kingston hyperx on early 2011 mbp, very slow write speed! why?

[acrihan]

good morning, good evening or good afternoon
my first post here, in all honesty, this question is at the top of my list at the moment so i'll jump right to it:

a couple days ago i got the hyperx 120gb sata3 ssd by kingston, for my early 2011 macbook pro.
i installed the drive, formatted and what not, installed a fresh copy of Lion 10.7.2 from a thumb drive i made.
got round to installing all the apps and things i use, and afterwards i said to myself, "hey, let's see if this thing kicks major a*&". the box says it goes upward of 500mb/s for both read and write (in special conditions, albeit).
right so i installed the free disk speed utility app from the app store. before that (and much more before that, like weeks) i had seen this guy with the exact same drive do the test, and both needles rocketed upward of 450mb/s for both read and write.
anyway, long story short, mine goes 160mb/s (maximum, and it looks as if something is limiting it to that speed) and upward of 450mb/s for read.
why? how? can anyone help?

nb: i know, i had read the other thread a dozen times but i still haven't been enlightened.. sorry for double posting!

 

[Makosuke]

Well, the first thing I'd do is find another disk tester just to confirm that it's actually running slow, rather than just that particular tool giving a bad number (which can definitely happen).

Also: Optical drive bay or main drive bay? I'm assuming main if you're getting 450MB/s read, but worth asking since some have optical bays that go to 6Gbit SATA but are flaky.

 

[acrihan]

it's my main drive now.
the other 7200 rpm 500gb Apple branded Toshiba drive i put into the Hyperx branded enclosure kingston includes in the bundle upgrade package, which is a neat perk and makes up for great value.

by comparison, ive been told that the 2011 iMac's get the full write speeds.
its still something of a mystery to me.
i did try turning TRIM on, didn't do squat. as in, it did not help.

maybe this issue will be fixed sometime, maybe with a Lion software update, or something.

 

[Makosuke]

Does that mean you already confirmed the write speeds with another speed tester like I mentioned?

Also: Did you install the recent firmware updates? There were major problems with a lot of MBPs in that line when using 6Gbit SSDs (from any manufacturer), ranging from slow speeds to being completely unusable depending on the particular machine.

I'll add that I also have an early 2011 MBP that, after the recent firmware update, gets ~480MB/s both read and write with an OWC SSD in the main bay. Prior to that update it was unusable in the main bay (erratic speeds and hangs), though it ran fine on the optical bus for several months.

 

[acrihan]

there is a firmware update for this drive, though, it's designed to work on Win7 only.. and this is my only computer.
anyway, i did an xbench. not sure what all that means?

 

[Makosuke]

Well, I don't know exactly how Xbench tests, but your numbers are all within about 20% of mine, and I have a 6Gbit SSD that's performing properly. Which is to say that it sure sounds like it's just your benchmark app acting up, and your drive is running normally.

Try downloading Aja System Test and seeing what it tells you--it gave more consistent results than other disk testers in my limited experience. (Note that if you're running Lion, it has a semi-bug that requires you to temporarily set the top level of your hard drive to "Read and Write" for Everyone.)

If you're not sure about the MBP firmware updates, you can just run Software Update and make sure it doesn't suggest any.

If there's a manufacturer firmware update for the drive I'd highly recommend figuring out how to install it, since there have been some significant issues with SSD firmware recently.

 

[acrihan]

you know what? i'm just exploring this Aja thing. this one reads proper speeds.
422 write / 471 read for a 4gb 1920x1080 8bit file.
quite odd the other benchmarks turn out those low numbers...

 

[Makosuke]

If Aja says it is so, it probably is. Their tool isn't targeted at geeks showing off, it's targeted at video pros who need to know for sure whether their hardware can handle the capture they're trying to do.

One possible difference is that Aja is doing straight-line, high-bandwitdh transfers--large blocks, sequential--which will give about the fastest throughput rates a drive is capable of. Xbench tests both small and medium blocks in random and sequential, which generally exposes the strength or weakness of the controller more than the raw theoretical speed of the SSD--the better the controller, the better the small block results will be. It's even possible that upgrading the drive's firmware will help.

As for the other app you're using, I have no idea; maybe it uses some mix that exposes a weakness in the controller, or maybe it's just doing the test in a way that's unreliable or doesn't repeat well.


Final note: I don't know how full your drive is, or how much data goes in and out of it, but if it doesn't do automatic garbage collection it will eventually start to suffer some speed hit, so that could theoretically also be a factor. TRIM should fix this, but results of enabling Apple's TRIM on unsupported drives have been quite mixed in everything I read. That's one of the reasons I opted for an OWC drive, which does Mac-ready auto garbage collection.

 

[squeakr]

It is the way that Black Magic changed their algorithm and how they report the speeds. The Sandforce controllers operate at the max levels during certain read/ write operations and block sizes. They changed it a few weeks ago and the speeds reported were cut in half to a third of what they were reporting prior to the update. I want the old app back!

 

[acrihan]

so basically the black magic tool was pumping bs before the update. well, glad thats sorted.
regarding the auto garnage collection and trim: im not sure how to check whether garnage collection is actually working or not. but i did turn on the trim for a brief period using a enabler tool i came accross the web. it did work but i did not do a stress test to ser how long it would last.

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**garbage

 

[Ccrew]

so basically the black magic tool was pumping bs before the update. well, glad thats sorted.

Not really. They were testing before with compressible data and changed their app to use uncompressable data instead. Pretty much impossible to cheat the speed numbers with data that won't compress..

At the end of the days theirs are real numbers versus the Mfg pissing contests that are all trying to post the highest #'s and have the public believing that that's what they're supposed to be doing. When you think about it even folks here are saying just download a different app to get the #'s you want. Not really a fix.

 

[Sevastos]

Same problem in late 2011 MBP

Hello everyone!

I just got my MBP last night and without even turning it on, I opened and swapped the memory with 8GB Kingston, the hard drive with the 120GB HyperX and the DVD drive with OWC Data Doubler.

When I tested the HyperX speeds I get these results:



The thing is that when I was researching for my SSD purchase I found that video on Youtube but never read the comments bellow it

I noticed that the video was uploaded on October 14th 2011 and the latest update of Disk Speed Test was on October 5th 2011, so I suppose that the guy is using the latest version of the app.

Suggestions on another benchmark test?

 

[acrihan]

Hello everyone!

I just got my MBP last night and without even turning it on, I opened and swapped the memory with 8GB Kingston, the hard drive with the 120GB HyperX and the DVD drive with OWC Data Doubler.

When I tested the HyperX speeds I get these results:

[url=http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/4162/diskspeedtest.png]Image[/URL]

The thing is that when I was researching for my SSD purchase I found that video on Youtube but never read the comments bellow it

I noticed that the video was uploaded on October 14th 2011 and the latest update of Disk Speed Test was on October 5th 2011, so I suppose that the guy is using the latest version of the app.

Suggestions on another benchmark test?

i would say, do what i just did, never mind damn tests, just enjoy it, cause it's a damn good investment!

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i would say, do what i just did, never mind damn tests, just enjoy it, cause it's a damn good investment!

also: tech2buzz used the drive on an iMac, not a mbp. might be the source of the problem.. !

 

[Sevastos]

i would say, do what i just did, never mind damn tests, just enjoy it, cause it's a damn good investment!

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also: tech2buzz used the drive on an iMac, not a mbp. might be the source of the problem.. !

Well, I bought this SSD instead of a Crucial M4 (that is much easier to have the firmware upgraded) because of the advertised speeds...

Also, I hate seeing my fiancé's MBA showing 237MB/s write and 263MB/s read speeds

 

[carlos1334]

Hi!
I just bought a Kingston hyper 3k 120GB and installed it on my mac mini mid 2011 and i'm a little bit worried about the advertised speed and the bench scores.
They are different with and without trim, getting higher score without trim.