SSD drive performance with x61s

[Nepyk]

Hi,

could you share with me your ssd drive read/write speeds, I would like to benchmark with other collueges.

Thanks in advance!

[ajkula66]

I don't have a X61 of any kind to benchmark, but does your machine have Middleton's BIOS installed or not? It makes a world of difference.

[Allstar]

Read 252,11 MB/s
Write 99,53 MB/s

Just my X61s running Samsung 840 Basic on SATAII

[ajkula66]

^^^^^^

The reads are fine but the writes are horrendous.

[Allstar]

Second run shows 112,71 Mb/s write speed. Yeah well, it sucks indeed. But hey, my L7500 system with 8GB RAM/128GB SSD runs Win8.1 Pro very snappy.

[Nepyk]

So my results are not bad:

Timing cached reads: 3984 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1995.60 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 710 MB in 3.01 seconds = 236.23 MB/sec
tomas@tomas-ThinkPad-X61s ~ $ dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/output.img bs=8k count=256k
262144+0 records in
262144+0 records out
2147483648 bytes (2,1 GB) copied, 7,96152 s, 270 MB/s

[ajkula66]

Second run shows 112,71 Mb/s write speed. Yeah well, it sucks indeed. But hey, my L7500 system with 8GB RAM/128GB SSD runs Win8.1 Pro very snappy.

Your SSD is the culprit since I get higher speeds on SATA I...with a Pentium M CPU...and 2GB RAM...not to mention a 2009 SSD...

And if you think I'm kidding, think again.

[Allstar]

Samsung 840 Basic has got very poor write performance. I'm getting 127 MB/s which nears the maximum limit of 130 MB/s. It goes up with the capacity due to number of the NAND chips.

[ygrig]

Here are my results.
Intel 530 120 Gb on ThinkPad X61s with Middleton BIOS:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 250.108 MB/s
Sequential Write : 132.463 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 232.708 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 134.299 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 13.153 MB/s [ 3211.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 31.005 MB/s [ 7569.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 90.361 MB/s [ 22060.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 66.164 MB/s [ 16153.3 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 22.3% (24.8/111.4 GB)] (x1)
Date : 2015/02/05 12:29:28
OS : Windows 8.1 Pro [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)

[ajkula66]

Here are my results.
Intel 530 120 Gb on ThinkPad X61s with Middleton BIOS:

Sequential Write : 132.463 MB/s

Ah the wonders of SandForce controllers....even with Intel's firmware they still underperform and always will...

[Shredder11]

Standard X61s with 2GB RAM, Windows 7 Pro 32-bit, Intel 160GB SSD X25-M 2.5" SATA (SSDSA2M160G2GC)

[DarkoLord]

http://i.imgur.com/as8IEFB.png

X61s, L7700, 8 GB, 128 GB Crucial M4

[Shredder11]

I thought I would add another of my SSD benchmark results, but this time with one of my Thinkpad Z61p machines (I have three). Instead of buying my third Intel SSD, I decided to get a Crucial BX100 which offered good performance and value for money. I have also noticed that many people around the net achieve faster performance with non-Intel drives.

The new drive was shown in the Win XP SP3 Device Manager as an unknown device at first, so I installed some Lenovo Southbridge drivers with AHCI support. This did the trick and XP could see and access the drive properly, and I then used my trusty Paragon Migrate OS to SSD software to clone my XP (Compatibilty Mode) install over to the new SSD in AHCI mode. Everything went smoothly and boots up normally etc.

As you can see from my CrystalMarkDisk results, they are fairly balanced compared with my Thinkpad X61s Intel SSD results as shown earlier in this topic. I assume both Thinkpads have SATA 1 capability and yet the X61s achieves much greater read speeds than my Z61p. However the Z61p achieves much better write speeds than my X61s. Maybe I need to look at my Z61p and see if I can work out what could be missing or need tweaking?





Upgraded Z61p with Core2 Duo T7600 2.4GHz, 3GB RAM, Windows XP Pro SP3 32-bit, Crucial BX100 250GB SSD 2.5" SATA (CT250BX100SSD1)

[precip9]

For some general times, see

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 49#p759549

Both machines have the Middleton BIOS.

[Shredder11]

At the moment my X61s boots Win 7 Pro to the desktop in 30 secs; my Z61p boots Win XP Pro SP3 to the desktop in 25 secs. I'm very shocked at my X61s out performing my Z61p in the read speed by an extra 113MB/s! I noticed in the Win XP device manager "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" section, the Primary IDE Channel and the other IDE related ones have the ancient Microsoft driver. So I have updated those with the Intel ones from 2007, which left only the Primary IDE Channel with Microsoft drivers for some reason. I ran CrystalDiskMark again and achieved identical results as before. So is it simply a case of Win 7 being vastly superior to Win XP when using SSD drives?

[Hans Gruber]

Do your X60s and X61s use SATA I or SATA II?

[ajkula66]

Do your X60s and X61s use SATA I or SATA II?

Every single X60/s/T on this planet uses SATA I since that's all that chipset supports.

[brchan]

As another note, if you consider Samsung SSDs, stay away from any that are not in the "PRO" line. Many are having issues with the EVO drives. There is a reason why 850 PRO SSDs have a 10 year warranty. The 850 PRO 128GB is only $100 and gives some of the best performance and value you can get (if 128GB is enough space). I recently got one and boot time takes 2.4564s, if you exclude the time to get an ip for the wifi.

Code: Select all

[chan96@w530tp ~]$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 2.262s (kernel) + 202ms (userspace) = 2.465s
[chan96@w530tp ~]$ systemd-analyze blame
          4.740s netctl@wlp3s0\x2dASUS\x202.4GHZ.service
            99ms dev-sda1.device
            78ms systemd-journald.service
            29ms systemd-journal-flush.service
            27ms user@1000.service
            15ms alsa-restore.service
            14ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
            12ms systemd-udevd.service
            12ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
            11ms systemd-sysctl.service
             9ms dev-hugepages.mount
             7ms dev-mqueue.mount
             7ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
             7ms kmod-static-nodes.service
             6ms systemd-modules-load.service
             5ms systemd-vconsole-setup.service
             5ms systemd-logind.service
             4ms systemd-remount-fs.service
             3ms systemd-random-seed.service
             3ms tmp.mount
             2ms systemd-update-utmp.service
             2ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
             2ms systemd-backlight@backlight:acpi_video0.service
             1ms systemd-user-sessions.service
             1ms systemd-rfkill@rfkill0.service
             1ms sys-kernel-config.mount
            

[precip9]

Do your X60s and X61s use SATA I or SATA II?

Every single X60/s/T on this planet uses SATA I since that's all that chipset supports.

With the Middleton BIOS, the X61 (NOT X60), has SATA II.

[Shredder11]

I suppose I maybe over reacted yesterday after a long day of getting things working, so I forgot that my X61s might be SATA II. I already knew my Z61p was SATA I and so the benchmark scores seem to be in the right area. Regarding my X61s, that computer was received from Ebay in Nov' 2012 with a password protected BIOS, so I do not know if it was modded in any way to unlock SATA II capability; it does appear to achieve SATA II speeds though with the Intel SSD I installed in 2013. Despite all of this I get the impression the Crucial BX100 is a half decent SSD drive, and would perform well in another SATA II / III system. The Z61p with BX100 SSD drive is being used as a music sequencing and editing computer, and the new SSD has really helped with application launch times. I'm still surprised at my Intel SSD write speeds in comparison though.

[ajkula66]

I'm still surprised at my Intel SSD write speeds in comparison though.

If it's a SandForce-based Intel such as 520/530 or 330/335, don't be surprised *at all*.

Even Intel's proprietary firmware can't turn mud - for a lack of stronger term - into gold.