***EDIT*** THIS APPLIES MAINLY FOR INSTALLING WINDOWS 8/8.1 ON ASUS LAPTOPS UPGRADED WITH AN SSD!!! ***EDIT***

***AIMED AT 4K PERFORMANCE***

Hey All!!!

I´m starting this thread with the goal of clearing up some misconceptions about the "Preferred" Win8/8.1 installation method on SSD´s... I have come to discover some interesting results! Here's some background information... A have an Asus K55A notebook which I upgraded with a 250GB Samsung 840 SSD... Specs are an Intel Core i3-3110M CPU, HM76/ 7-Series/C216 Chipset, 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3-PC12800 1600MHz running a Clean installed Win8.1 Pro RTM (x64)
To my surprise I always seemed to suffer poor SSD performance from the beginning... Couldn´t really ever figure out why... I ran thru ALL available Intel RST drivers... From v11.5 up to v12.9 with no real improvement... I wasn't getting anywhere near the advertised specs and rates for the 840 SSD... I also unlocked additional P & C-States, Parking and so on... I went thru pains of unlocking my UEFI/BIOS and messing around with settings that ended up bricking my notebook TWICE!!! I researched countless Tweaks and Win8.1 settings looking for a solution... Ultimately nothing seemed to solve the riddle... I also tested various NTFS Cluster Sizes... 512, 1024, 4096... up to 64KB... Different sizes for the EFI Partition, Recovery, C: and D: Partitions too... Making sure everything was 4K aligned and so on... I also tried various Over Provisioning spaces... Also excluding D: Partition as well... NOTHING provided answers or insight as to the cause.... I always Serure Erased the SSD using Samsung Magician previous to each install... Still coming up short in performance....
A few days ago I purchased an Asus S451LN VivoBook for my wife... And installed the same SSD I had in my K55A... Now... Again I Clean installed Win8.1 Pro like usual... And noticed the same exact lack of performance!!! Now this one has an Intel Core i5-4200U, 8 Series Chipset and 6GB DDR3 1600MHz Ram... So how could this be??? Just for kicks I tried something new... Something I had never tried before mainly because it's not the "Preferred" installation method and is supposed to cause more problems than benefits... I used Asus Backtracker and created a Recovery USB Drive from the OEM Win8.1 1TB HDD... And installed the OEM Recovery Image on to the SSD... The install was pretty fast and it partitioned the SSD accordingly with its reduced size... I might add that with this method I cannot use any Over Provisioning due to the Restore Partition at the end of the SSD... So I opted not to install Magician...
Now, I'm fully aware that this came at a cost of having "Bloatware" and so on... I immediately proceeded to run CrystalDiskMark and benchmark the SSD... Guess what??? I'm now getting BETTER THAN ADVERTISED PERFORMANCE!!!! I must admit that I have no idea as to the answer... But I assume that Asus modifies the Windows install, drivers and registry in a way allowing the correct functionality of the system... I have run in to some ahci.reg files other files that point to AHCI functions... Let me provide some comparisons...

Here's before (This is a Clean Install with C1E DISABLED with C-P-State Tweaks, 23.29GB OP)


This is a more accurate example from before... (With numerous tweaks...)


Now here's after (The OEM Recovery Install, NO OP & No other tweaks or changes!)


So in conclusion... It may be that a "Clean" Win8/8.1 RTM install is NOT the "BEST" method after all!!! That's my opinion and may not always apply as the solution.... But it may very well be the cause of SO MANY SSD users on countless forums being impacted by poor SSD performance and not finding any answers!!! I welcome all input and comments on this matter!!! Give this a try... and compare your results!!!

@Fernando

Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #2

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Your tip is only valid for owners of a brandnew OEM system, which has been delivered by the vendor with the latest version of Windows 8.1 (actually: Spring Update 2014) and doesn't contain too much software crap (bloatware).

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Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #2

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Since the manufacturer employees, who install the original OS and Recovery partitions onto their OEM products from scratch, are no magicians, each user should be able to get at least the same performance by doing a fresh "clean" OS install and some additional optimization settings (look >here<).

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@Fernando

Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #4

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That is an interesting find. Can you give me a link to such IRST driverpack delivered by ASUS?

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Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #4

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By the way: I have an Intel HM76 Express chipset ASUS F200CA notebook, which natively had a 500 GB HDD running Windows 8 x64 in AHCI mode. In April this year I replaced the HDD by a 250 GB sized Intel 510 SSD, done a clean install of the Win8.1 x64 Spring Update Edition and the performance settings for AHCI systems I have posted >here<. Now I have a notebook, which boots within a few seconds and is much more performant than the original system.

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@Fernando

Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #6

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Thanks for the link.
When I have the needed time, I will do a deeper look into the files.

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@Fernando

Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #7

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Meanwhile I have done a look into the additional files, which had been added by ASUS to the Intel RST driver v12.8.0.1016, but I couldn't find anything, what may boost the performance of the driver.

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@Fernando

Hey, after some digging around the IRSTPatch.exe code I found a reference to a log file in Windows Log directory... Here's what the IRSTPatch log file shows:

[2014/04/09 06:44:39] Open AsToolCDVer file succeeded!.
[2014/04/09 06:44:39] Print TOOL_NB64_W8GPT_V1.0.5 from C:\Windows\AsToolCDVer.txt
[2014/04/09 06:44:39] szValueIRST = ASUS_RAID0

A while back I had come across the "ASUS_RAID0" but in Event Viewer... Back when I had the Clean RTM ISO install... I remember Events detailing "ASUS_RAID0" being reset and also something about an incorrect location path or a missing "ASUS_RAID0" partition... Maybe that's the key! Could it be that somehow Asus added RAID0 functionality on their notebooks??? I say this because back when @lordkag was proving that the HM76 isn't RAID capable and I was unlocking my K55A BIOS... Here's a screenshot of my S451LN BIOS detailing RAID0 & 1 capability...

The question is, how is RAID0 configured and how can I prove it? Since I cannot really come to a better conclusion as to the enormous 4K performance difference as well as performance in general... Any thoughts? I will continue to dig deeper and share my findings ok!

@Fernando

Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #12

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@ @JSebastian:

Thanks for your intensive investigations regarding the reason of the performance boost you got with your notebook by using the ASUS Recovery option.
I don't know, if it is important, but I want to let you know, that ASUS did never offer any Intel RST driver on their Support site (>LINK<) for my ASUS Notebook F200CA (Chipset: Intel® HM76/HM70 Express, OS: Win 8.1 x64), which I had bought in September last year.

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@Fernando

Thanks for very useful information!!!

Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #14

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ASUS doesn't alter the hardware of their notebooks, but they may optimize them. The RAID entries you found may have something to do with the Intel(R) Rapid Start Technology (look >here<), where a small sized SSD running in RAID mode is used for data caching, whereas the OS containing system drive is an HDD. This technology has been very popular especially for notebooks as long as bigger sized SSDs were very expensive. Zitat

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Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #14

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ASUS does not modify the IRST drivers, but what they may do is to boost the measurable performance by data caching similar to the "RAPID mode" of Samsung's Magician. The question is, if it gives the users just better benchmark scores or really a noticeable better performance wjhile doing their daily work.As an example you may look >here<, where I have published my recent AHCI benchmark results with and without RAPID mode. Without RAPID mode I got an overall AS_SSD score of 1129 points, whereas I got 54.620 points after having enabled the RAPID mode data caching, but without realizing any performance boost while doing my usual PC work.

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