Finding SSD Bottleneck

PerfectBlue97

I've just upgraded my motherboard and cpu to a Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra with a Ryzen 7 2700, and swapped out my data volume from a Western Digital Blue to a Crucial MX500. My OS is on a separate SSD.

I was expecting to see a visible performance boost when reading\writing files from Photoshop or similar software if only because I'm moving from HD to SSD, but there hasn't been much change. And I suspect that I've got got a bottleneck somewhere, such as an incorrect setting on my motherboard, or that I've done something dumb with the way that I've connected the new data volume to the motherboard.

Task manager says that I'm not even getting close to stressing anything, I'm barely even accessing my RAM, and the files that I'm using aren't stupidly large, so I should be seeing faster read\write times on an SSD.

Does anybody have any clues as to what dumb thing that I've done, or where my bottleneck might be?

DavidG1

Initially test the speed of the SSD using crystaldiskinfo and update your post

PerfectBlue97

These are my OS SSD and my Data SSD. They're older models so they won't ever be blisteringly fast, but I'd expected more of a performance boost over my old WD Blue.

My PC boot up as quickly as you would expect, but when I'm saving files from packages like Photoshop, or loading more demanding games, I'm not seeing much difference.

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CrystalDiskMark 6.0.1 x64 (UWP) (C) 2007-2018 hiyohiyo

Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World

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* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]

* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes



Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 522.693 MB/s

Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 368.955 MB/s

Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 158.283 MB/s [ 38643.3 IOPS]

Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 192.516 MB/s [ 47001.0 IOPS]

Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 155.763 MB/s [ 38028.1 IOPS]

Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 132.260 MB/s [ 32290.0 IOPS]

Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 22.923 MB/s [ 5596.4 IOPS]

Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 77.356 MB/s [ 18885.7 IOPS]



Test : 2048 MiB [C: 85.6% (190.6/222.6 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]

Date : 2019/03/02 17:06:43

OS : Windows 10 [10.0 Build 17763] (x64)





-----------------------------------------------------------------------

CrystalDiskMark 6.0.1 x64 (UWP) (C) 2007-2018 hiyohiyo

Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]

* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes



Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 562.074 MB/s

Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 503.925 MB/s

Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 398.064 MB/s [ 97183.6 IOPS]

Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 325.731 MB/s [ 79524.2 IOPS]

Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 210.732 MB/s [ 51448.2 IOPS]

Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 182.787 MB/s [ 44625.7 IOPS]

Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 42.863 MB/s [ 10464.6 IOPS]

Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 101.598 MB/s [ 24804.2 IOPS]



Test : 2048 MiB [F: 7.8% (36.2/465.8 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]

Date : 2019/03/02 17:12:33

OS : Windows 10 [10.0 Build 17763] (x64)

DavidG1

I've compared your results with my SSD
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :   550.646 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :   533.464 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 8) :   394.173 MB/s [  96233.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 8) :   300.307 MB/s [  73317.1 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   190.776 MB/s [  46576.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   158.756 MB/s [  38758.8 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :    37.348 MB/s [   9118.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :    86.382 MB/s [  21089.4 IOPS]

Your OS SSD slower in most respects. I do note that your SSD only has 15% free space. You also say you upgraded the CPU and motherboard, did you do a fresh install? sometimes windows doesn't like being moved to different hardware without a clean install. Also check you have the latest BIOS update, and you have the OS SSD plugged into the primary SATA port. I would have expected your OS SSD results to be closer to mine TBH.

PerfectBlue97

The OS SSD is older and cheaper. I've been using it for several years and you get what you pay for, and I didn't pay very much, so it's not surprising that it's slower. It's plugged into Port 0 on the MB.

I'm not so worried about the OS disc. It's performing as expected for the amount that I paid. It's the Data one that I think is the problem. File save\loads are taking almost as long as they were on a 5 year old WD Blue. I'm not getting the performance boost that I think I should have.

I'm also noticing that game load times haven't significantly improved. I'm using a much faster CPU. I've moved from budget DDR3 RAM to DDR4 gaming RAM, and my games are now stored on an SSD.

The Data SSD was installed at the same time as the new motherboard, it's brand new out of the box and was never used on the old motherboard. So it shouldn't matter if the OS was a fresh install as there would be no legacy for the Data volume to conflict.

Greg Hook

You have connected the ssd to the right sata port?
Usually motherboards have a mix of 3 and 6gb ports.

PerfectBlue97

It's an X470 Aorus Ultra, so it only has SATA 3 ports, they're all 6gb. The OS disc is connected to port 0, the Data SSD is connected to port 1. I have a WD Black connected to Port 2, and a DVDR connected to Port 3.

The bios is current, it was release a couple of months ago. The cables are brand new out of the box, and I let Windows choose the Drives for the Data SSD. I left the SSD Port settings as the default for the motherboard.

No tinkering, no overclocking. It's a vanilla factory fresh motherboard.

DavidG1

Data transfer involves more than just your data drive. It involves windows drivers, registry changes, motherboard chipset and architecture.  Photoshop and windows drivers will reside on the operating system drive. Your D drive looks to be performing as expected looking at crystaldiskmark. I think you should be looking elsewhere for the bottleneck. Either the motherboard chipset (check you have the latest chipset drivers) or as mentioned before consider a clean install of windows. It may be a hassle to do but most other options have been excluded.
Also if it is a new model of motherboard the drivers will be relatively immature and performance may improve with further releases of chipset/SATA/PCH drivers, so you may have to wait. Also consider an email to gigabyte support to see if other people have had the same problem.

Kesuke

Is your OS on an SSD that connects via M.2 connector or SATA?
Do you have anything else in your PCIe slots other than a GPU?How much RAM does your system have in total?
What is the RAM allocation in Photoshop? (Edit > Preferences > Performance)Which disk is Photoshop using as the Scratch disk? (also in same menu as above)Quick/simple things to try;
Empty anything you can safely move off of the OS drive. Ideally it should literally just be the OS installed on that drive and NOTHING else. 15Gb is not a lot of room to play with on an old SSD. If you can run whatever optimization software came with that SSD (i.e. for Samsung SSDs it is called Samsung Magician).
Go into your control panel > system > apps and features... delete anything on the OS drive that you don't use or want anymore (like old games) to create a bit of space
Run a disk cleanup utility (like the windows built in version: control panel > admin tools > disk cleanup) on both drives.Update the SSD and Mobo drivers (make a good backup somewhere before you do this just in case)Your SSD drive performance doesn't seem unreasonable, so you should be seeing faster load and save times in photoshop. I regularly work with files that are gigabytes in size using photoshop and noticed a clear improvement using an SSD.

PerfectBlue97

1)  Both discs are SATA 3
2) No expansion cards other than the GPU
3) 16GB Ram, max load approximately 40%
4) 70% allocated, other graphics software set to similar amounts
5) Software is on the OS volume, data volume only has data on it.