Problems with force gt 180gb

Hello Corsair forum

 

I recently got a Corsair force GT 180gb http://www.corsair.com/force-series-gt-180gb-sata-3-6gbps-solid-state-hard-drive.html and I have been having some... unusual problems with it. The main two being that the performance is a considerably less then advertised or even what other users with similar specs are posting and that the results I am getting from ATTO are literally impossible! I have attached my bench results to this post for reference and my specs are up on the site.

 

Also, Before anyone asks here is a checklist of things I have already confirmed:

 

1. The SSD is plugged in to the INTEL SATA 3 port on my motherboard

2. The motherboard is in AHCI mode

3. ATTO is not malfunctioning as I have tested it with another SSD and have gotten normal results (can't say which as it is against forum rules to talk about corsairs competitors)

4. SATA cable is SATA 3 certified (though all SATA cables should work)

5. Drive health is at 100%

6. Running latest firmware

 

I am at loss as to whats going on and why the drive is so slow, so if anyone can help it would be appreciated.

I remember seeing those kinds of results before a while back. I'm not quite sure if there was a solution to that one.

 

Have you tried a different SATA port?

Latest chipset drivers?

While CDI speeds would be acceptable I guess, the ATTO resuts makes no major sense...

4 206 824 (4GB/s) read speed? That speed affects the scaling of the graph and the length of speed bars.

Are you using any uncommon storage driver or drive accelerating solution?

Why is that B: letter is assigned to this drive?

Or maybe there is a compression enabled on this drive?

Toasted- there are only two SATA 3 ports on Z68 motherboards that are Intel the other two SATA 3 ports are Marvel and those aren't capable of fully utilizing the the drive, I have tried changing it out with my other SSD and got the same results but I can try the Marvel controller too. The chip set drivers are also up to date and I know for a fact that it's not my mobo since the other SSD I use is is getting it's advertised speeds. Anyway, the results speak for themselves as I have seen multiple people in forums and reviewers get at least the advertised read speeds with specs almost identical or worse then mine so I don't understand why it is so much slower. As a matter of fact most reviewers have my other SSD rated as slower than the force gt.

 

bogdan_kr- I am just using the standard intel drivers. The reason the drive is labeled B is just personal preference, Windows likes to assign drive designations that are above C (D,E,F and so on) but I just renamed it when I formatted the the drive for use. I disabled compression and the ATTO results now look more in line with advertised spec but all the other bench tests I have run seem to show the CDM speeds rather than the results ATTO is showing while my other drives various bench scores all line up, I would post the scores from the other drives but Corsair doesn't allow that.

As far as I can remember by default ATTO uses compressible data while CDM and AS SSD use random data that is mostly incompressible. Since SandForce controller compress/decompress the data being sent to/from drive it can give higher results for compressible data.

I think that is why your other drive that is Marvell driven shows the scores that are all line up - Marvell achieves similar performance with both compressible and incompressible data.

So which is faster in actual common use, like gaming of program startup?

If I would have both of them I would compare them on my own :winking:

I think it is worth to note that after some use SandForce will have to operate on more or less complicated structure of compressed data (stored on the drive) while Marvell will operate without compression all the time. But that's probably not so important - the user (your) experience is important.

Most probably they would be comparable I guess.

Now I am just plain lost. Why would the SandForce drive operate on a complicated structure of compressed data while the Marvel drive not use compressed data, especially since the the SandForce drives seem to excel at non compressed data and the Marvel drive seems to work well with compressed data? If both are housing the same data why would there be a disparity? My main reason for trying to figure this out is so I can buy a second of whatever drive is faster for regular use to set up a raid 0 array. My only goal is consistent performance but the bench results just keep confusing me, I keep checking the results from others and it feels like like something has gone wrong.

I am sorry but I do not have experience with RAID arrays but I guess you would get nice results with two GTs.