Inconsistent SSD benchmarks

Hi everyone, my first time posting here. I just bought an SSD and, curious to measure its performance, I use AS SSD to arrive at benchmarks for the drive. The problem is those benchmarks are fairly inconsistent. The first time I used the program (after updating to Windows 8.1) it yielded a 27 MB/s 4K read speed. I went perform some tasks and restarted my laptop; once it was restarted, I benchmarked the SSD again and this time it's barely yielding a 16 MB/s 4K read speed. I did a clean installation of Windows 8 and updated it to 8.1. Now the 4K speed stays unchanged at 16 MB/s every time I try to benchmark the SSD. When I first bought it (yesterday), the 4K speed was around 21 MB/s. The SSD currently has 103 GB free out of 119 GB. Did I damage the SSD by performing several benchmarks with short intervals? What can I do to bring its speed back to the level it was at before?

 

Hi Joe, thank you for your response. I am not sure whether my SSD compresses data, but what worries me is that its performance worsened significantly (according to benchmarks) within a short time frame.

 

My system's working fine; I suppose there's no real problem, but can you tell me possible reasons behind the performance drop through benchmarks? That's what I was originally interested in finding out. Thanks for your time.

 

Thank you very much

 

Question: Did I damage the SSD by performing so many benchmarks though? Its model is Lite On L9S 128GB. Thanks.

 

Thanks Joe. You are very helpful.

 

Sorry, I have yet another question. Will my SSD help reduce lag when it comes to gaming? Specifically, I play Don't Starve which produces horrible lag late in the game, supposedly because there's more things built. Do you think my SSD will reduce this effect?

 

Running a game from the SSD might reduce the load times a little but it's very unlikely to have any effect on the game play; amount and speed of RAM; placement, amount and drive speed of Virtual Memory; speed and core #'s of the CPU; VRAM amount and speed of the graphics card; resolution and response time of the monitor; efficiency of the main drivers; how 'transparent' the firewall/antivirus software is, etc. are all in the equation when it comes to optimally configuring a PC for gaming.

Late session gaming lag/slowdown, look to VRAM amount (does it improve when played at a lower res.?), VM size/placement/fragmentation and CPU/VRM/NB temps. (is something throttling?) first.

Benchmarking SSD's: once after Windows install and once if it feels like it's choking. If there's ~25% free space on the SSD and the PC is allowed to 'rest' occasionally (for TRIM/GC to operate), the SSD should be fine over the long term.

Overdoing the benchmarking will make any inherent issues with the type of SSD/controller/firmware level worse. Study the reviews and benchmarks for your particular SSD carefully, badge marketing aside, they're all different.

 

Thanks guys! I just happened to benchmark my SSD 10 times a day so I was a bit worried.

"No. LiteON SSD is design with Instant Restore, this is similar to TRIM command, except Instant Restore is perform in real time, user do not need to execute a TRIM command in order to remove the unwanted block of data."

Taken from the FAQ page of the SSD's homepage. I know the English is bad, but what do you make out of this?

 

I was just fiddling with it! I just got more and more worried seeing the benchmarks drop each time with no signs of any upward movement Recently I found out that the root of the difference is energy saving features of non-high-performance power plans. I changed the plan from Balanced to High Performance and benchmarked again, and you guessed it, the numbers shot up immediately.

To all those who just bought an SSD, please don't be dumb like yours truly :-o

 

Indeed. SSD's are nice, I have two myself, and working on a 3rd, but the cheap consumer ones are not meant to be bench marked constantly. They have a limited write time, and that is part of the issue you are having.
I'm not familiar with the lite-on ssd, but I hope it works out with you.

Currently, I'm looking in buying another 1TB ssd to replace my 10k velociraptor drive. Once that is done, I'll be running everything on SSD's. 2.5TB worth. heh :major