G.Skill Phoenix Pro 120GB Slow Speeds?

[Mamapajama]

Can anyone offer any explanations as to why my speeds for this SSD is SO MUCH slower than the typical benchmarks online?

Here's a typical ATTO result from reviews online:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1453/4/

In my own ATTO bench, all five of my test runs cap out at a max of ~135MB/s Write and ~142MB/s Read, using identical transfer sizes as in the link above.

I'm running this on an older T61 w/ C2D 2.0Ghz (T7250) w/ 2GB DDR2 667, w/ AHCI enabled, and power savings features turned OFF to ensure CPU is running at max. Now, I suspect that the dated CPU/Memory might be the limiting factors here, not to mention the fact that this is on a laptop, but would that really account for HALF the performance of other reviews online? I am willing and already have come to grips w/ how dated my beloved Thinkpad is =D, but I'd like to know if it really is the machine showing its age or if I am missing something. Thanks!

 

[schenley101]

In the bios is it set to use sata300? I noticed that most of the review units came with sata150 drives. Just a thought

 

[Mamapajama]

schenley, thanks for your reply. That was one of those obvious things I didn't check, so I went back to check on it and sure enough, SATA II is "enabled" in my system settings. HOWEVER! It turns out that since the T61 debuted, Lenovo had always advertised "SATA 3.0 Gb/s support" for the T61/R61/X61 models, but they never revealed that THEY actually capped the throughput at 1.5 Gb/s! And that would explain why all the benchmarks capped out where they did... I just read through multiple forums full of very frustrated users who, like I just did, found out the hard way. Oh well--I won't complain since I'm near the end of the life of this machine, and this just gives me one more excuse to buy a new toy =D. I hope this was useful info for any other older Thinkpad owner.

 

[Juddog]

For what it's worth, the newer line of Lenovo's removed that cap - I have a T400 here with an Intel SSD and I hit the 267 MB/s limit of SATAII towards the bottom of the ATTO benchmark.

Time to upgrade your laptop!

 

[sMiLeYz]

i got the phoenix too, installed it in a new laptop hitting 209 read and 132 write respectively.
ACHI n trim enabled, i had to quick reformat the drive using my desktop (i know I know)

the read speed still the same, but the write speed drop to 77... anyway I can boost it?

 

[jacc1234]

What controller does your laptop use? If its the Intel ICH8M its basically capped at SATAI on my laptops.

 

[Juddog]

What controller does your laptop use? If its the Intel ICH8M its basically capped at SATAI on my laptops.

The T61's use the ICH8M chipset.

 

[flamenko]

Can u tell the difference physically? My bet is no because most of your visible diff comes from the seek times. I wouldnt be too disappointed if there is a hardware cap as long as there is no visible diff. 99% of people could not tell the diff between the best and worst in typical use.