Are my SSD benchmarks up to par?

[PP Mguire]

PJ, thanks for the input. Well, is there anything I can do to make this SSD go faster?



PP Mguire, now my SSD appears to be faster than your SSD. Neener, neener!

Slaymate, my system would not install ATTO after downloading it and trying to install it. Not sure why.

EDIT: Whoops, my bad...I was trying to extract ATTO file when all that was required was to click "run." Ok here are my ATTO benchmarks. Are they ok?

I would hope your SSD is faster than mine considering mine was part of the first generation to come out. Those speeds look alot better.

 

[soarwitheagles]

Your scores are just slightly below mine. And that could be attributed to to all the benching you've done because it's new.

As for making it run faster, have you went through the SSD Tweak Guide

That may be true, to an extent, but because of the way the SandForce controller operates running benchmarks like AS-SSD more than "on a rare occasion", will degrade your system performance and running them frequently can cause premature drive failure.

And like it or not the SandForce controller does give better overall drive performance than the Indilinx controller. And by more or less controlling the TRIM function, the SandForce controller is enabling the same level of drive performance across every operating system platform. This is really just what the market needs at this period in development. A lot of people are still running Windows XP and Vista which benefit a lot from the SandForce controller. It won't be to long before XP and Vista will be treated like Windows 98 because of basic hardware support. Once the LGA775 skt finally dies there will be a major swing away from XP & Vista and SATA 6GB will be common place. And that's when we should really start seeing some speed.

Slaymate, thanks again for helping me understand that my SSD is working ok. Yes, I did read the Tweak Guide several times. But there was so much involved that I felt a little overwhelmed. For now, the only changes I made were to turn off Defrag and change the Indexing. I know I will need to move Page file too in the near future.

I just burned most of my 9 day Thanksgiving holiday putting this build together.

Now I need some rest. I hope to further tweak the SSD and other parts of the system during the Christmas break. It is back to school for me tomorrow, which means back to work, and limited time for working on my two systems.

On an even brighter side of things, I am jazzed because I just returned from Fry's with a brand new EVGA GTS 450 Super Clocked GPU for under $60 and a Creative PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series Sound Card for $70 [normally $200]. I know the GTS 450 is nothing compared to the GTX 470, 480, or the Radeon 58xx, 59xx, but considering I am on a tight budget, I am happy to soon have the Direct X 11 for under $60.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

Soar

 

[Puddle Jumper]

That may be true, to an extent, but because of the way the SandForce controller operates running benchmarks like AS-SSD more than "on a rare occasion", will degrade your system performance and running them frequently can cause premature drive failure.

And like it or not the SandForce controller does give better overall drive performance than the Indilinx controller. And by more or less controlling the TRIM function, the SandForce controller is enabling the same level of drive performance across every operating system platform. This is really just what the market needs at this period in development. A lot of people are still running Windows XP and Vista which benefit a lot from the SandForce controller. It won't be to long before XP and Vista will be treated like Windows 98 because of basic hardware support. Once the LGA775 skt finally dies there will be a major swing away from XP & Vista and SATA 6GB will be common place. And that's when we should really start seeing some speed.

Non compressible data will certainly cause more wear on the drive since more data is actually being written to it however AFAIK most sandforce OEM's are still using the same flash that you would find in Indilinx or Intel drives , neither of which use data compression, so the sandforce drives should last as long as those drives would with non compressible data.

I have read statements saying that the Sandforce controller could potentially allow OEM's to use lower quality flash than other SSD's while still delivering acceptable reliability thanks to the controllers extensive use of compression, which would support your statement regarding drive failure, however I wasn't aware of anyone that was actually doing that.

I'm not saying Sandforce drivers aren't the best option available now, after all I did buy one for my system and have frequently recommended them. I'm also not pushing Indlinx as a suitable alternative, their drives were great values back when Intel was the only other choice and even now they can be a good deal if the price is right but they hardly offer top of the line performance. You could on the other hand make a case for buying a Intel or Crucial drive over a sandforce one if your usage consists of a lot of data that doesn't lend itself well to compression.

The bottom line is I'd still rather see benchmarks that show a more average case or even worst case scenario then a best case one.

 

[Slaymate]

When I review a drive I'll always run all the benchies

But I'm going to continue to advise everyone else not to, ATTO is good enough for the average user to verify their speeds with.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

When I review a drive I'll always run all the benchies

But I'm going to continue to advise everyone else not to, ATTO is good enough for the average user to verify their speeds with.

That's good. I've always appreciated the good selection of tests you use on SSD reviews.

ATTO is probably adequate for comparing similar drives like that, I'm just not comfortable using it to compare drives with different controllers.