| Benchmark Performance SSD Testing: AHCI vs IDE |  |
| Articles - Featured Guides | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Friday, 09 April 2010 | |
Benchmark Performance SSD Testing: AHCI vs IDE
NOTICE: This article has been archived - a replacement exists. The results of this article did not properly illustrate the difference between AHCI and IDE mode SSD performance on the Intel ICH10 SATA controller. Please refer to: SSD Benchmark Tests: SATA IDE vs AHCI Mode for the updated version of this article with new SSD test results and conclusion. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Related Articles:
|
|
Comments
i tested my 160gb intel g2 last night with hd tune pro. random read iops were consistently about 12% higher in ahci mode vs ide (couldn't test writes as i had data on the drive). i'm running 32-bit windows 7 ultimate with the standard microsoft drivers and my motherboard is a gigabyte p35 with ich9.
under crystaldiskmark, as hell racer mentioned, the intels do come alive in ahci mode, as the 4k qd32 random reads jump from about 20mb/s to 120mb/s. as-ssd also shows similar gains.
however, i do have to say that in normal use (i.e. not benchmarking), i cannot see a bit of difference between ahci and ide modes. except that ahci takes a bit longer to boot because the motherboard stalls for an additional 10 seconds as the drives are enumerated. not all motherboards do this, though.
"@ GullLars: Why is it you automatically assume I've done something wrong in my tests? Unless you've got the same ADATA S599 and have tested it with HD-Tune 4.01 for yourself, you're really just making baseless claims against my work. I have no idea where you found a SF-1200 performing at 35,000 IOPS on HD-Tune
Also, have used Iometer before for yourself? So I'm sure you know that there are so many different settings "
I didn't say 35,000 IOPS in HD-Tune. HDtune only tests at Queue Depth (QD)=1, so that would be way off. This is also the reason why HDtune is the wrong benchmark for testing IDE vs AHCI. You need to scale QD to see the difference, and an SSD that supports NCQ!
I use IOmeter frequently myself, and adjusting "# of outstanding IO's" is easy, it's on the front page...
You can quickly demonstrate the difference between IDE and AHCI by usign a SSD that supports NCQ, and running CrystalDiskMark _3.0_ and ATTO. Look at 4KB QD32 in crystal and test ATTO in QD 2, 4, 10 and compare the numbers. In AHCI mode they will be multiples of IDE mode.
Also, i accept your "challenge" regarding IOmeter, and i've made you a config where you can simply select target (partition) and hit run. It should give you data to set up nice graphs to illustrate the difference between AHCI and IDE quite nicely. AHCI will scale with queue depth, IDE will not.
IOmeter config comes in reply part 3.
The config goes as follows: 10GB testfile, 1 sec ramp time, 10 sec run time pr access spec, exponential QD stepping (2^n) from 1-32, access specifications; 100% random and 100% sequential for 100% read and 100% write at block sizes 4KB-32KB. This totals 120 runs of 10+1 sec each, and will take up ca 20-25 minutes to run pr drive.
Link to config zip file: ##diskusjon.no/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=362070
If you don't want to go through the hazzle of making the raw data into graphs, send me the raw csv files in an e-mail and i'll mail you back graphs in a nice excell spreadsheet. I'll dedicate my weekend to it if you want.