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**Tradesman** · 05-26-2012, 12:33 PM

Could be a few things, you may well be processing as fast as the current hardware allows, if reading from one and writing to another drive you'll be limited to to speed of the slowest drive which will be the mechanical drive(s). Might download Crystal Disk Mark or a similar benchmarking program to test each drive and see what they run at....Also want to keep in mind that while SATA II specs call for up to 3GB xfer rates, there aren't any mechanical drives that run that fast, hence obviously, even if a drive (mechanical) is classified as SATA III 6GB, it's not going to be able to run even at 3GB. You might check that the SSD is set up correctly, using AHCI drivers to get optimal speed from it, but still it will be doubtful you'll get the advertised 550MBs, maybe 500 for reads. More DRAM or an increased OC on the CPU might speed things up, but as far as the drives go, not a lot I can offer to help...I would suggest keeping the writes to the SSD to a minimum, writes are the bane of SSDs, I normally suggest they be used for OS and primary apps, in other words, primarily static data that doesn't change and is primarily just read from. Having a page file, writing temp files and caches on an SSD can shorten it's life

**Tradesman** · 05-26-2012, 12:43 PM

If you have a chance list your full system specs i.e what CPU is running at, what DRAM and it's timings/voltages, models and caches of the hard drives, GPU, PSU and I'll try and rough out some recommendations (also what software are you using for the rendering, some are better attuned to RAM/GPU/other than others are.

**p23185** · 05-26-2012, 07:07 PM

Originally posted by Tradesman View Post

If you have a chance list your full system specs i.e what CPU is running at, what DRAM and it's timings/voltages, models and caches of the hard drives, GPU, PSU and I'll try and rough out some recommendations (also what software are you using for the rendering, some are better attuned to RAM/GPU/other than others are.

Here goes.........

Don't get me wrong - I was happy with the current system and being able to render a 55min DVD compliant video to a mpg2 format in 9:32 min. BUT I had heard so much about the blazing speeds of a SSD that I thought I would just give it a try as an alternate to the HDD on video before setting one up as a the system drive. After all rendering that same 55m video used to be a "turn on and go to bed" activity with Win 98 SE and a Pentium 4 machine a decade ago.

System specs
Asus Mobo P8P67Deluxe, with Intel_i7-2600, 4 core/8 threads 3.4Ghz (no OC has been done)
voltages from the Asus probe monitor
Vcore 0.976v
+12v 12.000v
+5v 5.040v
+3.5v 3.312v
Probe reports CPU Freq of 1604.5 Mhz while I sit here composing this response. When someone called me on Windows Live IM the freq jumped up to 3810.4 Mhz - so I guess it adjusts itself based on the need to process and calculate..

RAM 8Gb DDR3-1600 Kingston HyperX (2 modules 4Gb each) - not sure how to get timings/voltages inside Win 7??? Rebooting and checking BIOS, I went into the AI Tweaker (never been in there), and under DRAM timing control the freq says 1600Mhz and all the other parameters (two pages of them) are all set to "auto".

HDD
disk 0 = C:\, D:\ Dual Boot of Win 7 Ultimate/Win 8 Consumer Preview
500Gb, Hatachi Model H31K5003272SP (or HDS721050CLA362)
This is a 7200rpm, 16Mb cache, Serial-ATA 3 Gbit / s

disk 2 = F:\, G:\ Video capture
Seagate 1.0 Tb, ST331000524AS 7200rpm SATA 6.0Gb, 32Mb cache Installed on 6Gb SATA channel

disk 1 = L:\, M:\ MPEG2 output files
Seagate 1.0Tb, ST310005N1A1AS-RK (or ST31000528AS) 32Mb cache, SATA 3.0Gb, 7200 rpm

disk 3 = S:\ Testing the SSD speed Installed on 6Gb SATA channel

Where would I find the correct drivers for these HDDs - i.e. where would I see the term AHCI driver for the HDDs? Would the term AHCI only appear in BIOS? When I go to device manager inside Win 7 the drivers listed are -

Hitachi - Windows 6.1.7600.16385
Seagate(s) - Windows 6.1.7600.16385
SPCC SSD110 ATA Device - Windows 6.1.7600.16385

All drives are using the same Windows driver - is this an AHCI driver? I have to admit this is an unknown to me - I have always just plugged the HDD in and checked to see the BIOS recognized it then boot to windows and initialize / format it.

SSD Speed - What was perplexing to me is that I copied the 24Gb of captured video over to SDD and used that drive to read while writing to L: I ended up with the identical speed of using the F: drive to read and write the output file to the S: SDD. There is no improvement writing or reading from the SDD - zip nada none - identical time backwards and forward. The task manager CPU monitor shows it just loafing along at 30-35% while rendering the MPG2 output file. One core/thread is usually at idle.

VIDEO SOFTWARE I am using Avid Pinnacle Studio v15 as the capture software, editor, and renderer to produce the MPEG2 output file (takes 9:32min from first paragraph above) which creates the finished file from the captured Audio Video Interlaced (AVI) file format off the camera or capture hardware.

PSU Is Thermaltake 600W, model TR-600P.

GPU Is nVidia GeForce_GT450

Other
I have a Vantec EZ Swap tray for plugging in backup SATA HDDs, and two NAS Drives. I didn't figure they need discussion here. The EZ Swap tray is empty currently.

**p23185** · 05-26-2012, 07:34 PM

I just discovered this issue - How to enable AHCI in Windows 7 RC after installation. So went out to BIOS and fortunately the SATA configuration is set to AHCI. I either don't remember selecting that when building the PC or have never known I needed to do something. There were four options to pick from
Disabled
IDE Mode
AHCI Mode
RAID Mode

**Tradesman** · 05-26-2012, 08:56 PM

You've got AHCI so that's good, many default to IDE Mode and that sort of what I was expecting, it's a slower interface, so good there. Might want to download CrystalDiskMark (Freebie) or something similar and you'll be able to see better what the drives can do.

Big question would be on the CPU, Is it the straight 2600 or the 2600K - the straight 2600 is a locked CPU at 3.4, however I'd go ahead use use Turbo Boost, which will kick it up to 3.8 and try running the video there......with video rendering the CPU is the primary thing...the faster the better. If it the 2600, then you can further OC it by raising the BLCK to a degree, I'd just start with the turbo boost and see how that does, using the BLCK to OC will take us a bit longer and have to be a little more careful (i.e. watching temps and voltages, etc).....
If you have the 2600K, that's a whole nother thing...the K model is unlocked and you can really go wild.....being unlocked you just raise the multiplier (still need to watch temps/voltages but much easier than the plain 2600 and playing with the BLCK). When I build a 2600K, I normally deliver it at 4.2 GHz or higher. I'm running one on air at 5 GHz and have a 2500K that runs at 5.1 GHz on air (currrently).

So check out the CPU and if straight 2600, go ahead and enable turbo boost, kicj it up to 3.8 and try that,,,if you have the K model, I'd just kick it up to 4GHz (to start anyway, shouldn't require any voltage adjustments)

**p23185** · 05-27-2012, 09:14 AM

The CPU appears to be a plain 2600, NOT a "K" version
I will try the turbo boost this afternoon

**p23185** · 05-27-2012, 09:16 AM

guess I don't know how to post a picture, go ehre

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...id-1freq-1.jpg

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...PUid-2data.jpg

**Tradesman** · 05-27-2012, 09:30 AM

All right, I'd go ahead and try w/ the turbo boost on at 3.8....from there can raise the BUS (BCLK) which is what shows at 100 in your first pic....but see how things are at the 3.8 initially

**p23185** · 05-27-2012, 07:30 PM

Originally posted by Tradesman View Post

All right, I'd go ahead and try w/ the turbo boost on at 3.8....from there can raise the BUS (BCLK) which is what shows at 100 in your first pic....but see how things are at the 3.8 initially

OK, I used the "FAST" button under the Auto Tuning tab. This shows it was sucessful and increased the CPU freq from 3.4 to 4.3 (27%)

http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...sful052712.jpg

Next I rendered the same file from a couple of days ago, while monitoring the resource monitor and the cpu freq monitor. The time came down from 9:32 min (Friday) to 9:07 min. Not really significant is it?........certainly not a 27% improvement, which is what the CPU speed improved. In fact it shaved 25 seconds off Friday's time, which is a 4.4% saving.

http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...Freq052712.jpg

Here is a pic of the freq and voltages for this setting. Note the idle freq of 1647 Mhz compared to the previous screen shot of 4016 Mhz when rendering.

http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...lues052712.jpg

I probably will go no further - I still think other than for perhaps reliability (no spinning parts) the SSD is no better than 7200rpm hard drive.

**p23185** · 05-27-2012, 07:41 PM

Here are some RAM parameters out of the ASUS monitor
Slot #1
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...ters052712.jpg

Slot #3
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...ters052712.jpg

**Tradesman** · 05-27-2012, 08:17 PM

I'm not familiar with your SSD, GSkill makes SSDs but not these and I've used GSkill, OCZ, Partiot, Corsair and Crucial, but never Silicon Power, might contact them, and they may have some ideas to increase it's performance -

UStech@silicon-power.com

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No performance enhancement on SP V60 SSD

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