SSD performance: Motoring Computer Related forum

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Thread Author: smokie	Replies: 12

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Fri 5 Sep 14 17:03

SSD performance - smokie

o I picked up a bargain Samsung 840 Evo PRO SSD, the 512Gb variety, brand new. No idea why really, just seemed rude not to at the price.

It comes with Samsung magician, an SSD management and benchmarking tool.

The PRO is supposed to be really quick, and it is, but it is not quicker than existing SSDs, and sometimes comes out slower (according to both Magician and also how long it takes to copy a 5Gb library).

My mobo has 3Gb SATA. So I thought I'd get a 6Gb PCI-E card which arrived yesterday. All disks perform noticeably slower on that, yet I thought PCI-E would be as quick if not quicker than the mobo SATA. Magician reports correctly that the card is 6Gb and the mobo is 3Gb.

Windows 7, prefetch etc turned off and OS optimised for SSD. 8Gb memory and no paging on C drive. (Paging is actually confined to the E drive which is a 120Gb OCZ Agility 3, and is the one which is nearly as quick as the Samsung PRO. And I know SSDs ought not be used for paging but it's an old one...)

D drive is a Samsung 840, Magician gives some erratic results for that (i.e. multiples of the actual maximum) but that also has shown performance at least as good as the PRO.

Any thoughts?

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Fri 5 Sep 14 22:49

SSD performance - rtj70

What do reviews say about this SSD compared to other drives? What sort of benchmarks have you run? What sort of data transfers you doing? .... not enough info to be honest.

It all depends as they say for performance of an SSD.

I actually thought maybe the 840 Evo PRO SSD was the new 3D V-NAND based TLC device? Is it? I have some 840 SSD's but don't think they are Evo PRO's. I have to boot the PC to check. But isn't the EVO brand the V-NAND based ones?

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Fri 5 Sep 14 22:58

SSD performance - rtj70

And how do you know the bottleneck isn't the PCIe SATA card? Maybe a PCIe SSD would have been quicker in your setup? Latest fast SSD's demand a lot of bandwidth. Hence PCIe SSD's in many laptops.

Last edited by: rtj70 on Fri 5 Sep 14 at 22:58

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Fri 5 Sep 14 23:21

SSD performance - smokie

It is supposed to be one of the fastest consumer drives around, and I don't doubt that from online benchmarks. I only used the Samsung supplied performance test, my rudimentary data copy with stopwatch and Windows performance index (in which the disk performance went from 7.7 when the drive is on my mobo to 7.4 when on the PCI-E card. Nothing especially technical but the PCI-E card is definitely slower despite being 6Gb v. my mobo's 3.

The V-NAND is in the 850 PRO.

I just found a rapid mode to switch on in the Magician tool. Requires a reboot. Apparently uses some memory, so will try that.

I don't particularly expect paging, just didn't want it on the C drive. I had 16mb of memory but half went west a couple of months ago and the computer seems no worse for it so not yet replaced.

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Fri 5 Sep 14 22:58

SSD performance - Fullchat

"Any Thoughts?"

Only one. I haven't a clue what you are talking about. :(

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Fri 5 Sep 14 23:05

SSD performance - rtj70

>> Paging is actually confined to the E drive which is a 120Gb OCZ Agility 3

Why do you expect paging - using more than the RAM you have? 32GB isn't that expensive.

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Fri 5 Sep 14 23:26

SSD performance - Bromptonaut

EDIT

Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 5 Sep 14 at 23:27

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Sat 6 Sep 14 00:46

SSD performance - smokie

RAPID mode seemed to speed it up quite a bit. Somewhere along the way (downloading various for benchmark tools) I picked up a browser hijacker and have spent a few mins getting rid.

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Sat 6 Sep 14 08:11

SSD performance - smokie

btw it is a PRO not and EVO PRO

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Sat 6 Sep 14 11:06

SSD performance - rtj70

Probably not going to see a noticeable difference unless you run some benchmarks. :-)

Last edited by: rtj70 on Sat 6 Sep 14 at 11:07

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Sat 6 Sep 14 12:09

SSD performance - smokie

I think this is terminology, I'm calling them performance testers, tried a few now and they all give similar results to the Samsung one.

Anyway in RAPID mode it is marginally quicker than it was, and quite a bit quicker than the older SSD, but the Â£6 6Gb PCI-E card made little difference except slower boot up time as it had to load the card's BIOS so I've ditched it.

Next lump of spare dosh will go on fast processor and new mobo (probably I5 to keep cost down) - must have a decent number of USB3 ports and 6Gb SATA. . Looks like about Â£200 - Â£220 worth.

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Sat 6 Sep 14 12:23

SSD performance - ....

Can I ask what might seem a really dumb question. What is your C drive ?

You say the 840 drive is the D drive, the old OCZ is your E drive.

Is the 840 D drive different from the Evo PRO or are you running something else for a C drive ?

Have you checked the connectors to the MoBo? I found when I hooked my SSD up to my 3Gb motherboard the performance wasn't that great, I moved the connectors for the drives, CD and BlueRay around making the SSD connector the first to the board Socket 0 I think it is. that made an immediate difference to performance.

Last edited by: gmac on Sat 6 Sep 14 at 12:24

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Sat 6 Sep 14 13:22

SSD performance - smokie

The 512Gb PRO is the C drive. I have another 256Gb Samsung 840 (not PRO) as D drive and the OCZ as E. So the C drive ought to be quicker than D & E Drives, which is what I am now seeing.

Because of the times I've disconnecting the drives to put them on the PCI-E card I suspect it's unlikely they are always going back to the same ports.

I would say - I'm not suggesting the performance is bad at all. Just that the Magician software didn't seem to rate the PRO that much better than even the OCZ - but that has changed now, maybe it was a fluke result but the RAPID setting has speeded it up. It is still nowhere near the "rev limiter" in the software and I thought that would be improved by using it in the 6Gb PCI-E rather than the 3Gb mobo, but there is definitely no significant improvement using the PCI-E card.

As I said, there is no real performance issue as such, just the benchmarking (natch) software wasn't reporting the dramatic differences I expected to see.

Last edited by: smokie on Sat 6 Sep 14 at 13:23

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