Corsair P64 SSD - Slow??

[NickCPC]

Hi guys,

 

I was lucky enough to get a P64 for my birthday a couple of days back. I installed Win7 x64 on it but something felt a little slow about it - boot times were still ridiculously quick but loading an application was sometimes slow.

 

I verified this with a couple of benchmark tests (HDTach and another one I saw on here somewhere, can't remember the name but it gives speed values in greeny/blue boxes iirc). Although my average read speed was ~110MB/s, write speeds were ~40MB/s, much lower than I was expecting.

 

I followed the guide given here (after reading this) to the letter (only difference being I used Ubuntu 9.10), so managed to completely wipe the drive.

 

I then reinstalled 7 on it and am now running it as my main drive, and the slowness seems to have stopped (I can boot in ~14 seconds from end of BIOS to being able to launch a program which is excellent!) and program launches are much faster.

 

However, I was reading a variety of reviews of the other drives in the P-series and most seem to have average read speeds of <160MB/s and write speeds of <140MB/s. I've just run HDTach again with the following results;

 

- Burst Speed = 128.6MB/s

- Random Access = 0.2ms

- Average Read = 111.3MB/s

Not sure it tells me the average write on HDTach (you can see my screenshot if you know where it should be).

 

http://i47.tinypic.com/3586k4m.jpg

 

Basically I'm a little worried that I'm not getting speeds on par with the P128/P256 even after issuing the "secure erase" command from HDParm. The drive's firmware is the latest one from Samsung/you guys at Corsair according to the label (I don't think an updater has been released yet anyway/no TRIM support?) Should I be worrying? Also, are there any reliable tests which show write speeds too? Just want to hear what people think before I get worried.

 

Cheers,

Nick

 

PS Mods - sorry for the size of the image, if you want to make it a clickable text link please feel free to edit.

[Wired]

What's with the happy / sad faces in the system tray?

 

Aside from that, I think I may start a Corsair group on Steam :)

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/CorsairMemory/

[Davyc]

@ Wired

 

The smilies in the system tray come with the Beta version of Office 2010 - the idea is to send M/S a smile or a frown depending on how you feel about how any part of office is functioning. I've sent more frowns than smiles - but then it is a beta lol

 

@ Nick

 

Don't be too concerned about published speeds - these are generally quoted as the *maxed out* speeds (all m/f's do this, even on printers). The speeds you achieve will depend on some of the other components in your system and how they cooperate with each other (or not as some do). The thing to remember is those two little words that preceed speed figures "up to" .... stop worrying about speeds unless your system starts to grind lol

 

As for app's to check your SSD - forget it, none of them are reliable as they're all built for spinning platters - even if they say they're compatible with SSDs; and remember, the results they return are variable and only act as a guide. Once we see apps that are designed from the ground up for SSDs then we can begin to formulate figures that mean something.

[Wired]

You're ****ting me - MS has simplified Beta testing to THAT? Oh brother...

[Davyc]

@ Wired - lol ..... yeah it threw me when I saw them appear and then found out what they were for; MS were graceful enough to allow them to be uninstalled via the CP without affecting the other Office programs.

[NickCPC]

The "Office Send-a-smile" program has been used iirc since Office 2007 Technical Preview - although I don't think it was used in the 2007 Beta. It was definitely used in the 2010 TechPrev, and has stuck with the Beta. I find it very useful for submitting feedback near instantly. Newsgroups were good in the TP as you got a direct reply from the devs, but the new ones on TechNet aren't as good as the Connect ones.

 

Back on topic... thanks Davyc for your reply. However, if all the reviews I am reading about the P128/256 are using HDTach and getting >~160MB/s average read and write, and I'm languishing at 110MB/s max, hopefully you'll agree it's natural to be a bit worried. Ideally I'd like to hear from fellow P64 owners and see how they're getting on.

 

I'll have a go at transferring via FTP a couple of large (>4GB) .mkv and .iso transfers tomorrow. I really don't want to have to return the drive but if it's not performing at the level it should be, it's not doing its job right imo :( But thanks anyway for your reply!

[Davyc]

@ Nick

 

Hey buddy, I understand your concerns about write speeds and how looking at review figures can give rise to concern. Remember this though, when these people do the reviews they're using a fresh drive that most likely has only had the OS installed on it and a number of benchmark apps; they've probably never seen real world use where apps are installed and uninstalled and temp files have been written all over the place day-after-day and your own data files saved, opened, resaved etc. Their figures are demonstrative of a fresh drive and are, at best, synthetic.

 

It has to be remembered too that other hardware in your system can have an affect on performance; i.e. running SATA1 as opposed to SATA2, the speed of your bus, the speed of your processor, memory, etc ..... all of these different things come to bear at some point and can make the figures look disappointing.

 

I used to own a Samsung controller based SSD, not Corsair's, and I had the same worries that you had and being impetuous I sent it back and got the Indilinx controller Corsair X-64 .... now I am considering going back to the Samsung based drives and am looking at the P-64 as my first option - just waiting for some good bargains to hit the retailers lol.

 

Quick question - does your P-64 have the latest Samsung firmware 18C1? If it has try leaving your computer at the logged off screen over night and see what happens; hopefully the performance recovery feature will do its work and restore some performance.