SSD performance on SATA I systems

[Qacer]

My hard drive went kaput. I figured I'd update my setup to have an SSD as my primary drive and store all my "other" files on a secondary "green" hard drive. I'm not a gamer, but a typical user who normally browses the web and occasionally, use video editing software. I'll be putting Windows 7 on the fresh installation, so I believe my chosen OS is ready for SSD.

However, my system is a few years old. I have a Gateway 842GM. My motherboard is an Intel one, but I can't seem to find the model number on it. Another site mentioned that it is similar to an Intel D915GAGL. I can, however, confirm that the board has the 82801FB I/O Controller Hub 6 (ICH6). Intel's documents states that ICH6 supports SATA Rev 1.0a, but not AHCI.

The SSDs that I have seen are recommended to have AHCI enabled on the system. However, they can still work with non-AHCI computers, but with degraded performance. Before I pull the trigger and buy one, what does degraded performance actually mean? Has anyone have an SSD running on a SATA Rev 1.0a system?

This is the drive that I have chosen:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233108
Corsair Nova Series CSSD-V64GB2-BRKT 2.5" 64GB SATA II MLC Internal SSD

Thanks!

 

[Old Hippie]

Intel's documents states that ICH6 supports SATA Rev 1.0a,

SATA1 is capped at 150MB/s and will cripple an SSDs read speeds.

Lack of AHCI isn't a show stopper but combined with the SATA1 limit and the older MB components I'm not sure how much of an improvement you'd get.

I have no doubt it would be an improvement and for 120.00 ya just can't go wrong. 🙂

It would be nice if you could post some test results and we could all learn how an SSD performs under those conditions.

 

[Emulex]

lack of ncq will hurt multitasking like the new samsung ssd

but so i'd go for a drive that has high iops since you have no ncq at a low queue depth and solid.

the X25-V line is a good choice. The 80gb will be out in 1.8 very soon and 2.5" in a few months. they make a 30 and 40gb (oem'd by others) as well.

read speeds are 220-250mb/s which outruns all my sandforce drives. write speeds are low but you only write 2-5% of the time. latency is the killer. no drive can touch it.

 

[Qacer]

I was reading some more about NCQ, and here is what I found out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing

"For example, the SandForce 1200 based OCZ Vertex II 50GB drive running on a Dell Perc 5i (which doesn't support SATA NCQ) delivers about 7,000 4k IOPS (50% write) at a controller queue depth of 32 IOs. Moving the drive to the similar Dell Perc 6i increases this to over 14,000 IOPS on the same basis."

Also, this particular Corsair drive has a stated IOPS of 7000 (from http://ssd-reviews.com/ssd/v.php?id=268). So assuming that best case scenario my system would get 50% of the stated performance, then I would still see about 3500 IOPS for this drive. If assume a 70% drop in performance as the worst case, then that would still give me 2100 IOPS, which is still 23 times faster than a 7200 RPM SATA drive. However, I do not know if this refers to read or write.

As for the Intel X25-V 40GB SSD, I noticed that it has a manufacturer random IOPS write of up to 2500. A 70% decrease of performance as a worst case puts this at 750 IOPS, which is still faster than the stated values for the SATA hard drives.

I guess I'd still see some performance gain. The other big plus for SSDs is the power consumption. I have the tendency to leave my system on the entire time. I'm planning on installing my OS and other main applications on the SSD. I'm going to get another a hard drive as my secondary drive and store all additional files on there. I'm probably going to go for a green or eco drive that is highly rated. The WD green drives that I've seen seems to have a high chance of arriving DOA from what reviewing users are saying.

 

[Old Hippie]

Stats are just that.

That IOP thing is just one minor factor in real world performance.

You need a new HD anyway.

If you're having trouble justifying a 120.00 purchase that will increase the performance of your machine, I dunno what to tell ya.

Maybe you otta get away from the Gateway and join this generation? 😀

 

[Qacer]

From what I've seen so far, I will pull the trigger on an SSD. 🙂 I don't require heavy hard drive use anyway except maybe for video editing once in a while.

Another good news is that I was able to pull some of my files from my old hard drive. I just need to wipe it out now before I completely trash it. I was going to replace the PCB and see if I can use it for another few years, but for $40 for a PCB replacement, I don't think it's worth it.

 

[Emulex]

the x25-v is underrated so you buy the x25-m. it really is faster than you think

the x25-m 80gb is no faster in read

 

[taltamir]

i wouldn't go so far as calling it crippled... it will be slower, but still a lot faster then spindle drive.

 

[Qacer]

I finally got my Corsair Nova Series 64GB SSD (CSSD-V64GB2-BRKT). After drilling some extra holes into my hard drive cage, I was able to install the 3.5" adapter for the SSD drive. I also upgraded my system to Windows 7 Home Premium.

Also note again that my mobo only supports SATA Rev1.0a.

Anyway, the following pic is from a recent benchmark using ATTO:

For those who can't see the image, I used the following settings:
Transfer size: 0.5 to 8192.0 KB
Total Length: 256 MB
Direct I/O: checked
Overlapped I/O: selected
Queue Depth: 4

Test results
Transfer size / Write / Read
0.5 / 2275 / 8788
1.0 / 8512 / 17742
2.0 / 27812 / 33792
4.0/ 58803 / 49802
8.0 / 86294 / 76773
16.0 /102943 / 99133
32.0 / 119666 / 122012
64.0 / 127543 / 131007
128.0 / 131984 / 136593
256.0 / 131657 / 136817
512.0 / 131909 / 133549
1024.0 / 129992 / 134217
2048.0 / 131909 / 136724
4096.0 / 132017 / 136724
8192.0 / 132017 / 136492

 

[sub.mesa]

Your random reads should still be > 20MB/s, which is alot faster than 0.xMB/s on HDDs, so you would still get most benefit when starting applications and booting. Lack of NCQ will be more hurting your performance than lack of SATA/300, in my opinion.

Aside from lower sequential speeds, SATA/150 would also cause higher 'progagation delay'; sending a single request simply takes more time. This becomes more taxing on high-speed low-latency SSDs when doing many small random reads; common tasks on a system drive. But even with this increased latency, you should still get most benefits of an SSD compared to a setup where the OS is stored on HDD instead.