Why did my 4k write score drop?

death_samurai

I ran crystal disk mark and AS SSD benchmark and this was after i had internally erased my ssd and restored it again and updated the firmware to 4.2

Previously i used to score around 70ish in my 4k write score but i now only score around 50ish.

Does anyone know why?

I'm using the gskill phoenix pro 120GB ssd.

Darren Hodgson · 04-16-2012, 13:54 | posts: 9,661 | Location: England

Is TRIM working correctly? There's an easy way to check it from the command prompt (just Google it).

More importantly, does SSD seem noticeably slower in general use? If not then I really wouldn't worry about the results from artificial benchmarks.

IcE · 04-17-2012, 03:26 | posts: 6,988 | Location: Toledo, Ohio

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darren Hodgson

Is TRIM working correctly? There's an easy way to check it from the command prompt (just Google it).

More importantly, does SSD seem noticeably slower in general use? If not then I really wouldn't worry about the results from artificial benchmarks.

TRIM isn't used on Sandforce, just garbage collection. So whether it's enabled or not is irrelevant.

As for the reason behind the drop, could be a ton of things. 4K performance IIRC goes down when there's less free space/freespace fragmentation.

Agent-A01 · 04-17-2012, 03:50 | posts: 5,621 | Location: USA

Quote:

Originally Posted by ice445

TRIM isn't used on Sandforce, just garbage collection. So whether it's enabled or not is irrelevant.

As for the reason behind the drop, could be a ton of things. 4K performance IIRC goes down when there's less free space/freespace fragmentation.

Trim is used when all the drive's nand is not fresh.

OP let your pc sit in the bios after you do a clean. ie ccleaner/disk cleanup for an hour or two. my gskill needed it after a while. speed it up nicely because GC never does work for me while im in the OS. i only notice a difference if i let it do it in bios.

death_samurai · 04-17-2012, 15:24 | posts: 3,430 | Location: SG

to agent how do u let ccleaner do it in the bios? I only know how to operate it on windows.

death_samurai · 04-16-2012, 16:16 | posts: 3,430 | Location: SG

yes trim is enabled.

Virtue · 04-16-2012, 23:50 | posts: 827 | Location: Montreal

Make sure your drive is also properly aligned. Follow this to be sure about everything http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/s...-for-ssds-hdds

but other than that you should probably ask this on the gskill forum

Agent-A01 · 04-17-2012, 16:56 | posts: 5,621 | Location: USA

lol no i didnt mean do it in bios. i meant let it clean up some space in windows, delete your old restore points, and empty out the windows/softwaredistribution/downloads folder. i also would do this batch file that clears out all logs in event viewer(in a old os ive seen it stack up to hundreds of MB, they are useless logs). http://forums.windowsforum.org/index...howtopic=46107

after all that, let your system idle in the bios for an hour or two and let garbage collection do its work.

death_samurai · 04-17-2012, 19:13 | posts: 3,430 | Location: SG

my installation is kind of new i suppose. I don't have restore pts. I use 3rd party ghost software to backup and then restore.

scheherazade · 04-17-2012, 20:41 | posts: 1,908 | Location: NOVA

4K @ what queue depth?

qd0 shouldn't be affected by anything... as IIRC it generally only writes to one chip at a time - so load-balancing is a non-issue.

-scheherazade

Agent-A01 · 04-17-2012, 22:12 | posts: 5,621 | Location: USA

Quote:

Originally Posted by death_samurai

my installation is kind of new i suppose. I don't have restore pts. I use 3rd party ghost software to backup and then restore.

doing ghost is bad.. causes mis alignment of the os on the drive causing reduced performance..

IcE · 04-18-2012, 00:54 | posts: 6,988 | Location: Toledo, Ohio

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

doing ghost is bad.. causes mis alignment of the os on the drive causing reduced performance..

Not if it's aligned when you ghost it. Source for this?

Agent-A01 · 04-18-2012, 03:04 | posts: 5,621 | Location: USA

Quote:

Originally Posted by ice445

Not if it's aligned when you ghost it. Source for this?

First hand Experience. had a bunch of dell 760s at a place i did some work, so i decided to do one OS and copy all the drives. one publisher wanted it as fast as it could so i put in an agility 3 from ghost copy and it was acting kinda slow. so i checked the alignment of the drive, and it wasnt aligned. reinstalled and it fixed the speed. If you need hard evidence, use google.

Also, SSD nand have 512kb block sizes and by defualt windows 7 uses 4096kb cluster sizes(which is fine for regular drives) if its set higher than 512kb the SSDs have to atleast double their writes which reduces lifespan overtime and loses write performance.

IcE · 04-19-2012, 08:38 | posts: 6,988 | Location: Toledo, Ohio

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

First hand Experience. had a bunch of dell 760s at a place i did some work, so i decided to do one OS and copy all the drives. one publisher wanted it as fast as it could so i put in an agility 3 from ghost copy and it was acting kinda slow. so i checked the alignment of the drive, and it wasnt aligned. reinstalled and it fixed the speed. If you need hard evidence, use google.

Also, SSD nand have 512kb block sizes and by defualt windows 7 uses 4096kb cluster sizes(which is fine for regular drives) if its set higher than 512kb the SSDs have to atleast double their writes which reduces lifespan overtime and loses write performance.

I'm going to test this myself with Windows Backup and see what I find. As for your second point, there's no need whatsoever to change the cluster size from the default 4096 BYTES (Not Kilobytes). 4KB is the optimal balance between available space and file system performance with ANY modern drive.
Check them units dawg, they matter.

PhazeDelta1 · 04-18-2012, 01:09 | posts: 9,314 | Location: 90° N

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

doing ghost is bad.. causes mis alignment of the os on the drive causing reduced performance..

If you align it before hand, your fine. If you use Clonezilla or Windows Image, those 2 programs will copy the alignment to the new drive automatically.

death_samurai · 04-19-2012, 02:08 | posts: 3,430 | Location: SG

Guys i'm using acronis which i read is one of the best to create image of your HDD. My HDD is partitioned into 2 drives. How do i check if it's misaligned?

Darren Hodgson · 04-20-2012, 15:33 | posts: 9,661 | Location: England

Quote:

Originally Posted by death_samurai

Guys i'm using acronis which i read is one of the best to create image of your HDD. My HDD is partitioned into 2 drives. How do i check if it's misaligned?

AS SSD Benchmark will show the offset in green with a polite 'OK' if the alignment is correct so try that.

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

death_samurai · 04-19-2012, 02:12 | posts: 3,430 | Location: SG

Guys i have paragon alignment partion tool cos once i had to change the size of one my drives and i used it to correctly align the drive. That was done months ago. I ran it today again and it says my SSD drives are perfectly ok so i suppose it's not the alignment that's causing the drop in 4k.

---TK--- · 04-19-2012, 22:41 | posts: 14,695 | Location: New Jersey, USA

did you just quote yourself? lol edit fixed

IcE · 04-20-2012, 06:46 | posts: 6,988 | Location: Toledo, Ohio

I was under the impression that block sizes were 512KB and not 512 bytes from the casual googling I did.

scheherazade · 04-21-2012, 00:21 | posts: 1,908 | Location: NOVA

Quote:

Originally Posted by ice445

I was under the impression that block sizes were 512KB and not 512 bytes from the casual googling I did.

Yes. recent SSDs are 4096 bytes (4k) (and some are 8192 (8k)).

-scheherazade

Agent-A01 · 04-21-2012, 02:15 | posts: 5,621 | Location: USA

Quote:

Originally Posted by scheherazade

Yes. recent SSDs are 4096 bytes (4k) (and some are 8192 (8k)).

-scheherazade

like what? all sandforce drives use 512bytes, the new indilix based drive from ocz uses 512bytes, the samsung 830s use 512bytes.. those are the only recent ones i can think of.

scheherazade · 04-23-2012, 18:53 | posts: 1,908 | Location: NOVA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

like what? all sandforce drives use 512bytes, the new indilix based drive from ocz uses 512bytes, the samsung 830s use 512bytes.. those are the only recent ones i can think of.

You're thinking of the block size as exposed by the API (Which AFAIK all SSDs use 512).

The internal block size is 4k/8k.

Quick google :

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage...Force-Steroids

"I should note that as with other 480GB SandForce-driven SSD's, *any* SandForce 2281 SSD with a capacity greater than 256GB will see a dip in 4K IOPS performance. This is due to the way the SF controller handles the mapping of LBA's. To double capacity from 240GB to 480GB, the SandForce controller's finite number of allocations must be reconfigured to utilize 8KB blocks (up from the standard 4KB - intentionally matched to the NTFS 4KB cluster size). This negatively impacts IOPS performance as a 4KB random write translates to the equivalent of an 8KB random write once the added overhead is taken into account.

This is also clear in the Intel specs, as incompressible 4KB writes see a near 50% cut when comparing the 480GB to the 240GB capacity points."

Maybe you're thinking of erase blocks?
IIRC those are typically 512K (not 512).

-scheherazade