Help with OCZ Vertex 2 performance

[echo]

Hello again guys,

I just recently upgraded to a OCZ Vertex 2 60gb SSD based on all the good reviews I heard about it. Once I got it, I did a clean install of Windows 7 x64 bit on it with my existing SATA hard drives disconnected, then plugged the 2 SATA drives back in after windows 7 was installed.

Although everything works, the speed I'm getting with the vertex 2 (which is my OS and apps drive. my C:\ drive) seems remarkably similar to my old SATA 7200RPM drives. Bootup time, app load time, file copy time, wow zone in time. Everything seems in some spot faster, but not tremendously. Definitely not the "if I blink I can miss the zone in time sometimes" reviews that I've read about. From character login screen to being ready to play in hellfire peninsula for example, took me around 4-5 seconds. Porting with mage portals and hearthing yields similar results. about 3-6 seconds. (by the way, this is tested with solo boxing to try to get optimum results)

I've followed all the tweaks listed at this guide. (SSD section)

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?63273-*-Windows-7-Ultimate-Tweaks-Utilities-*&p=442158&viewfull=1#post442158

(turned off hibernation, checked that TRIM is enabled, disabled disk defrag, disabled indexing, prefetch/superfetch, disabled system restore, set page file to one size as 512mb minimum/maximum, etc.)

Given the headaches I have with migrating all my user settings and OS installations/customization/tweaking I was really expecting more. Especially after reading the glowing praises everyone else was heaping on these things. So my question is, what am I doing wrong? Does SATA cable placement matter? On my BIOS the vertex shows up as the 3rd drive after my 2 regular 7200 RPM SATA drives. does that make a difference?

Hoping someone can help. Thanks in advance and have a good day. :)

[Ualaa]

Are you in AHCI mode?
That made a fairly substantial difference for me.

Not sure beyond that, maybe one of the more tech savvy people might have a better idea.

[echo]

Hi Ualaa, thank you for the quick response.

Yes, I followed this guide

http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/

and made the registry changes and then changed my BIOS to enable ahci mode. windows booted up fine, installed the drivers, and I rebooted windows one more time and everything works fine.

Far as I know, I am now in AHCI mode, and I just tested wow again with similar results.

To be fair, the zoning time IS faster than what I was getting before with the mechanical SATA drives; it just doesnt seem close to what everyone else is describing as their personal experience though. (I ported like mad between ironforge/stormwind/darnassus/exodar/hellfire peninsula and got anywhere from 2 to 7 seconds zone time. nothing dramatically better than what I had before with my old drives. this is again with only one instance of wow)

I just tried to test copy a 5 gig folder from the SSD drive to the SSD drive. Initially I got over 250 mb/s according to windows but the speed almost immediately dropped off and after 5-6 seconds or so I was only copying the folder at about 79-81 mb/s.

Is this normal? Or do I just have inaccurate expectations?

[Ualaa]

You could download the ATTO disk benchmark tool.

For most SSD drives, the big thing is the read speed.
The write speed might not be anything spectacular; at the time I bought my SSD, the top SSD's were the Intel X25-M's, which actually performed worse than many platter drives at write speeds, but blew everything away with their read speed.

Also not sure the size of the average warcraft file; you will get faster or slower results with larger or smaller files.

[daanji]

I have a OCZ Vertex II 120 GB SSD. I get about 220 MB reads with 180 MB writes.


I also have a pair of Kingston 64 GB drives in RAID 0. In that setup, I get 435 MB reads with 320 MB writes.

I recommend downloading AS SSD Benchmark, which is tailored specifically to testing SSD drives.

Most of the current testing have physical platters in mine, so the tests are not very accurate.

[Noids]

How full is the disk?

Current WoW for me is pushing 30GB, not sure how much Win 7 takes up, but you might be getting close to filling up the disk. I know the vertexes (vertices? :P) have a certain amount reserved for disk management which is outside of the 60GB capcity (4GB maybe?) but there can definitely be an issue with degraded performance on fuller SSDs.

If this is the case, two options I can think of. Get another ssd and raid them. Put your OS back on your platter drive and WoW only on the SSD and see if there is a difference.

[ILikeTwins]

Noids brings up a good question. I remember reading somewhere that you need like 20% of the disk free so the drivers can move things around properly to maintain their speed. For your disk that would means something like 10-15GB should be free. I have one of the 80GB Intel SSDs and one of the other things I noticed was that it has gotten slower over time (couple months). I think I read that they do that the more you read and write to it but you shouldn't be seeing that yet with a new drive.

[Ualaa]

I've read platter drives slow down, at 50% of capacity used. SSD's aren't supposed to slow down until 90% capacity.

If you have Windows 7, and the TRIM command that should keep the drive running quick. If you don't, I've read it's a good idea to partition the drive so you have an unused section which the memory controller can use to keep the drive running smoothly.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I get 488 MBs read on my 50G revo under sandra test.

It dosnt have trim it has some other thing.

Test with sandra (its free) and you can get lots of infos as to what is going on with your system, do the benchmarks and you should have a good idea where the bottleneck is.

http://www.sisoftware.net/

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/ocz_revodrive_50gb/7.htm (yur drive is in yellow).


I would not put my OS on these as I think, if its like mine, it is a raid zero set up. Just almost one failure and you are down.

WoW fit into 50G so I save some bucks over the higher capacity drives.

[echo]

Thanks to everyone for the valuable and informative feedback. I had temporarily taken the SSD out of my current system to test some stuff. I will check out the links and tools you all suggested and see if maybe I can't figure out what's going on. Thanks again everyone for your time!