Intel 320 Feels Slow

[MoInSTL]

Well, first of all, does it actually feel any faster? or no?
If you're feeling no performance difference, then i would have to say something is wrong.

Can you be more specific where you're not "feeling" the speed?
Boot times? (can you give us a boot time, from the end of your POST sequence to the login screen/desktop)
Programs not starting fast enough (if so, which programs, and how long to start them?)
Windows OS not as snappy as you though? (does the start menu populate instantly? does control panel populate instantly? does Add/Remove programs populate instantly?)

edit: did you test your "fresh" system before you started tweaking and optimizing it?

#1. Yes it feels faster but I went from 4GB to the max for this Dell Studio 1558 laptop to 8GB the week before. I did notice that difference opening Chrome, Outlook 2010, etc. I am thinking two things. First, doubling the RAM helped a bunch and having done that the week before, the addition of the SSD was not as discernible. Yes, Start Menu & Control Panel opens instantly.

I don't think there is anything is wrong. The physical install was straightforward and the Intel Toolbox detected no issues and everything looks great. I loaded the newest chipset drivers first, then the Intel Management Engine, video, sound, touchpad, an app that controls the back lit keyboard and function keys, upgraded the DVD firmware, etc.

#2 I did do a test before the tweaks for this POS chipset It's the HM55. But I had done the normal optimization like turning off hibernation, indexing, superfetch, lowering my page file to 1024, and disabling services I don't use like tablet, bluetooth. After I dd the chipest tweak, I did see some improvement. It's the 4K reads I am not thrilled about at 17.45. I just feel like something is holding it back and it's probably the chipset.

serpretetsky: I have to get ready for work so I will time the boot tonight.

upsdriver: I was not being "unrealistic" as I mentioned in my first post I had a Dell Mini 9 with an SSD and it booted almost immediately. I upped the RAM to the max of 2GB and that little 16GB drive flew with stripped down Windows 7 RCs. In fact, I also used vlite and stripped down Windows Ultimate x32.
I am not a him btw. I know there are very few women that build their own desktops, OC and in general tweak to the degree that I do. I was one of very few women at the Windows Launch here. But I have taught my 3 sisters how to build their own rigs and they tinker too. They learned by me shipping back my old mobos and CPUs.

zCypher: Yep, AHCI is enabled in the BIOS. I also verified Trim using the command line and with the Toolbox.

VirtualLarry: I did not "fall for the forum hype, and went out and purchased an SSD". There are only two easy upgrades on a laptop. Install more RAM and a faster drive. That's basic Larry. And you can start your own thread. ^_^

Sunburn74: I ordered it from Dell so I could use my Dell card. They screwed up several things and I ended up getting an additional $50 off the original discount. The $138 includes taxes. It's not all in my head either.

groberts101: I agree with what you said, "Some just don't mind waiting as much as others do". Which, btw is why I am running two WD Raptors in RAID 0 on my desktop.

peonyu: I think you are on the right track. I think it's my POS chipset that for lack of a better word, seems throttled. That would explain why I feel like something is holding back.

How many posts before I can post my scores?

Thanks everyone. I'll time my boot tonight.

FWIW, below are my specs:
Studio 15 1558| Black Chainlink| i5-520M, |8GB DDR3 RAM |120 GB Intel 320 SSD|ATI HD 4570, 512K|Backlit|9 Cell|Web Cam|Windows 7 Professional x64

 

[groberts101]

couple of more idea's for you to try as well here, Mo. Don't need to live with them.. just test them out.

disable speedstep and c-states in the bios(c-states is the biggie for some systems as it is known to throttle the small randoms).

be sure the power options in Wondows is set to high-performance mode.

boot into safe mode and retest from there.

obviously want to do them one step at a time to quantify gains from each. Good luck with it

 

[Subyman]

I disagree with the statement about notebooks. My wife's dv7t with a 160 gb intel 320 series feels extraordinarily snappy to me, bested only by my 2500k rig. And I regularly use a 1055t, i7 920 @ 3.9, and 3 other laptops as well.

I said netbook, not notebook.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Installed an Intel 320, 120GB last week. I am running a SATA II laptop with an i5-520M, 8GB RAM, ATI HD 4570, 512K, Win 7 Pro x64. I have done several tweaks like turning off Superfetch, etc. along with one for my chipset here.

My Crystal Mark scores are reasonable and similar to my AS SSD scores. I can't post an image yet, but the Seq reads are 247, Seq Writes 136, 512 Read 173, Write 134, 4K Read 17.5, Write 37, 4K QD32 Read 144, Write 83.5.

So given my chipset and SATA II the scores are alright. However, it doesn't feel fast. I had a 500GB spinner at 7,200 RPM and honestly this doesn't feel as snappy as I was expecting. I had a Mini 9 with a tiny 16GB SSD and Atom processor netbook and ran stripped down versions of the various Win 7 Release Candidates. It booted fast and I could feel the difference. Maybe the 4K reads were better?

Did a clean install, ran latest Intel chipset drivers first, disabled unnecessary services, running at tweaked high performance power plan, removed Windows stuff I don't use, have first box checked in Write Cache. FWIW, I did most of the SSD Optimizations here Except, I elected for a small 1024 page file. I have 95GB free of 111. Verified TRIM and running in ACPI.

I realize feeling fast is subjective but am I missing something? I know the 320 isn't the fastest but I was able to get it for $138 with overnight shipping. That was too cheap to pass up.

Edit: Long time Anand reader, first time poster. Ex old school OC'er.

Did you verify if the partition is aligned correctly? One easy way to check it is download the AS SSD benchmark and it will tell you in the top left corner.

I also have a Intek 320 Series in my laptop although it is a i5 2410m with the newer QM67 chipset and it is incredibly fast.

That said I even saw a performance improvement in a a single core atom netbook that only supported SATA 1 when I installed a Vertex 2.

 

[MoInSTL]

groberts101, great idea regarding disabling speedstep. I'll try your other suggestions as well. Benching from Safe Mode will automatically make it score higher, but will do. The C-states aren't available in this dumbed down Dell BIOS IIRC. Will check to make sure. EDIT: Yes, it's a tweaked regedit version of High Performance. If you get a chance, could you read this?

Puddle Jumper: Yes, it's aligned correctly. I also used AS SSD to test my pitiful 4K reads (along with everything else). How many posts before I can post images?

 

[groberts101]

yep.. those'll work and was going to be my next rec if you didn't have enough options available to get there. Good job.

I always use imageshack to post images after printscreen/paint edits. Any other preferred upload site will do as well.

PS.. the point about safe-mode testing was that if you see substantial gains?.. you have some resource hogging or software/driver related issues going on. Just helps to more quickly trim away the fat for quick tests, is all.

 

[MoInSTL]

yep.. those'll work and was going to be my next rec if you didn't have enough options available to get there. Good job.

I always use imageshack to post images after printscreen/paint edits. Any other preferred upload site will do as well.

Print screen/paint? Use the Snipping Tool! LOL. You sound old school too.

 

[bryanW1995]

I said netbook, not notebook.

Sorry! And you even mentioned that netbooks are an extreme example, too. Reading comprehension fail on my part.

 

[groberts101]

Print screen/paint? Use the Snipping Tool! LOL. You sound old school too.

lol.. that I am. I actually use Adobe PS for even simple tasks usually but felt the need on this ocassion to perpetuate the "XP tricks" of a bygone era.

 

[MoInSTL]

yep.. those'll work and was going to be my next rec if you didn't have enough options available to get there. Good job.

I always use imageshack to post images after printscreen/paint edits. Any other preferred upload site will do as well.

PS.. the point about safe-mode testing was that if you see substantial gains?.. you have some resource hogging or software/driver related issues going on. Just helps to more quickly trim away the fat for quick tests, is all.

Ack! I am now running late for work, but my curiosity got the best of me. Ran CM @ 3 passes, 50MB, Disabling speedstep did nothing. Booted into Safe Mode and scores were better by only 1 or 2 points. 4K Read did go from 17.45 to 18.87. 4K QD32 Reads/Writes dropped by about 15 points.

Not precise timing, but a warm boot took about 15 seconds from end of POST to desktop. It POSTs so fast, it's hard to time.

I need to disable an unknown device in Device Manager. Intel recommends turning off any shock/fall detectors and this came with one. I didn't install the driver. I think I will disable the RJ 45 port as well.

 

[groberts101]

hate to say it.. but welcome to last gen laptops power saving implementations. Never designed for SSD speeds is all that amounts to in the end. Was worth a shot I guess. Good luck with it all.

 

[MoInSTL]

hate to say it.. but welcome to last gen laptops power saving implementations. Never designed for SSD speeds is all that amounts to in the end. Was worth a shot I guess. Good luck with it all.

Yeah, thanks. FWIW.
http://s833.photobucket.com/albums/zz252/moinstl/Crytal Mark Scores/

 

[allthatisman]

I had a used 160gb 320 series SSD that I picked up used on AT a couple months back. I already had a 128gb WD SiliconEdge Blue SSD that I've used for almost a couple years now. The AT benches showed a fairly significant enough speed difference between the two drives, and with the increased space, it seemed like a no brainer... I could't for the life of me tell that the Intel drive was faster in ANYTHING that I threw at it, and if anything, it was slower in some tasks. It seemed inconsistent and possibly bad... but every test I did showed that it was a healthy, hardly-used drive. I ended up re-selling it for basically what I paid, and I've been back with my WD SSD.

The only thing I can think of is that the WD has the older, larger NAND... perhaps there is more to this, but it's beyond my level of understanding. I know when Western Digital was designing this drive they wanted to focus almost solely on reliability... well I've had a couple dozen re-installs on it, and it's always been super reliable and consistent. If I could, I'd buy more.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know, you're not the only person who was under-whelmed by the 320...

 

[Makaveli]

OP trying doing some stuff that actually hits your Disc I/O then you will see the difference. Cause once things get loaded into memory you won't notice much. However when you start hitting stuff that is disc bound and multiple things are once it will show its benefit.

Try running a virus scan while in the middle of a game.
Try Copying large files to and from the SSD then open up a browser and few multiple tabs at the same time.

Filtering a excel spreadsheet with 50k rows or running formula's on it etc

If all you do is play games you will not see much of a benefit you have to be doing stuff that will bottleneck a HD which is alot of random stuff at the same time.

I notice the lack of pausing that is super annoying when I upgraded to an SSD. Even a total novice user should feel this but you have to work the machine.

Most of the people that say they don't see a difference is simply because of their usage pattern.

 

[dawza]

Makaveli is spot-on. You shouldn't need to do xyz performance tweaks to "feel" the difference. Either your usage is I/O intensive and you'll instantly note the difference, or you won't; in the latter scenario, there is a good chance that after a while, going back to a roughly equivalent HDD-based system will reveal some notable differences.

That said, W7 does a great job of keeping things loaded to RAM, so in many instances, you may not perceive any benefit in launch speed for typical desktop programs. Heavier-duty applications are a different story.

For non-believers, simply install a VM on a standard 7.2K RPM HDD and do the same on any modern SSD. Power the VM completely off and start fresh. Heck, I'd put money on an unaligned G1 Intel on a mobile C2D platform against an i7-based desktop running on a VR for this test any day of the week.

Before others start complaining that this isn't a realistic scenario for their workflow-- it's not meant to be. But it is applicable for many people, provides proof of concept, and is accessible to all.

 

[VirtualLarry]

OP trying doing some stuff that actually hits your Disc I/O then you will see the difference.
Most of the people that say they don't see a difference is simply because of their usage pattern.

This. (At least in my case.)

 

[MoInSTL]

OP trying doing some stuff that actually hits your Disc I/O then you will see the difference. Cause once things get loaded into memory you won't notice much. However when you start hitting stuff that is disc bound and multiple things are once it will show its benefit.

Try running a virus scan while in the middle of a game.
Try Copying large files to and from the SSD then open up a browser and few multiple tabs at the same time.

Filtering a excel spreadsheet with 50k rows or running formula's on it etc

If all you do is play games you will not see much of a benefit you have to be doing stuff that will bottleneck a HD which is alot of random stuff at the same time.

I notice the lack of pausing that is super annoying when I upgraded to an SSD. Even a total novice user should feel this but you have to work the machine.

Most of the people that say they don't see a difference is simply because of their usage pattern.

Thanks for that and I am running Avast, opened Outlook & Word 2010 and a couple of tabs are open. I can work it more over the weekend when I have time. But I did notice it's as though nothing else was open and everything opened very fast. I need to really load it up so it's not loaded in RAM. I may even pop my 2X2GB sticks back in just to make it easier to differentiate RAM load from SSD. As I mentioned, I just went from 4GB to 8GB the week before. I very much noticed that. I also just went from 1.5 DSL to 12Mbps Uverse Internet. So everything is faster!

My scores are respectable for a 8 month old laptop. I recall how quickly my Atom based netbook booted and I am running things like Office that were never on the x86 netbook. So my expectations may have been higher based on that. As groberts101 mentioned, power saving may be a contributing factor as well as the chipset.

Thanks again for the tip. I'll post my subjective results. Oh and I also read for Crystal Mark, there needs to be something else running in background. I tested when idle.

 

[SlowSpyder]

So you fell for the forum hype, and went out and purchased an SSD, and were dissapointed? Join the club.

SSDs are[/ii] faster, but in terms of real-world experience, as long as you have enough RAM for caching, it doesn't feel all that much faster.

Try doing something like a virus scan, something you can objectevely benchmark. I do a malwarebytes scan in like 6 minutes, instead of 30. It's pretty nice for that.

I'm right there with you for the most part. I went from Vista 64 and a 1TB and 640GB drive to Win7 and an Intel 320 120GB SSD plus the 1TB and 640GB drives. In all honesty I think I preferred the previous setup before. 120GB isn't enough space, so I have to change the location of everything I install. Sure, the machine boots faster, and there is a bit more responsiveness, but I'm hardly blown away by the SSD.

 

[Zap]

I have done several tweaks like turning off Superfetch, etc. along with one for my chipset
...
However, it doesn't feel fast. I had a 500GB spinner at 7,200 RPM and honestly this doesn't feel as snappy as I was expecting.
...
Did a clean install, ran latest Intel chipset drivers first, disabled unnecessary services, running at tweaked high performance power plan, removed Windows stuff I don't use, have first box checked in Write Cache. FWIW, I did most of the SSD Optimizations here Except, I elected for a small 1024 page file. I have 95GB free of 111. Verified TRIM and running in ACPI.

Do you do similar optimizations with your HDD? I find the most difference when just installing default Windows with zero optimizations on both HDD and SSD. Others around here who tend to optimize Windows on their HDD have said the same thing, about not being impressed by an SSD.

I'm of the same general opinion as that guy^. Even my kids and small nieces/nephews can tell the difference with SSD.

I built my mom a fairly low end machine with Pentium G9650 (Clarkdale socket 1156), 2GB RAM and 40GB Intel SSD. It is used only for internet and email. Everyone who have used it (my sister, other family members, family friends) think it is the fastest computer ever. () As in, they go out of their way to exclaim how fast it felt.

Of course could be that most of them use old-as-dirt computers, and my sister has a netbook with HDD and several year old iMac with HDD.

 

[MoInSTL]

Do you do similar optimizations with your HDD? I find the most difference when just installing default Windows with zero optimizations on both HDD and SSD. Others around here who tend to optimize Windows on their HDD have said the same thing, about not being impressed by an SSD.

Yes, I absolutely always optimize it. All the way down to turning off all 3 Windows (IMO) spying CEIP (Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program) settings in Scheduler. If you don't know about it, Google it to disable it. It sends a lot of usage info to Microsoft when system is idle.

I also had a 7,200 RPM HDD. Much faster than the 5,400 drives installed in some laptops. But as Makaveli suggested, making it actually work a bit more does seem to improve real world results.

So yes, I do a lot of OS tweaks and have all the way back to Windows 3.11

 

[cytg111]

my experience when i popped a 320 160gigger in the system in my sig was something like "this is how its supposed to work" ..
... anytime I find myself working on a station with a spindle thats what i am thinking "Broken".

 

[jihe]

Installed an Intel 320, 120GB last week. I am running a SATA II laptop with an i5-520M, 8GB RAM, ATI HD 4570, 512K, Win 7 Pro x64. I have done several tweaks like turning off Superfetch, etc. along with one for my chipset here.

My Crystal Mark scores are reasonable and similar to my AS SSD scores. I can't post an image yet, but the Seq reads are 247, Seq Writes 136, 512 Read 173, Write 134, 4K Read 17.5, Write 37, 4K QD32 Read 144, Write 83.5.

So given my chipset and SATA II the scores are alright. However, it doesn't feel fast. I had a 500GB spinner at 7,200 RPM and honestly this doesn't feel as snappy as I was expecting. I had a Mini 9 with a tiny 16GB SSD and Atom processor netbook and ran stripped down versions of the various Win 7 Release Candidates. It booted fast and I could feel the difference. Maybe the 4K reads were better?

Did a clean install, ran latest Intel chipset drivers first, disabled unnecessary services, running at tweaked high performance power plan, removed Windows stuff I don't use, have first box checked in Write Cache. FWIW, I did most of the SSD Optimizations here Except, I elected for a small 1024 page file. I have 95GB free of 111. Verified TRIM and running in ACPI.

I realize feeling fast is subjective but am I missing something? I know the 320 isn't the fastest but I was able to get it for $138 with overnight shipping. That was too cheap to pass up.

Edit: Long time Anand reader, first time poster. Ex old school OC'er.

For laptops I appreciate the silence and shock resistance of a SSD much more.

 

[kbp]

hate to say it here Larry(and just know I'm not trying to pick on you).. but with a small drive already that full in combination with the usage pattern you previously described?.. TRIM alone will not make a world of difference. Better than without for sure on that particular controller.. but you have too much working against you there.

going from a large boat with a leak.. to a smaller one with a leak.. will still put you at the bottom of the bay eventually.

Have you read my other replies(with included links) to enable you to manually TRIM these drives for speed maintenance?

I agree. 74% full.......
Might think on getting a larger drive you can GROW into.

 

[hal2kilo]

So you fell for the forum hype, and went out and purchased an SSD, and were dissapointed? Join the club.

SSDs are[/ii] faster, but in terms of real-world experience, as long as you have enough RAM for caching, it doesn't feel all that much faster.

Try doing something like a virus scan, something you can objectevely benchmark. I do a malwarebytes scan in like 6 minutes, instead of 30. It's pretty nice for that.

I find it hard to believe you don't see a difference. Run a virus scan and you will be amazed as noted by your first replyl.