to Spec

-What settings or Modifications do I need to make to prepare WIN7 Installation, what about OS Cluster Size

-is over-provisioning mandatory for maintaining drive performance

-any guides for Win7 SSD tweaks

-Is there any other important information that I am missing?



Please if anyone can any these questions I would be very greatful

 

[Makaveli]

I can't speak from the AMD side of things anymore, but I just purchased an intel 160GB G2 02HA.

I'm on a Intel X58 chipset motherboard, my primary OS was installed on a Western Digital 640GB AAKS drive. First thing I did after mounting it in my tower with the 2.5 - 3.5 bay adapter was to go into computer management and to make the drive active.

I then downloaded the 02HD firmware off the site, and burned the iso to a CD. As per the instruction I rebooted and then booted off the cd and did the firmware update.

Next up reinstalling Windows 7.

I have my copy of windows 7 on usb flash key to speed up the install, so I booted off the key started the windows install. Took about 12 mins for the whole thing to be completed, and I was at the desktop ready to install drivers.

The first thing I heard about SSD and windows 7 intels current drivers don't support trim when installed. So you have to stick with the MS ide drivers (will be the same on the AMD side). You can also download the intel SSD optimizer which will only work when you have a trim enabled firmware and the MS drivers. After all that everything was up and running and I decided to start looking for tweaks.

I found this first...

http://communities.intel.com/message/78713?tstart=0

So disabled superfetch, the prefetcher and drive indexing

Next up I took the page file off my SSD and stored it on my storage drive. Some people say its better to leave the page file on the SSD, but I choose to move it. With enough system ram I rarely hit the page file so its gone. System restore was also moved to another drive aswell.

I then found this next.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=442160&postcount=5

The two important tweaks I took from this site was the browser cache, which I moved to my storage drive.

And the windows temp and tmp folders also moved off my ssd.

Majority of these tweaks lean more towards the fewer writes on your ssd and not so much preformance tweaks. With this being a trim ssd i'm hoping for windows to be able to keep performance up.

Best of luck and enjoy your purchase.

Buying an SSD was the biggest improvement to my computing experience in a very long time.

 

[Voo]

Majority of these tweaks lean more towards the fewer writes on your ssd and not so much preformance tweaks.

I'd say some things you did harmed your performance (at least moving the FF cache on the HDD, I wouldn't move the temp folders either.. I mean the whole guide is about using a Ram Disk to speed this things up!) and about "less writes on the drive".. you know that MLC flash has ~10k write cycles?

In the best case that means you'd have to write 780TB to your drive before every cell has been written to ten thousand times. Because the wear leveling algorithm is far from perfect and other things, let's just take a tenth of that.. are you sure you can write 78TB of data to your drive in a reasonable amount of time?


SMART data for my 160gb drive tells me I've written ~1.5TB in the last three months and that was with benchmarking and other stuff I won't do from now on. But even if I did it would take me approximately 13 years to write 80TB to the disk.

Your mileage may vary, but to write 80TB to the drive in 5 years would mean you'd have to write 1.3TB to the drive every month.. I can't imagine any desktop usage that'd do that.

 

[jor8888]

5 yrs from now ur ssd will be outdated anyway. ppl will laugh at u still running G2 when everyone is running G5 with 5x faster speed lol.

 

[Makaveli]

I'd say some things you did harmed your performance (at least moving the FF cache on the HDD, I wouldn't move the temp folders either.. I mean the whole guide is about using a Ram Disk to speed this things up!) and about "less writes on the drive".. you know that MLC flash has ~10k write cycles?

In the best case that means you'd have to write 780TB to your drive before every cell has been written to ten thousand times. Because the wear leveling algorithm is far from perfect and other things, let's just take a tenth of that.. are you sure you can write 78TB of data to your drive in a reasonable amount of time?


SMART data for my 160gb drive tells me I've written ~1.5TB in the last three months and that was with benchmarking and other stuff I won't do from now on. But even if I did it would take me approximately 13 years to write 80TB to the disk.

Your mileage may vary, but to write 80TB to the drive in 5 years would mean you'd have to write 1.3TB to the drive every month.. I can't imagine any desktop usage that'd do that.

Well after making those changes I haven't noticed any performance hits. Browsing is still very fast with the cache being on the storage drive. And i'm aware that the guide is for using a ram disk that is why I only choose two of the tweaks on it that I found would produce less writes to the SSD.

 

[Makaveli]

5 yrs from now ur ssd will be outdated anyway. ppl will laugh at u still running G2 when everyone is running G5 with 5x faster speed lol.

Sounds like the reasoning of a teenager. I build my computer for my own use, why would I give a shit what anyone else thinks of my rig.

 

[Voo]

Well after making those changes I haven't noticed any performance hits. Browsing is still very fast with the cache being on the storage drive. And i'm aware that the guide is for using a ram disk that is why I only choose two of the tweaks on it that I found would produce less writes to the SSD.

Just look how much data you've written since you've got the drive - do you really write that much data to the drive that you need these improvements?


Not that you can't use the drive in 5years onwards, but are you really using five year old HDDs in your main rig? I'm not worried about the speed improvements (5times the random r/w with the same technology on 22nm? sure..), but I think till then the capacity will go way up.

 

[Makaveli]

Does the intel Solid State Drive Toolbox show me how many current writes to the drive?

I c the OP posted this on the intel forum aswell

 

[Makaveli]

O one thing I forgot to add before doing the firmware update make sure SATA is set to IDE in your bios. Mine was like that by default so I had no issues with the flash. However I didn't switch it back so my SSD was running in IDE mode. I had to go into device manager switch to the MS AHCI reboot then go into the bios and switch it to SATA AHCI.

 

[Voo]

Does the intel Solid State Drive Toolbox show me how many current writes to the drive?

Yep.. Check SMART attributes --> E1 Host Writes

For me that'd be 1.42TB, so I'm rather relaxed about writing too much data to the drive


And I just flashed it in AHCI mode - afaik it tells you if you have to change the mode to IDE, but it's probably safer the way you did it.

 

[Makaveli]

my E1 Host writes is at 70GB's.

I've had the drive since Dec 24th.