Trying to gauge SSD performance

Hi all,
I just installed Windows 8.1 on a brand new Samsung 850 Pro (after some trouble) and I'm trying to assess the performance to make sure everything came out all right before I go to all the trouble of reinstalling my applications. Here are my results from AS-SSD benchmark -- they seem lower than the advertised numbers, but maybe that's nothing. Let me know if these are fine and how I can improve (just wanting to make sure things are set up correctly, not wanting to squeeze every number out of this thing).

(I've already double-checked to make sure the drive is aligned, though the default 8.1 installation should have accounted for this if I understand correctly)
Regards,

Samsung Magician is asking me to enable AHCI mode in order to boost performance, but I'm not sure how to do this.

authorandrew said:

Samsung Magician is asking me to enable AHCI mode in order to boost performance, but I'm not sure how to do this.

Click to expand...

You have to go into your PCs BIOS to change IDE to AHCI for your disk. To understand what the differences between the two go here.

Ok, my BIOS doesn't have an option to change this. Following the link you sent me, I found this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8gW_ycdnas#t=17 -- the option it mentions, in the Main tab, is not in my BIOS. Perhaps this could be solved by a BIOS update?

Here are the details. Make the setting in the OS first. If there is no AHCI setting in the BIOS, use RAID.

AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista - Windows 7 Help Forums

Other than that your numbers are really good.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. It's not that I don't have an AHCI option, it's that I don't have the option to change anything about my disk at all. My BIOS looks pretty basic.

EDIT: I also don't have an msahci key in my registry, perhaps due to the age of my computer? It's from c. 2012

Yes, the AS SSD figures look good, that's normal for SATA II capable laptop, you will achieve the advertised speeds only in a SATA III capable laptop.

Ahh, I suspected the SATA connector was the bottleneck. Is that after-market upgradeable, or just something to wait until I upgrade?

There is really nothing to worry about. In the measurements you may get better nums with a Sata III connector, but in real life you would not notice the difference. The amazing speed of the SSDs comes from the extremely short access time (0.1ms or less versus 15ms of a HDD). The data transfer rates are of minor importance - especially since the OS deals only with 4K records most of the time. If you make a measurement with Atto, you will understand what I mean.

That's good to hear. Thanks! Now to set up my apps/programs again...