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How should and ssd behave on SATA2?

nanowatt
By nanowatt
in Storage Devices
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I bought as a gift for a friend an adata sp 550, 2gb of ram(Now he got 4) and a 1 tb wd blue because his pc needed a speed up.The problem is that he's motherboard only got sata 2 and well, it's not as fast as i expected.The speed is locked around 285-290 mb(as far as i know the limit for sata 2 is 300) both write and read, but it seems kinda slow.The boot time is good, but when it comes to browsing it feels slow.It will take around 1-1,5 secs for mozilla to open up, but the problem is the actual page loading.tho the download speed is around 25-30mb/s(browsing speed around 200-300 mbps), pages will take around 1 sec to load up and 3 sec for youtube which for me feels slow.Windows 7 is installed on it, trim is enabled and is running with ahci enabled.

 

ohh and there's another problem which he might be trippin'.He installed minecraft and i had to convince myself of it, the world's loading speed is kinda slow.I don't know how to fix that

 

 

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Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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RAM and CPU need an upgrade.

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About right. Linus' 'AMD 8 core vs Intel server cheapo 8-core' buil has more on the downsides of SSDs in SATA 2. I have a SSD in SATA 2 myself, and it is around the just under 300mbs

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RAM and CPU need an upgrade.

Well, he got 4 gigs now and i think it should be enough, tho i think i have a few more laying around, but the cpu is not that bad.Is a first gen i3 and again, i think it should be enough

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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Well, he got 4 gigs now and i think it should be enough, tho i think i have a few more laying around, but the cpu is not that bad.Is a first gen i3 and again, i think it should be enough

 

RAM caching? 

Intel Core i7-6700K | Corsair H105 | Asus Z170I PRO GAMING | G.Skill TridentZ Series 16GB | 950 PRO 512GB M.2

 

Asus GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB STRIX OC | BitFenix Prodigy (Black/Red) | XFX PRO Black Edition 850W

 

 

My Build | PCPartPicker | CoC

 

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Well, he got 4 gigs now and i think it should be enough, tho i think i have a few more laying around, but the cpu is not that bad.Is a first gen i3 and again, i think it should be enough

 

Yeah, the speed is normal for SATA2.

 

4GB of RAM is on the low side, but even then, it should still be snappy with a i3.

 

Hmm, is the OS clean installed? It should be fairly quick, faster than a hard drive. It's not infected or anything like that, is it?

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Important: Did you set SATA mode as AHCI?

Yes, tho we had a strange problem.When i first installed the thing and set for ahci it was fine, we installed the windows and all was good.He wanted 10 so...well i had to do it for him and installed that, just to tell me he wants 7 back.Short long storry.The pc would not get past the check and i had to reset the bios, set ide, format everything, set ahci and then format and create the partitions.Is was ahci in the first place....i don't know how to explain it

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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Yeah, the speed is normal for SATA2.

 

4GB of RAM is on the low side, but even then, it should still be snappy with a i3.

 

Hmm, is the OS clean installed? It should be fairly quick, faster than a hard drive. It's not infected or anything like that, is it?

The boot time is quite good and it's really snappy and yes, the os is fresh.I guess i am used with my pc so that's why it feels slow.

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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RAM caching? 

If you mean virtual memory,well, i disabled it.

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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IDK if you saw the note Edit, but you can't just change from IDE to AHCI, you need to reinstall OS, and no, JIC start repair isn't enough

I set ahci before installing the os, but i had to go into ide mode and reformat the partition and delete it because for some reasons it would not get past the hdd check with ahci enabled.After i deleted the partition on ide mode it was fine.I set for ahci and installed the thing without problems.

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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I bought as a gift for a friend an adata sp 550, 2gb of ram(Now he got 4) and a 1 tb wd blue because his pc needed a speed up.The problem is that he's motherboard only got sata 2 and well, it's not as fast as i expected.The speed is locked around 285-290 mb(as far as i know the limit for sata 2 is 300) both write and read, but it seems kinda slow.The boot time is good, but when it comes to browsing it feels slow.It will take around 1-1,5 secs for mozilla to open up, but the problem is the actual page loading.tho the download speed is around 25-30mb/s(browsing speed around 200-300 mbps), pages will take around 1 sec to load up and 3 sec for youtube which for me feels slow.Windows 7 is installed on it, trim is enabled and is running with ahci enabled.

 

ohh and there's another problem which he might be trippin'.He installed minecraft and i had to convince myself of it, the world's loading speed is kinda slow.I don't know how to fix that

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR YO YALL FILTHY MATHERFAKERS!

 

IDK if you saw the note Edit, but you can't just change from IDE to AHCI, you need to reinstall OS, and no, JIC start repair isn't enough

And sometimes drivers are needed

 

Well not really, I have done it on my previous rig. It is doable but it involves booting into safe mode with several registry items cleared. Long and difficult process, but easy to find on google if you need it. Not as good as a clean install but okay.

 

Regardless SSDs arent magic. If read and write speeds aswell as lookups etc are as expected the fault may lay with other parts of the pc.

 

Speed is relative eitherway. Is the PC alot quicker than it was? I do not know what your used to but save for giving him your rig, this seems like the maximum performance he will get out of these parts. BTW ur an awesome friend to help him out ;)

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Hmm... As long as the HDD was unplugged during the installation it'd be alright.

How much virtual memory did it set in each drive?

0

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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Well not really, I have done it on my previous rig. It is doable but it involves booting into safe mode with several registry items cleared. Long and difficult process, but easy to find on google if you need it. Not as good as a clean install but okay.

 

Regardless SSDs arent magic. If read and write speeds aswell as lookups etc are as expected the fault may lay with other parts of the pc.

 

Speed is relative eitherway. Is the PC alot quicker than it was? I do not know what your used to but save for giving him your rig, this seems like the maximum performance he will get out of these parts. BTW ur an awesome friend to help him out ;)

Well, the speeds get to almost 290 on sata 2 and it's a lot faster than what he had so i guess it's just me being a speed freak.

ps: i know how it feels to have a slow pc and aint fun.I do what i can when i can :D

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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Well, the speeds get to almost 290 on sata 2 and it's a lot faster than what he had so i guess it's just me being a speed freak.

ps: i know how it feels to have a slow pc and aint fun.I do what i can when i can :D

 

Well the thing you could do is add a sata3 port with an pci-e extension card. should be cheaper than swapping the board out (like $/€25 something new vs x amount for used 1156 board). Is that board using ddr2 or ddr3? If it is ddr2 it might be worth it to keep your eyes out for a cheap ddr3 board

 

For instance this one

 

Anyway before you start worrying and spending cash ask ur friend if he thinks its slow xD

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Was like that in the beginning or did you change it? If so, did it behave like that before?

Any chance to measure latency for the SSD?

I set it like that.Idk... let me check

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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Well the thing you could do is add a sata3 port with an pci-e extension card. should be cheaper than swapping the board out (like 30 something new vs x amount for used 1366/1155(?) board). Is that board using ddr2 or ddr3? If it is ddr2 it might be worth it to keep your eyes out for a cheap ddr3 board

Is a 1156 ddr 3 board, quite old

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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Clarkdale i3s only support DDR3 but their IMCs are kinda trash

I know....next year if i have the money i will get him a newb mb and cpu, maybe a skylake, but for now he is stuck with what he got :D

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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Clarkdale i3s only support DDR3 but their IMCs are kinda trash

 

Yeah was still rocking an Q6600 in those days which supported both. Didnt upgrade till sandy bridge. Just read up on clarksdale and you are more than right.

 

Regradless Expansion cards like these are the most cost effective way to get the maximum out of that ssd. Sata2 isnt much faster than 7200 rpm harddrives

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Yeah was still rocking an Q6600 in those days which supported both. Didnt upgrade till sandy bridge. Just read up on clarksdale and you are more than right.

 

Regradless Expansion cards like these are the most cost effective way to get the maximum out of that ssd. Sata2 isnt much faster than 7200 rpm harddrives

 

Okay disregards all my suggestions and read this article

 

TL;DR

 

Random I/O performance is very important from a practical point of view. Under Windows, most I/O operations occur at low queue depths. In such a situation, our synthetic benchmarks show us that there's not much difference between SATA 6Gb/s and 3Gb/s. There’s barely even a theoretical performance gap at a queue depth of one, and certainly no practical difference. We can now answer the question of whether you need available SATA 6Gb/s ports to justify an SSD upgrade. Clearly, you're still going to see plenty of benefit from solid-state storage, even if you're using a 3 Gb/s connector. In the real world, a 3 Gb/s interface doesn't bottleneck common applications. It's only when you push the technology's limits using synthetic benchmarks, server/workstation-oriented workloads, or large SSD-to-SSD transfers that 6 Gb/s signaling kicks into gear.

 

So yeah minecraft will load faster with Sata3 (large maps/data etc.) But day to day tasks like webbrowsing will not be helped by it.

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Thank you everyone for your time.Stuff is clear now, he needs that shit on sata3.Best of wishes, happy new year and may the new one be better for you than 2015.Cheers

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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The boot time is good, but when it comes to browsing it feels slow.It will take around 1-1,5 secs for mozilla to open up, but the problem is the actual page loading.tho the download speed is around 25-30mb/s(browsing speed around 200-300 mbps), pages will take around 1 sec to load up and 3 sec for youtube which for me feels slow.

 

Well the issues you describe essentially have nothing to do with the speed of the SSD or that it is plugged in to a SATA 2 port, bar the opening of mozilla itself but even then I doubt the speed of disk access is the bottleneck.

 

The bottleneck for the issues you describe is most likely the internet connection and/or the CPU in the computer. For general browsing and the initial loading of a youtube video the amount of bandwidth isn't the biggest factor, latency determines how snappy pages load. Also the ability for your CPU to process the page or video has a big effect on this. My really crap laptop that has an AMD E2-1800 CPU with a Samsung 850 Evo loads pages extremely slowly and is just generally crap, my desktop which is an i7-4930k on the same internet connection load pages MUCH faster.

 

Also an Intel SATA 2 port will not limit the IOPS of an SSD that much, only it's throughput. On my Asus Rampage IV Black (X79) the ASMedia SATA 3 ports are slower than the Intel SATA 2 ports, by a significant amount too.

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@nanowatt Out of interest do you happen to know the CPU that is currently in the computer? Depending on what it is you might be able to pick up a really good upgrade on ebay for very low cost, like an i7-860/i5-760.

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@nanowatt Out of interest do you happen to know the CPU that is currently in the computer? Depending on what it is you might be able to pick up a really good upgrade on ebay for very low cost, like an i7-860/i5-760.

It's a clarkdale, first gen i3(550).An upgrade is not that expensive and i saw a 4 core i7 around 110-150 euros.I could get that for him, but i am not sure how good it will be

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
 
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It's a clarkdale, first gen i3(550).An upgrade is not that expensive and i saw a 4 core i7 around 110-150 euros.I could get that for him, but i am not sure how good it will be

 

I guess for tech that old it might just be best to do a complete platform upgrade, either new or to a newer second hand motherboard/cpu that supports the existing ram to keep the cost down. If it's actually not that slow just continuing as is could also be the best option. Problem is that it is really hard to know if a CPU upgrade will actually help or just be money for nothing.

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