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Slow SSD speeds

failblox
By failblox
in Storage Devices
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Go to solution Solved by hojnikb,

So real-world performance is significantly less for the Corsair Force 3 than the advertised speeds? That's just the way the drive is?

Pretty much yes. Drive uses cheaper, but much much slower async flash although they can still advertise the same 550/500 speeds, since with sandforce and compression even crappy 10MB/s flash could hit that.

 

Same thing kingston pulled. First batch of V300 had fast toshiba flash in them (so reviewers got them) but later in the game they switched to async and obviously real world speeds drop quite a bit (even lower than your force3). But since they only advertised compressible speeds, nothing "wrong" was done advertising wise as there was no false advertising.

Posted

The SSD that I've been using in my system for almost 2 and a half years now is a Corsair Force 3 240GB SSD. The advertised speeds for this drive (according to Corsair's website) are a max read of 550MB/s and a max write of 520MB/s. Now I know that even if I bought a brand new SSD I probably wouldn't get those kind of speeds, but when testing my speeds using AS SSD benchmark, these are my results. For an SSD, those look pretty bad to me, as these were the results for my WD Black 4TB HDD. They're pretty close for a hard drive and a SSD. I'm just about to do a secure erase of it and reinstall Windows to see if that restores speeds for me.

Would anyone have any idea how my SSD managed to get so slow over time? Is it normal for something like this to happen? And how could I prevent something like this to happen in the future?

I actually couldn't underclock my 5 year old GPU to make it as slow as a next-gen console.

#pcmasterraceproblems

~Slick

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Do you have it plugged in to SATA3?

Also, take a look for updated firmware.

Yep it's plugged into my mobo via SATA3. I just updated the firmware now, and I'm still getting the same results :\

Edit: Just ran a second test and got write of ~100MB/s. It seems that my write dropped even more after the firmware update...

Edit 2: Ran another one and now it's giving me 150MB/s again. It seems to be really inconsistent.

I actually couldn't underclock my 5 year old GPU to make it as slow as a next-gen console.

#pcmasterraceproblems

~Slick

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Also double make sure that the sata3 port is in AHCI mode not IDE. (from within the bios)

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Also double make sure that the sata3 port is in AHCI mode not IDE. (from within the bios)

Just checked and it's AHCI.

I actually couldn't underclock my 5 year old GPU to make it as slow as a next-gen console.

#pcmasterraceproblems

~Slick

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Just checked and it's AHCI.

 so if its in AHCI/ SATA3 (6GBPS) Port/You have your drivers installed..... idk what else could be the limiting factor :S perhaps sata data cable but I have never heard of that before.

Intel I9-9900k (5Ghz) | Asus ROG Maximus XI Formula | Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR4-4133mhz | ASUS ROG Strix 2080Ti | EVGA Supernova G2 1050w 80+Gold | Samsung 950 Pro M.2 (512GB) + (1TB) | Full EK custom water loop |IN-WIN S-Frame (No. 263/500)

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 so if its in AHCI/ SATA3 (6GBPS) Port/You have your drivers installed..... idk what else could be the limiting factor :S perhaps sata data cable but I have never heard of that before.

Could it be cause I've been using it for a couple years and I've installed/reinstalled multiple operating systems on it?

I actually couldn't underclock my 5 year old GPU to make it as slow as a next-gen console.

#pcmasterraceproblems

~Slick

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Then format it and run a fresh copy of Windows then, as make sure trim is enabled

I believe TRIM is automatically enabled in Windows 8/8.1 so I don't think there's really an option to turn it 'off' or 'on'. Am I correct?

I actually couldn't underclock my 5 year old GPU to make it as slow as a next-gen console.

#pcmasterraceproblems

~Slick

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Yes it should be you never know. My Motherboard should have enabled ahci when booting from a ssd but it didn't and I had to do it myself.

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Corsair Force 3 uses a sandforce chipset(SF2281), so when you run a benchmark like as ssd which uses incompressible data , you get lower then advertised speeds, if you run atto, you will reach your advertised speeds

 

Screenshot of another 240gb force 3 , as you can tell it's pretty much the same speed as you are getting,with atto you will get the advertised 550/520 MB/s speeds (seeing it uses compressible data)

500x1000px-LL-460a135c_AS5Benchmark.PNG

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Your speeds are actually just fine, because you're using sandforce drive with async flash.

Rated numbers are for compressible files. Basicly, they use compression to get insane numbers with crappy flash.

+°´°+,¸¸,+°´°~ Glorious PC master gaming race :wub: ~°´°+,¸¸,+°´°+
BigBox: Asus P8Z77-V, 3570k, 8GB Ram, Intel 180GB & Sammy 750GB, HD4000, W7
PiBox: Rasberry Pi, BCM @ 1225Mhz ^_^ , 256MB Ram, 16GB Storage, pIO, Raspbian

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Corsair Force 3 uses a sandforce chipset(SF2281), so when you run a benchmark like as ssd which uses incompressible data , you get lower then advertised speeds, if you run atto, you will reach your advertised speeds

 

Screenshot of another 240gb force 3 , as you can tell it's pretty much the same speed as you are getting,with atto you will get the advertised 550/520 MB/s speeds (seeing it uses compressible data)

500x1000px-LL-460a135c_AS5Benchmark.PNG

 

Your speeds are actually just fine, because you're using sandforce drive with async flash.

Rated numbers are for compressible files. Basicly, they use compression to get insane numbers with crappy flash.

So real-world performance is significantly less for the Corsair Force 3 than the advertised speeds? That's just the way the drive is?

I actually couldn't underclock my 5 year old GPU to make it as slow as a next-gen console.

#pcmasterraceproblems

~Slick

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So real-world performance is significantly less for the Corsair Force 3 than the advertised speeds? That's just the way the drive is?

Pretty much yes. Drive uses cheaper, but much much slower async flash although they can still advertise the same 550/500 speeds, since with sandforce and compression even crappy 10MB/s flash could hit that.

 

Same thing kingston pulled. First batch of V300 had fast toshiba flash in them (so reviewers got them) but later in the game they switched to async and obviously real world speeds drop quite a bit (even lower than your force3). But since they only advertised compressible speeds, nothing "wrong" was done advertising wise as there was no false advertising.

+°´°+,¸¸,+°´°~ Glorious PC master gaming race :wub: ~°´°+,¸¸,+°´°+
BigBox: Asus P8Z77-V, 3570k, 8GB Ram, Intel 180GB & Sammy 750GB, HD4000, W7
PiBox: Rasberry Pi, BCM @ 1225Mhz ^_^ , 256MB Ram, 16GB Storage, pIO, Raspbian

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Pretty much yes. Drive uses cheaper, but much much slower async flash although they can still advertise the same 550/500 speeds, since with sandforce and compression even crappy 10MB/s flash could hit that.

 

Same thing kingston pulled. First batch of V300 had fast toshiba flash in them (so reviewers got them) but later in the game they switched to async and obviously real world speeds drop quite a bit (even lower than your force3). But since they only advertised compressible speeds, nothing "wrong" was done advertising wise as there was no false advertising.

Ah I see. Thank you. I'm just wondering would Samsung's SSD's or any other company's SSD's be better? I hear Samsung makes pretty good SSDs.

I actually couldn't underclock my 5 year old GPU to make it as slow as a next-gen console.

#pcmasterraceproblems

~Slick

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So real-world performance is significantly less for the Corsair Force 3 than the advertised speeds? That's just the way the drive is?

The advertised speeds back then were pretty much always done with atto so they weren't lying, sandforce based ssd all do worse with incompressible data (.exe ,zip files etc), but they reach their speed if its compressible

 

This graph pretty much shows what i mean

128kwrite_incompress.png

 

As for other ssds, aslong as you get a ssd that doesn't have a sandforce chipset then you don't see this happening (not often,the kingston v300 is another story really since they just swapped nand), for example with a samsung 840 evo ssd it won't matter if its compressible or not since it uses a samsung mex controller and you will get similar speeds in atto vs as ssd

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The advertised speeds back then were pretty much always done with atto so they weren't lying, sandforce based ssd all do worse with incompressible data (.exe ,zip files etc), but they reach their speed if its compressible

 

This graph pretty much shows what i mean

128kwrite_incompress.png

 

As for other ssds, aslong as you get a ssd that doesn't have a sandforce chipset then you don't see this happening (not often,the kingston v300 is another story really since they just swapped nand), for example with a samsung 840 evo ssd it won't matter if its compressible or not since it uses a samsung mex controller and you will get similar speeds in atto vs as ssd

Thanks for the explanation - it helped a lot :D

I actually couldn't underclock my 5 year old GPU to make it as slow as a next-gen console.

#pcmasterraceproblems

~Slick

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You could replace that Corsair with a 512gb MX100 for less than you paid for that antique and blow the doors off that drive!

Sir William of Orange: Corsair 230T - Rebel Orange, 4690K, GA-97X SOC, 16gb Dom Plats 1866C9,  2 MX100 256gb, Seagate 2tb Desktop, EVGA Supernova 750-G2, Be Quiet! Dark Rock 3, DK 9008 keyboard, Pioneer BR drive. Yeah, on board graphics - deal with it!

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