Why does my Intel based SSD have such slow random read/write performance?

[AlgaeEater]

I posted a similar problem in another thread. But I am in the same boat as yours. My results don't quite match Anandtech's results in the random read/write department. Can someone shed some light on this?

I got the same exact results as yours on my 160GB G2, and other test setups have shown the same results as well as noted by fletch101.

If there's a trick to increasing the performance, let me know as well. Otherwise; everything is working as intended. Outside of benchmarks however; I'm not sure if the difference is noticeable. Then again, that is a considerable performance increase.

I'm too lazy to look up Anand's charts, but unless he has a specific 4-64 graph, maybe he was talking about that instead of the straight 4k read/write?

 

[fletch101]

I got the same exact results as yours on my 160GB G2, and other test setups have shown the same results as well as noted by fletch101.

If there's a trick to increasing the performance, let me know as well. Otherwise; everything is working as intended. Outside of benchmarks however; I'm not sure if the difference is noticeable. Then again, that is a considerable performance increase.

I'm too lazy to look up Anand's charts, but unless he has a specific 4-64 graph, maybe he was talking about that instead of the straight 4k read/write?

As soon as I un-lazify myself, I will try to run the IO meter setup that Anand did in his G2 review.

 

[jimhsu]

Here is exactly how much free space matters:

SSD Toolbox "optimization" was run prior to each bench. No other system settings were changed.

17.2 GB free:



25.8 GB free:



Pay particular attention to the write speeds.

Subjectively, there is also far less stalling when a large seq write is taking place, and the results are also more stable.

As far as Intel drives are concerned, they should be sold as 60GB drives for all practical (performance) purposes. This is basically a known fault of Intel's write combining algorithm - it works fast and beats the pants off of anything else with under high queue lengths, but needs plenty of free space. (anand discussed this in one of the articles).

 

[pcslookout]

Here is exactly how much free space matters:

SSD Toolbox "optimization" was run prior to each bench. No other system settings were changed.

17.2 GB free:



25.8 GB free:



Pay particular attention to the write speeds.

Subjectively, there is also far less stalling when a large seq write is taking place, and the results are also more stable.

As far as Intel drives are concerned, they should be sold as 60GB drives for all practical (performance) purposes. This is basically a known fault of Intel's write combining algorithm - it works fast and beats the pants off of anything else with under high queue lengths, but needs plenty of free space. (anand discussed this in one of the articles).

Yeah it sucks. I may soon try just installing my OS and applications on my Intel 80 GB G2 that way well over 50GB is free and I have some safety net room. Just install all my games on my 150 GB raptor, which should be fast enough, that way my SSD doesn't slow down to much with having no free space.

What kind of write speed and scroe should I aim for with a Intel 80 GB G2 when everything is installed completely?

 

[EarthwormJim]

Yeah it sucks. I may soon try just installing my OS and applications on my Intel 80 GB G2 that way well over 50GB is free and I have some safety net room. Just install all my games on my 150 GB raptor, which should be fast enough, that way my SSD doesn't slow down to much with having no free space.

What kind of write speed and scroe should I aim for with a Intel 80 GB G2 when everything is installed completely?

You're not noticing that even his full Intel drive is faster than just about any other SSD out there. Yes it's random write performance is cut in half, but it's still 25mb/s. Indilinx drives do maybe 15mb/s when empty.

I think you're making this into too much of a big deal. Make good use of the drive, you already payed a lot for what little space it came with.

 

[pcslookout]

You're not noticing that even his full Intel drive is faster than just about any other SSD out there. Yes it's random write performance is cut in half, but it's still 25mb/s. Indilinx drives do maybe 15mb/s when empty.

I think you're making this into too much of a big deal. Make good use of the drive, you already payed a lot for what little space it came with.

Ok I will admit your right but it makes me wish I bought the 160 GB instead because I don't think I would of ever coming close to filling that. Even with all my current games and programs installed. That way I could actually use 80 GB of space but still have enough so I would still get good enough performance.

Do you really think running all my games on my 150 GB Raptor would slow me down a lot ? Lets say I like to sometimes run two games at once? Don't ask me why I just do. I hate to wait for games to load up I just keep them open sense I have 8 GB of ram.

 

[SolMiester]

http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?cat_id=4

German site, but the download link is right at the top, so that shouldn't be a problem

Cheers mate, been trying to find it for days!

 

[Beautiful_Life]

I'm having a similar problem. My random 4k read and writes is half the speed of most of the benchmarks I see. It does make a real difference in loading Windows and programs.

 

[Spikesoldier]

this is my two G1's in RAID0

note: this was taken after a secure erase and clean win7x64 install.

here is ATTO:

 

[Spikesoldier]

I'm having a similar problem. My random 4k read and writes is half the speed of most of the benchmarks I see. It does make a real difference in loading Windows and programs.

looks like you need to install intel chipset driver

 

[Beautiful_Life]

looks like you need to install intel chipset driver

Which chipset driver do I need to install.

I'm using Intel's GS45 chipset and I've already installed the GMA driver. I choose not to install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager because it slows down my SSD, not only on benchmarks, but on real world usage too. Furthermore I don't have a RAID setup.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Beautiful_Life, try the new Rapid Storage Technology driver, it helped with my G1 noticeably.



Not everything is rosy with the Intel SSD's high random write speeds. There has been discussions where it said the high IOPS of the Intel drive might cause stuttering because it overwhelms the GC mechanism quickly. High IOPS and high random write speeds in small files aren't the answer to everything. The drive also needs to be able to keep up with such high speeds.

The 8820 firmware in the first X25-M drives helped a lot with this, but its not enough. New architecture is required to fix this and won't be realized until Postville-refresh or Gen 3 Taylorsville drives. TRIM is currently the only solution out of this. High IOPS are a waste though, if its not balanced in other metrics. For PC X25-M desperately needs much higher write and fast enough GC to keep up with its insane random writes.

Free space is very important on an SSD. After all this effort creating entirely new storage technology, they managed to create similar problems as original hard drives. Defrag on platter HDD=TRIM on SSD, free space for HDD=just as important on SSD

I've been benchmarking the setup on my sig. Going from 25-30GB free space to 13GB has resulted in frames dropping around 10%. It shows those that think storage doesn't affect gaming performance at all.

 

[Beautiful_Life]

Beautiful_Life, try the new Rapid Storage Technology driver, it helped with my G1 noticeably.

Not everything is rosy with the Intel SSD's high random write speeds. There has been discussions where it said the high IOPS of the Intel drive might cause stuttering because it overwhelms the GC mechanism quickly. High IOPS and high random write speeds in small files aren't the answer to everything. The drive also needs to be able to keep up with such high speeds.

The 8820 firmware in the first X25-M drives helped a lot with this, but its not enough. New architecture is required to fix this and won't be realized until Postville-refresh or Gen 3 Taylorsville drives. TRIM is currently the only solution out of this. High IOPS are a waste though, if its not balanced in other metrics. For PC X25-M desperately needs much higher write and fast enough GC to keep up with its insane random writes.

Free space is very important on an SSD. After all this effort creating entirely new storage technology, they managed to create similar problems as original hard drives. Defrag on platter HDD=TRIM on SSD, free space for HDD=just as important on SSD

I've been benchmarking the setup on my sig. Going from 25-30GB free space to 13GB has resulted in frames dropping around 10%. It shows those that think storage doesn't affect gaming performance at all.

Thanks for your suggestion. I did try out the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager, which is actually not very new since it was released on the 17th of July 09. It noticeably slows down my read performance so I had to redo my whole Windows Installation to get back msahci, since the registry hack didn't work for me. On benchmarks, my Seq read rose from 170 to 240 MB/s and random 4k from 7MB/s to 11/MB/s. Random write almost doubled. Processor activity also decreased since it's not continuously scanning from RAID configuration. Windows Boot time went from 43 secs to 30 secs and PhotoshopCS4 started in 8 secs down from 15. Plus, IMSM doesn't support passing the TRIM command automatically. So my conclusion is that IMSM is the worst thing to install if one is running a non-RAID setup.

Spikesoldier's comment led me to do some investigation and I found out I hadn't run the Intel Chipset INF file update utility. So I ran the latest one (22 Dec 09) and viola, my 4k random read jumps 52% up. My boot speed goes down to 28 seconds with a full onslaught of startup programs. Photoshop boots in 5 secs. Thanks alot! However this will probably only solved this problem for those who are using Intel Motherboards and Windows Vista/7.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Beautiful_Life, try the new Rapid Storage Technology driver, it helped with my G1 noticeably.



Not everything is rosy with the Intel SSD's high random write speeds. There has been discussions where it said the high IOPS of the Intel drive might cause stuttering because it overwhelms the GC mechanism quickly. High IOPS and high random write speeds in small files aren't the answer to everything. The drive also needs to be able to keep up with such high speeds.

The 8820 firmware in the first X25-M drives helped a lot with this, but its not enough. New architecture is required to fix this and won't be realized until Postville-refresh or Gen 3 Taylorsville drives. TRIM is currently the only solution out of this. High IOPS are a waste though, if its not balanced in other metrics. For PC X25-M desperately needs much higher write and fast enough GC to keep up with its insane random writes.

Free space is very important on an SSD. After all this effort creating entirely new storage technology, they managed to create similar problems as original hard drives. Defrag on platter HDD=TRIM on SSD, free space for HDD=just as important on SSD

I've been benchmarking the setup on my sig. Going from 25-30GB free space to 13GB has resulted in frames dropping around 10%. It shows those that think storage doesn't affect gaming performance at all.

The intel storage driver is not recommended to install for SSD setups. It is optimized for hard disk drives and in most cases worsens performance compared to the Microsoft driver.

However the Intel chipset driver is essential for proper performance (not just for your disk drive either).

 

[IntelUser2000]

I don't know about anyone else, but I used to have a random slow boot problem with the X25-M after doing system-level changes like updating a driver.

After the installation of the Rapid Storage driver the random slow boot times disappeared and the whole system is more responsive. You could say that the IMSM driver is meant for platter-based HDDs, but there's a likely chance they thought of having proper SSD support in the driver itself. SSDs are made to be replacement of hard disks, lots of things are in common between them, and surely the manufacturers design the interface and the firmware with that in mind.

 

[sub.mesa]

The kingston is based on the first generation Intel controller, as far as i know. Not the G2.

It also has half the channels Intel has, so its less fast. But it keeps the low write amplification and good wear leveling of the Intel controller; and is still fast in latency based tasks; as high as a 40GB SSD goes. Didnt see much of the Intel X25-V 40GB though.

 

[Old Hippie]

it helped with my G1 noticeably.

Same thing here but I'm running 2 80GB G1s in RAID0.

 

[EarthwormJim]

The kingston is based on the first generation Intel controller, as far as i know. Not the G2.

It also has half the channels Intel has, so its less fast. But it keeps the low write amplification and good wear leveling of the Intel controller; and is still fast in latency based tasks; as high as a 40GB SSD goes. Didnt see much of the Intel X25-V 40GB though.

Every review that has opened up the Kingston drive has shown a G2 controller.

 

[jhansman]

Hmmm, could it be that SSD is an overhyprf, overpriced, gee-whiz technology that is really not yet ready for prime time or your average web-surfing mouse clicker? Just askin'.

 

[jimhsu]

Hmmm, could it be that SSD is an overhyprf, overpriced, gee-whiz technology that is really not yet ready for prime time or your average web-surfing mouse clicker? Just askin'.

So were hard drives "back in the days" where everyone expected to run everything from inexpensive floppies...

"Sure, this thing is faster, but my collection of 50 floppies stores that much more, and is cheaper to boot. Hard drives will never become mainstream."

 

[jimhsu]

Beautiful_Life, try the new Rapid Storage Technology driver, it helped with my G1 noticeably.



Not everything is rosy with the Intel SSD's high random write speeds. There has been discussions where it said the high IOPS of the Intel drive might cause stuttering because it overwhelms the GC mechanism quickly. High IOPS and high random write speeds in small files aren't the answer to everything. The drive also needs to be able to keep up with such high speeds.

The 8820 firmware in the first X25-M drives helped a lot with this, but its not enough. New architecture is required to fix this and won't be realized until Postville-refresh or Gen 3 Taylorsville drives. TRIM is currently the only solution out of this. High IOPS are a waste though, if its not balanced in other metrics. For PC X25-M desperately needs much higher write and fast enough GC to keep up with its insane random writes.

Free space is very important on an SSD. After all this effort creating entirely new storage technology, they managed to create similar problems as original hard drives. Defrag on platter HDD=TRIM on SSD, free space for HDD=just as important on SSD

I've been benchmarking the setup on my sig. Going from 25-30GB free space to 13GB has resulted in frames dropping around 10%. It shows those that think storage doesn't affect gaming performance at all.

I've argued that the 80GB X-25M should be relabeled as a 60GB drive and sold because of this defect. This is an area (as well as seq writes) where Intel seems to be significantly behind (Indilinx-based drives seem to get along fine with much less free space). Don't have an Indilinx so I can't say for sure.

Have you also noticed response times spike dramatically (i.e. JMicron like) when trying to access a drive that is doing a large seq write? This happens sometimes particularly when free space is lower.

 

[Spook]

I was reading the SSD optomizations when I setup my SSD drive, and one of the options was to disable or enable, can't remember which, the Write caching on the properties in the device manager..... this significantly lowered my drives performance, Like you guys are describing....

Sorry, Im not at home to check my machine.

 

[EarthwormJim]

I was reading the SSD optomizations when I setup my SSD drive, and one of the options was to disable or enable, can't remember which, the Write caching on the properties in the device manager..... this significantly lowered my drives performance, Like you guys are describing....

Sorry, Im not at home to check my machine.

What drive do you have? Not all drives actually have a cache.

 

[Spook]

Im using 1x80Gb, and 1x160gb Intel G2 SSD drives.

 

[Beautiful_Life]

I've argued that the 80GB X-25M should be relabeled as a 60GB drive and sold because of this defect. This is an area (as well as seq writes) where Intel seems to be significantly behind (Indilinx-based drives seem to get along fine with much less free space). Don't have an Indilinx so I can't say for sure.

Have you also noticed response times spike dramatically (i.e. JMicron like) when trying to access a drive that is doing a large seq write? This happens sometimes particularly when free space is lower.

I haven't noticed this defect on my G2 drive. And Intel does leave some free space on the drive at all times. The 80 GB drives do have 80 binary GB in flash memory but the OS has only access to 74 binary GB. The remainder is regulated by the drive's internal controller to ensure maximum performance at all times.

Hmmm, could it be that SSD is an overhyprf, overpriced, gee-whiz technology that is really not yet ready for prime time or your average web-surfing mouse clicker? Just askin'.

For the normal housewife or grade school kid who plays yahooligans and facebook, yeah it's definitely overprice, but that obv not the target market either now.

I can see it selling very well to geek who in the past spend countless dollars on overclocking and now will spend more to set up a 4x RAID 0 array of SSDs.

The second target is rich and middle class college students. They're willing to get every single gadget that MAC has to offer so they're willing to pay for a much faster 'computer' to eliminate the annoyances when doing projects and assignments. It sucks to have to wait a minute for every office program you wanna launch. After all they're already paying for 8 GB of memory and the fastest GC which they'll never end up using.

Then comes researchers and businessmen. They have the money and time is money. Fast boot plus less mechanical failure = win.