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SSD not as fast as I'd hoped

521 views 11 replies 6 participants last post by  PhotonFanatic 
#1 ·
Hi all. I recently upgraded from a Western Digital 640 black, to a Samsung evo 850 500Gb. And I have to say... its not really the night and day difference that everyone seems to rave about. It is faster yes. But the way people talk, I was expecting something like an 80% improvement. Its more like 50% at best. Maybe 30-40% in some cases. It did shave off about 10 seconds of my boot time. And folders do open quicker. But the main reason I bought it, was so that I didn't have to wait so long for loading in modern games. And some of these games can take a good bit to load. So as a test I quickly loaded up Mass Effect Andromeda. And, there isn't a real big improvement there. Its slightly noticeable. Slightly.

But... I'm wondering if this may have something to do with the problem, and maybe someone here can tell me: I imaged my windows 7 drive, off of the WD HDD, onto the Samsung Evo. So its Windows 7, and it was imaged. I did a bit of reading, and most tests seem to show that if anything, Windows 10 is actually a tiny bit slower than Windows 7 when it comes to SSDs. Some other tests show it being the same. And I don't know if imaging the drive, as opposed to doing a brand new install of windows, could have some kind of effect on overall speed. I just don't know. So does anyone know what's up?

Would I be better off with a new install of Windows 10, and not imaging it over from another drive?
 
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#2 ·
Post up a benchmark screenshot of AS SSD testing the SSD?
 
#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhotonFanatic View Post

Hi all. I recently upgraded from a Western Digital 640 black, to a Samsung evo 850 500Gb. And I have to say... its not really the night and day difference that everyone seems to rave about. It is faster yes. But the way people talk, I was expecting something like an 80% improvement. Its more like 50% at best. Maybe 30-40% in some cases. It did shave off about 10 seconds of my boot time. And folders do open quicker. But the main reason I bought it, was so that I didn't have to wait so long for loading in modern games. And some of these games can take a good bit to load. So as a test I quickly loaded up Mass Effect Andromeda. And, there isn't a real big improvement there. Its slightly noticeable. Slightly.

But... I'm wondering if this may have something to do with the problem, and maybe someone here can tell me: I imaged my windows 7 drive, off of the WD HDD, onto the Samsung Evo. So its Windows 7, and it was imaged. I did a bit of reading, and most tests seem to show that if anything, Windows 10 is actually a tiny bit slower than Windows 7 when it comes to SSDs. Some other tests show it being the same. And I don't know if imaging the drive, as opposed to doing a brand new install of windows, could have some kind of effect on overall speed. I just don't know. So does anyone know what's up?

Would I be better off with a new install of Windows 10, and not imaging it over from another drive?
Might be a stupid question but is the SSD plugged into a native Intel 6GB/S SATA port or is it plugged into a Marvel SATA port? Noticed you are running a Gigabyte Z77 board so thought I would ask. Third party SATA ports are much slower than native Intel ones, you wouldn't notice with a HDD but you would with an SSD.
 
#4 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sean Webster View Post

Post up a benchmark screenshot of AS SSD testing the SSD?
Yes thanks for the name of that test. You can see the results below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by scracy View Post

Might be a stupid question but is the SSD plugged into a native Intel 6GB/S SATA port or is it plugged into a Marvel SATA port? Noticed you are running a Gigabyte Z77 board so thought I would ask. Third party SATA ports are much slower than native Intel ones, you wouldn't notice with a HDD but you would with an SSD.
Hmm... I do not have it plugged into port A0. Which is of course, the standard port people use for their C/ drive. Its plugged into a port that is in the same cluster, but I'll go ahead and move it over to A0.

Here's the results of the test:

SSD%20test%20results_zps563czaet.jpg
 
#5 ·
AS SSD result looks fine to me, AS SSD is always a worst case scenario, when Samsung or any other manufacturer quote disk speed it is always best case scenario on an empty drive which will always perform better. Looks to me that you are plugged into a native Intel port so I wouldn't worry about changing it. Using an image instead of a clean install I wouldn't think would effect performance, your results reflect that. Try running Crystal Diskmark that should give you higher reads and writes. Windows 10 will give you faster boot times, personally I like Windows 10 with the exception of forced updates, it has less running processes and is more efficient, if you ever upgrade your gear you more or less are forced onto Windows 10, maybe give it a try it is still free as far as I know Windows 7 key still works with Windows 10.
 
#6 ·
I suspect there are other bottlenecks or artificial ones that prevent games from seeing the vast increase you see in boot time. I'm not technically savvy enough to know why. But it's not night and day in games, and it's very easy to get used to slightly longer loading times as long as you expect them.

Also because you've already got the drive active you've cut a lot of the SSD's advantage down relative to a boot
 
#7 ·
i would do a fresh windows install. back up important files offsite and fresh install + download update version of all the applications you use. Although i understand that is annoying if your are on some sort of limited internet connection. But if you have good internet, there's no reason not to do a fresh install. Although i just noticed you are on windows 7 which is much more annoying. Windows 10 is literally brainless to do fresh installs with.
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by scracy View Post

Looks to me that you are plugged into a native Intel port so I wouldn't worry about changing it. Using an image instead of a clean install I wouldn't think would effect performance, your results reflect that. Try running Crystal Diskmark that should give you higher reads and writes.
Some questions about your reply:

1. Chrystal Diskmark doesn't actually do anything for performance, correct?

2. I always wondered why some of the SATA ports were white lol. Whats up with that? Why are they called "native" intel ports, and why are they faster? Seems you'd want them all to be native intel ports if that is the case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Juicin View Post

Also because you've already got the drive active you've cut a lot of the SSD's advantage down relative to a boot
Could you please elaborate a bit on this? I'm afraid the meaning of this sentence escapes me.

I will do a new windows 10 install on the SSD tomorrow. I bet I'll see some improvement.
 
#9 ·
When you boot the disk isn't spinning, like I said I'm a layman, so I'm not really capable of explaining it

But I can hear it (edit - and see it visually in the gui's delay)

When I click on a shortcut on my desktop* for example, theoretically my drive could have been "sleeping" and it starts spinning when I click on the shortcut to the file on the drive. But most of the time that drive is already active for me and is already spinning. So there is no delay there, and I don't hear the whir of it waking* up. Which delays the files response

On boot the only thing i can hear from my pc is my drives whirring, they take some period of time to be ready
 
#10 ·
Hopefully it'll grow on you. I was one of the folks who said I can wait an extra 5 seconds way back when SSDs were hip and fresh
wink.gif
. When I got my first SSD, I still wasn't amazed. But now after using them for about five years, I kinda twitch whenever I'm on someone's system that uses a mechanical OS drive. For me, it's more like you know what to expect when you own an SSD, and once you get used to the seemingly subtle difference compared to a mechanical drive, it won't seem so subtle when going back. But that's just my experience; ymmv.
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhotonFanatic View Post

Some questions about your reply:

1. Chrystal Diskmark doesn't actually do anything for performance, correct?

2. I always wondered why some of the SATA ports were white lol. Whats up with that? Why are they called "native" intel ports, and why are they faster? Seems you'd want them all to be native intel ports if that is the case.
Could you please elaborate a bit on this? I'm afraid the meaning of this sentence escapes me.

I will do a new windows 10 install on the SSD tomorrow. I bet I'll see some improvement.
Crystal Diskmark is just a benchmark for disk drives similar to AS SSD except it measures disk speed in a different way.
The Z77 chipset controls two 6 GB/S SATA ports hence why they are called native because they are from the Intel chipset, both these ports have in the real world at least about 550 MB/S of bandwidth. Later chipsets such as Z87 and Z97 have 6 of these SATA ports not just 2. Gigabyte have a third party vendor called Marvel that allow them to add more SATA ports than what the chipset has by default, problem with these third party SATA ports is that they don't have the bandwidth that the native Intel SATA ports have which means if you use one of these ports for your relatively fast SSD the SSD wont perform as well as it should in terms of read and write speeds. When using a mechanical drive you wouldn't notice any difference between the native SATA ports and the Marvel ports because mechanical drives don't have the performance to saturate either type of SATA port. You will see an improvement in boot speed with Windows 10 but even more so with a newer board as I don't think Z77 boards have fast boot as an option in their what I believe is still a bios and not UEFI, but I could be wrong about that.
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by airisom2 View Post

...once you get used to the seemingly subtle difference compared to a mechanical drive, it won't seem so subtle when going back.
Same thing with taking vitamin B-100 lol. You start to think "Hey, where's all the energy this stuff is supposed to give you?" And then you stop taking it, and now you want naps during the day again sometimes, and now its hard to get out of bed again.

Well thanks for all the help everyone. I've really learned a lot here. If I come up with a couple more questions I'll post them up.
 
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