SSD performance differences

Also posted this on a pc forum. No responses. Is this normal behavior in sample streaming drives?
 

What motherboard? I wonder if there is a difference between the SATA ports the different SSDs are connected to? I wonder if it is worth trying swapping SATA cables and ports to eliminate that possibility?
 
Cheers, Peter.
 

http://event.asus.com/2011/mb/Identify_B3_Motherboards/
 
Is yours the B3 revision? If not, there seems to be an issue with SATA ports on the original version. Although that page says you can use B3 BIOS and drivers, it's not clear if that fixes the problem. This might all be a red herring, but worth eliminating.
 
Cheers, Peter.
 

One more thing (then I need to go to work). It looks like that mobo has two SATA 6 ports (one dark blue and one white one - not sure why they are different colors), and two SATA 3 ports (light blue). Is it possible that the OS SSD is connected to a SATA 6 port, and the other SSDs are on the light blue SATA 3 ports?
 

It has 4 3 gb sata 3 light blue ports. Nothing but dvd plugged into them.2 gray 6gb. I have my os in one. I had Barracuda in the other. I swapped it with one of the ssds to see if it would run faster. OS still in same port. PC won't load windows. Right up to the spinning icon on the windows screen, but screen goes black. I took all drives but OS out, it does the same thing. Why is this?

I got it back up running after 2 more reboots?!? Anyway, I changed the drives around to see if the non OS would run any faster in the grey sata 6gb than the blue 6gb ports. No difference at all. Makes me wonder if I bought anything other than quieter drives. I don't understand how the OS drive is so amazing and the others are so seemingly pedestrian.

I also have that MB and in addition to only two 6GB/s connections the BIOS I run was not on ASUS's website for a long time (and forget if it ever was, since it has a fruity build number and date - like it was outsourced to AM). That particular MB was ASUS trying to jump the gun on new technology, and not all of it happened.

PassMark's benchtest is a better program to check your machine. They have a free trial and will do the entire machine. Realize the entire system needs evaluation to be valid.

SONAR is not intensive for video at all, so even a moderate card for graphics is fine. Ironically even high-end 3D cards don't "excel" at 2D either... they are geared for 3D, not 2D, so a heavy-handed 3D card still isn't going to gain much in the 2D realm (and unnecessary).
 
Bottom line, if the performance isn't obviously bad, looking at benchmarking software can just get folks focused on "non-practical application." The SSD on the Program/OS drive is #1 priority (and most benefit), and seems you have that. Max-throughput on a data drive is rarely going to be achieved and really unnecessary - sort of like a car that top-ends at 240mph... where are you going to top-end it at? Moving the entire contents from one to the other would be about it.
 
With that said, have you tested out "real world" performance running some projects you are familiar with? The X3 Demo project I have found useful to try various things out (especially good for setting buffers on audio interfaces). Streaming situations or intense orchestral libraries would be the best test, but I have never done either of these.

This may or may not be useful....some bios  setups have "power saving" and throttling. If you plugged into the correct ports Jim mentioned, do you know if you have performance settings in your bios? If so, there is a possibility that your system is only using what it think it needs to use. If you have any kind of power saving or throttling I would turn it off.

In the Magician screen it should show which SATA interface type it is using.

 
My non-os drive is performing without issues.
 

 
Although there is a "Rapid" mode but, according to a blurb in one of the screens, it can only be activated on one drive at a time (Advanced Feature | Rapid Mode). I currently have mine set to have the system drive in Rapid mode. That may account for the differences in performance. The blue ones here are my non-os, non rapid mode drive.
 

 
 

Ahh, good to know. That would explain the 'off-the-chart' speeds.