*OFFICIAL* Alienware M18x Benchmark Thread - Part 2

[juliant]

Ofcourse, I had a problem uploading pics that is why I was keeping them in zip format.

[Mr. Fox]

OK, I see that RST 11.5 is supposed to have RAID0 TRIM, so I am testing this version that I found available for Lenovo ThinkPad beta testers now.

Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology Driver for Windows 8 (64-bit) Beta - ThinkPad

Will report back after installing it and messing around whether it's a go.

Edit: Well, it's the same version that Keith posted, only without the RST GUI. It only throws a BSOD relating to iastorA.sys if I try to launch the Intel SSD Toolbox, so I reinstalled the beta Keith linked and I'm going to leave it be and see what transpires. My D: drive is still showing up in the Safely Remove Hardware tray app as a SCSI device, LOL.

[steviejones133]

I just grabbed HDtune 4.60 before tinkering with RST, ran it and I have the same problem - no info displayed. Also have the same odd partition but I do recall having to turn off another C: Drive in drive properties to get rid of it and allow system restore to run on my raid.

Also noticed that John has the same thing on his HDtune shot.....maybe its just the way of things....

[Mr. Fox]

Just to add to the fun......

If I remember correctly, RST 11.5 was supposed to provide TRIM for raided SSD's. There is a beta version of it on Station Drivers (versus the Alpha that seemed to be listed forever) if you guys want to give it a shot also. I installed it yesterday, and so far so good.

intel drivers pour Raid/Sata/Ata/Ahci

Brother Keith, this is still working OK for me as long as I don't launch the Intel SSD Toolbox (caused BSOD, but did not with the older versions of RST). Seems good right now other than my D: being seen as "removable" SCSI drive. That does not seem to be hurting anything. The RAID is seen as a SCSI also. They were not shown as SCSI with the earlier versions of RST.

Another odd observation is that my D: drive and RAID array [C:] have switched positions. My RAID is now Drive 1 and the HDD is Drive 0.

[Keith]

Brother Keith, this is still working OK for me as long as I don't launch the Intel SSD Toolbox (caused BSOD, but did not with the older versions of RST). Seems good right now other than my D: being seen as "removable" SCSI drive. That does not seem to be hurting anything. The RAID is seen as a SCSI also. They were not shown as SCSI with the earlier versions of RST.

Another odd observation is that my D: drive and RAID array [C:] have switched positions. My RAID is now Drive 1 and the HDD is Drive 0.

All I did was uninstall the old RST, reboot, and install the 11.5. I don't have any other drives installed in my system besides the two SSD's, so I didn't get the drive switcheroo deal that you are dealing with.

What makes me think the TRIM commands are finally being passed is my CDM results. When I first installed the drives in the array, my sequential read/writes were 1000/800 on average. After a few weeks, the speed had dropped to 800/550 ish. This was with whatever version of RST I have on my flash drive. TBH, I don't recall what version it is.

Before I switched to the 11.5 I did another CDM bench to do a "before and after" comparison. The results came back in the 800/550 range.

Before going by my parents for Mother's Day, I switched over to 11.5 and let the system sit idle while we were gone for the day - about 8 hours. When I got home that night, I redid the CDM bench to see what effect if any it had on the performance of the drives. The result came back in the 1000/800 range, so I assumed it was finally passing the TRIM command?

[izpirikitik]

Tried to fire up 3Dmark06 with m18x (Windows 7 Ultimate 64) and i get this error:

"This application has failed to start because openAL32.dll was not found. Re- installing the application my fix this problem."

Tried downloading oalinst from creativelabs, didn't fix it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[juliant]

Here we go guys:

1. Vantage score (GPU 725/1500, CPU 2960XM 4.2 Ghz)
2. Intel RST screenshot.

Regards

[steviejones133]

Here we go guys:

1. Vantage score (GPU 725/1500, CPU 2960XM 4.2 Ghz)
2. Intel RST screenshot.

Regards

Thanks for posting those! +rep!

Looks like one of your SSD's (middle port, right??) is indeed only running Sata II (which was kinda expected) but so is the mSata, which is kinda disappointing as your Samsung PM830 64gb mSata can perform at Sata III speeds...... Nice score on vantage btw

[Mr. Fox]

Here we go guys:

1. Vantage score (GPU 725/1500, CPU 2960XM 4.2 Ghz)
2. Intel RST screenshot.

Regards

Thanks for the screen shots, buddy. Much appreciated.

To help us get a better understanding of how the 675M SLI setup performs, please select "Disable PPU" from the Vantage options. The benchmarks we have posted in this thread are with PPU turned off. See thumbnail for the setting in question. (We cannot get a clear picture of the true performance compared to AMD CF systems with PPU enabled because AMD systems are lacking many of the features we have with NVIDIA, and PPU is a huge one.)

One other favor, please post the URL as a link for your Futuremark web scores. Here is an example of the URL to my top score (with PPU disabled):

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2920XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 score: P32676 3DMarks

[juliant]

Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2960XM Processor,Alienware M18xR2 score: P27120 3DMarks