SSD installed but no performance gain

[JAGX]

My setup:

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD3
CPU : CORE i5 760 2.80GHz
RAM : 8 GB GSKILL F3-12800CL7D
GPU: MSI|N460GTX Hawk Talon Attack
PSU: CORSAIR|CMPSU-750TX 750W
HDD : Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7200rpm [backup]; WD Caviar black 1 TB [storage]
SSD :Samsung Evo 840 [OS boot]
OS: Win 7 Ultimate SP1 [transfer not fresh]
Case: Azza Solano 2000


Sequential read/write on the SSD is 284/273, advertised is 540/520.

While my mobo supports SATA 3.0 at 6Gbps, the Samsung EVO software says that SATA 3 is not supported and judging by these speeds, it isn't working. Further, booting seems the same and the Windows rating is exactly the same.

The Samsung magician also lables the SSD as a 'NON OS DISK' idk what that is all about.


I checked,TRIM and ACHI are enabled, and the drive is aligned properly.


I don't know why these performance issues are here, drivers or maybe something else?

 

[Hellhammer]

Your motherboard does not have native support for SATA 6Gbps (it's provided by a third party controller), so I'd just keep that as it is (third party controllers aren't as good as native Intel controllers).

Also, make sure that the boot partition (check with Disk Management) is on the SSD. Windows has a weird habit of putting the boot partition to a random disk if more than one disk is connected at the time of installation.

 

[KingFatty]

Looks like your motherboard has some slower SATA ports, and some faster ones. I don't have your motherboard, but saw the manual online for the revision 1 (which revision is your motherboard?).

Anyway, dumb question, but are you sure the SATA port that the SSD is plugged into actually is the one of two that support faster SATA, and not one of the other six SATA ports that are slower? Slow ones were labeled SATA2_0...SATA2_5. The faster ports were labeled SATA3_6 and SATA3_7.

Also, the manual I saw refers to the faster ones as being specifically provided by a Marvell controller (Marvel 9128 chip). Maybe you can try to get more specific/newer motherboard chipset drivers that support/update the Marvel chip specifically?

 

[JAGX]

Hmm that is strange, disk management says that boot is on the old drive, how do I change this?

Also, I did not connect to the SATA 3 port Although I heard thos eMarvell controllers are not good anyhow...

I'm on rev. 2.0

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Non-Intel SATA controllers generally have a lot of issues. It's recommended in most cases that your SSD be connected to an Intel SATA2 port if your motherboard doesn't have any Intel SATA3 ports.

There's probably a more complicated way to get that system partition transferred to your new drive, but the easiest thing to do might just be to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows with only the SSD hooked up.

 

[phis6]

Hmm that is strange, disk management says that boot is on the old drive, how do I change this?

You can try to copy the bootmgr from your hard drive's active boot partition into your SSD and set the SSD's boot partition to active. In that way you don't need to reinstall your OS.

 

[tweakboy]

SSD does nothing when playing games, its for leading stuff and textures es.. SSD is load times,, if you have enough ram,, your framrate shopuld be identical,,,,,, thx

 

[Ketchup]

A few things, if you haven't thought of them already:
1. Make sure you are using a 6 Gbps SATA cable for the SSD.
2. Make sure the new SSD drive is plugged into SATA ports 6 or 7 (these are the ports pointing outward, above the ports that are pointing up).
3. Make sure the GSATA controller is enabled in the BIOS and in the same mode as the Intel controller (AHCI is what you want on this type of drive).
3a. If you find that the GSATA controller (the Marvell Controller listed under Integrated Peripherals) was not enabled/set up properly, reboot and let windows set up the controller before trying to switch the drive to those ports.
3b. If you have issue with Windows detecting the controller, you can find them here:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3439#dl

 

[ronbo613]

I have the GA-P55-UD4P with a Samsung 830 SSD. Don't use the Marvell controller SATA ports, use one of the Intel chip SATA ports.

 

[Ketchup]

I have the GA-P55-UD4P with a Samsung 830 SSD. Don't use the Marvell controller SATA ports, use one of the Intel chip SATA ports.

That is an option, and the OP should still be seeing the speed increase on the 3 GB/s ports, but the 6 will be better.

Can you tell us why you are not recommending the Marvell controller?

 

[mindbomb]

afaik, the 6 gigabit port on these motherboards are connected by pci express 2.0 x1. So they are 4 gigabit really. Plus, idk why, but with sata it's hard to completely max out the rated speed.

 

[Cerb]

afaik, the 6 gigabit port on these motherboards are connected by pci express 2.0 x1. So they are 4 gigabit really. Plus, idk why, but with sata it's hard to completely max out the rated speed.

The rated speed is the total data rate on the lines, not the rate at which a user's data is transferred to/from the device. Practically every storage and networking system is measured the same way. There is a variable amount of unavoidable overhead.

 

[mindbomb]

yea, but it seems like a lot of overhead compared to gigabit ethernet and modern ddr3 memory controllers.

 

[Cerb]

Some SSDs can peak at a bit past 550MBps. That's 92% theoretical for 6Gbps as user data. I've never seen GbE get that.

DDR3 is a whole different animal.

 

[mindbomb]

well, i looked into it, and usb 3, sata and pci express 3.0 use 8b/10b encoding, which explains why the speeds seemed low for me, despite the bitrate in bits being quite high.

 

[ronbo613]

That is an option, and the OP should still be seeing the speed increase on the 3 GB/s ports, but the 6 will be better.

Can you tell us why you are not recommending the Marvell controller?

All I can tell you is what I've experienced. My first SSD in the computer was an OCZ Vertex 2 which I naturally plugged into what I thought was the fastest port; the 6Gbps ports on the GA-P55-UD4P. I'm sure all the BIOS settings were correct and it was set for AHCI. I had nothing but problems. Turned out the Vertex 2 was a POS. I tried to clone the Vertex 2 to a new Samsung 830(which is a great SSD) with Clonezilla and it wouldn't work. I found out that drives attached to a Marvell controller had problems with Clonezilla, which had never failed me before. I cloned the drive with G-parted. With the new Samsung 830 still on the 6Gbps Marvell port, the new SSD was not booting correctly at times and having random issues, just not running right. I swapped my optical drive, which was on the Intel controller with the SSD from the Marvell controller and haven't had a problem since.

I asked about it on the Gigabyte forum and decided I'd be better off with the SSD boot drive on the Intel controller. Sure, the SSD would be a little faster on a 6 Gbps line, but on this genre of mobo, it's like a first generation product; the 6 Gbps and USB 3.0 look good in the advertising, but the real world performance is something different. My motherboard SATA and ESATA ports all have a drive attached. The Samsung SSD is plenty fast, even on the Intel chip and the computer is super dependable, that's all I can really expect, especially since it's not the newest rig on the block.

 

[Ketchup]

All I can tell you is what I've experienced. My first SSD in the computer was an OCZ Vertex 2 which I naturally plugged into what I thought was the fastest port; the 6Gbps ports on the GA-P55-UD4P. I'm sure all the BIOS settings were correct and it was set for AHCI. I had nothing but problems. Turned out the Vertex 2 was a POS. I tried to clone the Vertex 2 to a new Samsung 830(which is a great SSD) with Clonezilla and it wouldn't work. I found out that drives attached to a Marvell controller had problems with Clonezilla, which had never failed me before. I cloned the drive with G-parted. With the new Samsung 830 still on the 6Gbps Marvell port, the new SSD was not booting correctly at times and having random issues, just not running right. I swapped my optical drive, which was on the Intel controller with the SSD from the Marvell controller and haven't had a problem since.

I asked about it on the Gigabyte forum and decided I'd be better off with the SSD boot drive on the Intel controller. Sure, the SSD would be a little faster on a 6 Gbps line, but on this genre of mobo, it's like a first generation product; the 6 Gbps and USB 3.0 look good in the advertising, but the real world performance is something different. My motherboard SATA and ESATA ports all have a drive attached. The Samsung SSD is plenty fast, even on the Intel chip and the computer is super dependable, that's all I can really expect, especially since it's not the newest rig on the block.

Gotcha, too bad it didn't work well on those boards.

 

[ronbo613]

Gotcha, too bad it didn't work well on those boards.

USB 3.0 and 6Gbps SATA had just come out when these motherboards were state of the art. Perhaps if Marvell would write new drivers for a five year old controller, they might be able to get close to that 6Gbps throughput, but since they are probably busy updating drivers for a five month old controller chip, I don't see that happening.

On the other hand, this Gigabyte motherboard has been a rock solid workhorse for the past five years, never seen a blue screen(since I got rid of that Vertex 2). When you have a dependable workstation, it's easy to overlook the fact the computer might be able to boot up one second quicker.

 

[sequoia464]

All I can tell you is what I've experienced. My first SSD in the computer was an OCZ Vertex 2 which I naturally plugged into what I thought was the fastest port; the 6Gbps ports on the GA-P55-UD4P. I'm sure all the BIOS settings were correct and it was set for AHCI. I had nothing but problems. Turned out the Vertex 2 was a POS. I tried to clone the Vertex 2 to a new Samsung 830(which is a great SSD) with Clonezilla and it wouldn't work. I found out that drives attached to a Marvell controller had problems with Clonezilla, which had never failed me before. I cloned the drive with G-parted. With the new Samsung 830 still on the 6Gbps Marvell port, the new SSD was not booting correctly at times and having random issues, just not running right. I swapped my optical drive, which was on the Intel controller with the SSD from the Marvell controller and haven't had a problem since.

I asked about it on the Gigabyte forum and decided I'd be better off with the SSD boot drive on the Intel controller. Sure, the SSD would be a little faster on a 6 Gbps line, but on this genre of mobo, it's like a first generation product; the 6 Gbps and USB 3.0 look good in the advertising, but the real world performance is something different. My motherboard SATA and ESATA ports all have a drive attached. The Samsung SSD is plenty fast, even on the Intel chip and the computer is super dependable, that's all I can really expect, especially since it's not the newest rig on the block.

I had the same experience with a Gigabyte AMD board with the Marvell controller. I retired the board fairly quickly, it really bothered me not to have a proper sata III port.

 

[mindbomb]

you can always buy a raid controller with sata 6 Gb/s ports like ones from LSI. I see them for ~$100 on ebay sometimes, and they use an x8 pci-e slot. idk if they are any good though. They seem to not support trim though.

 

[Deders]

I've got an 830 plugged into a Sata 2 port, it's half the max speeds but it's the 4k read and writes that make the difference so it hardly makes a difference between Sata 2 or 3 in real world performance.

Which drive has the Windows folder on?

284/273 is great for a Sata II port.

 

[Railgun]

1. Make sure you are using a 6 Gbps SATA cable for the SSD.

Absolutely irrelevant.

 

[Wall Street]

Try using one of the Intel ports. The 6 Gbps Marvell ports were added to those boards as a check-the-box feature. Those first generation add-in controllers don't work well and certainly seldom get to the advertised 6 Gbps. I think that the Marvell chip is probably a PCI-E 2.0 x1 device, which make anything over 400 MB/s nearly impossible.

EDIT:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2227791

Read this ancient thread to see that the Marvell SATA 3 controller on your board is much worse than the Intel SATA 2 ports. Like I said, it is a check-the-box feature and not practical to use.