i7 & x58 boot times

[arc87]

Hi there,

System components are

i7 920
EX-58 Extreme
OCZ 12gb DDR3 PC3-10666 / 1333MHz / Intel Core i7 Edition
Gigabyte 5870
OCZ vertex 60gb
WD black 500gb
Pioneer blu-ray player & dvd-rw
Corsair HX-850
Windows 7 home premium

Now system is taking 43 sec to push of power button to ready to use i would have thought it would be alot quicker.

From time i push power button to time monitor is out of standby and into bois text 16sec.

another 8sec to load bois text & post summery

and 19sec to load windows and ready to use.

the first part pushing button on to bois text 16 sec is there anyway to speed that up faster ram ect, ive heard people say quick boot but its not a feature.

[qwertylesh]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

lol Hi arc, ltns hey? :P

I thought you got the overall boot up time improved a little bit already?

It would seem that the 19 seconds (imo) is quite long for loading off the disk considering its SSD.

Did you try format and reinstalling the ssd after enabling the sata native setting?

I think lsdmeasap can help you optimize your bios configuration further then what I have suggested on the ocau forums, which is good, but i do also think that if you setup a fresh windows on the ssd after the bios is thoroughly configured, that you'll get better windows 7 boot up times.

I haven't timed mine to the second but really what you've been describing here and on the ocau forums is pretty unusual, I think mine starts up faster and my system is lower spec'd as we've discussed already.

Hope you can get it all sorted out mate :)

[arc87]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

Hey mate did you see the link to the trim tool i posted on ocau it doesnt say win 7 but do you think its worth ago ?

I have improved timing thanks to your help so far but as you say 19sec is awhile some vids on utube and that i watch with similar or less speced rigs can be button on ready to go in 24 sec maybe its just a conflicting hardware?

I didnt format the ssd but after enabling the sata native setting i did a fresh isntall. From what i understand from the ocau post is that formatting is no good for ssd.

[kg4icg]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

What are you guys expecting miracles? The os doesn't boot until after the BIOS initializes which is right after you push the power button, unless you have a EFI BIOS then things would be faster, but measured time for booting OS is after the BIOS finshes initializing, not after the power button was pushed.

[wazza300]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

mine takes 56 seconds from pressing switch to reaching desktop,but thats with mechanical hd's

[LulaDude]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

Hi all

long time reader, 1st time posting...

...mainly because I have the same problem here: w7 load times are about the same as for the X58-UD5 in AHCI to "load" bios and drivers!

right now I dont have any more details (bios revisions, etc) om my system, but it has a W7 ultimate (fresh install) in a X25-M 80GB.

what could I do to improve this new and awkard situation !?

thanks in advance

[Psycho101]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

If any of these delays you guys are experiencing are due to the AHCI BIOS, then updating your mobo BIOS to the latest version may resolve things, as long as the new AHCI ROM is included. My board is now using 1.20E and is super quick.

Using wiper.exe (trim tool) won't do a thing for BIOS delays. Also Indilinx SSD speed degradation is mainly on sequential and random writes. Read speed remains pretty stable, sometimes dropping maybe 10%, compared to a 40% drop in write performance. Some random writes are performed at boot, but the random IOPS of a degraded Indilinx drive are still~5-6 times higher than a WD Velociraptor.

Formatting and reinstalling will only help if you have the latest TRIM supporting firmware, which is 1.40, a copy of Windows 7 and you format the drive from Disk Manager in Windows. The low level driver used during Windows Setup doesn't pass the TRIM command.

Sometimes with an Indilinx drive, even with TRIM enabled, Windows 7 looses track of the LBA bitmap, causing TRIM to not restore performance. To rectify this, go to Disk Management and shrink the OS partition of the SSD by a couple of GB, restart then re-expand it. This forces the bitmap to be reconstructed.

You might actually want to try the 1.41 Vertex firmware. this doesn't have TRIM, but instead has advanced Garbage Collection and Block Consolidation. IMO the 1.41 firmware does a slightly better job of keeping performance up, and it works with RAID, unlike TRIM which doesn't. Wiper.exe can still be run on 1.41 firmware without problems. TRIM is good because it's going to be the defacto standard and something all SSD makers can implement due to being an industry standard. It however isn't quite as good as a combo of GC and Block Consolidation, plus a manual wiper.exe now and again.

For people with an Intel drive, it depends which version you have. The G1 drives don't support TRIM and Intel sy they never will. The G2 drives do, but the firmware update has currently been withdrawn.

To restore performance to 100% on an Intel SSD (also works for any other SSD inc Indilinx Barefoot based ones) download HDDErase 3.3, image your drive, set Legacy IDE mode in the BIOS and run HDDErase. This issues the ATA-Secure Erase command which resets the NAND to "empty". Remember to go back into the BIOS and restore AHCI mode after. This is especially important on Intel drives which get a huge boost from AHCI in random IOPs. Also make sure the intel drive has the latest firmware flashed to it before you run HDDErase. Again, the drive needs to be in Legacy IDE mode to be flashed. The ISO with the latest firmware and flasher tool is on the Intel site.


To measure true boot time from the moment that HDD/SSD speed matters:
Use the zipped executable I've attached to this post. It will open a cmd prompt and a dialog box asking you if you wish to reboot. click yes and it will time how long it takes until the OS is completely 100% loaded. I have checked the exe and it's virus free. If you want to download it yourself, go here, half way down the page in section II called "Boot Time".

[qwertylesh]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

thanks for the information Psycho101 :)
It should help the op, and also lets him know the ssd tools wont improve the boot up time.

kg4icg, I have no issue whatsoever with my rig and startup time, mine is very quick, im using mechanical hard drives as per my sig, the OP's rig really should startup quicker then mine though, we both have 920's and C7 ram (he's not using raid, we have very similar bios configurations), infact his disk should make a big the difference compared to mine.

LulaDude, go with Psycho's suggestion if your board takes a long time at the AHCI screen, with the newest ahci/raid rom, its detection screen is super quick.
I setup an ex58-ud3r rev 1.6 yesterday and the ahci deteciton screen barely draws onto the screen before its done and drawing the next screen (post summary) its that quick!

[arc87]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

Spoke to a guy at local computer shop and he reckomended bois flash ? if that is the case is it jsut the f8 key and away it goes. He reckons the time from push button to bois load screen (20 secs) is normal. But then he agreed with me that my system is slow comparded to his and apparently mine is way superior to his.


Psycho101 i tried that zip thing opened it up did the restart but where do i find the results nothing opens up again saying a time.

I have thought about getting an asus p6t deluxe 2 as another member on another site has got pretty much same as me although i have 12gb ram and he has 6 and he has x2 5870 where i have 1 and he takes 20secs from button push to ready to use.

[LulaDude]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

thanks for your help!

I am a little confused with this thing AHCI ROM: if I do a bios update will I have this latest AHCI ROM, or should I install a new driver?

In this later case, will I have to instal the w7 again?

[qwertylesh]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

You shouldn't need to install a new driver, just flash to the latest bios for your motherboard and it should hopefully be a newer ahci version.

If not the latest beta should be, and if still not you could modify the latest to have a newer version ahci and raid rom, but thats strongly not recommended.

[arc87]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

I have just downloaded beta f9d and saved to file but @bois update wont "update bois from file"

Can not load ROM image from BIN file. Maybe BIN size not match.

What else can i do to update to version F9D ?

[LulaDude]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

hi just checked my current bios: f7 (X58-UD5). the last non-beta version.

have I another problem?

[Psycho101]

Re: i7 & x58 boot times

It's strongly suggested by many on this forum, including our resident moderator Lsdmeasap that one avoids using @BIOS. To flash, use QFlash. Load the BIOS file onto a USB stick, boot and enter the BIOS. Hit the relevant [F] button to enter QFlash and follow the prompts. Note that Legacy USB Storage Detect must be enabled in the BIOS to flash from USB.

As qwertylesh rightly says, hopefully the latest beta will have an updated version of the AHCI BIOS. If not, then I personally would not worry. How long it takes to clear the BIOS/AHCI detection is in no way a measure of PC performance. The delay is simply because of BIOS and AHCI ROMdetection and diagnostic routines that do not engage any higher level functions of the PC. You could runa slow AHCI on IBM's Deep Blue and it wiould take just as long Certainly not worth buying another Mobo over.

If it is annoying you, consider using Hybernate or S3 Sleep, maybe even Hybridsleep (S4) if the board supports it.

Also qwertylesh was on the money RE drivers. No re-install or driver update is needed. AHCI RoM is part of the low level detection and diagnostic routines and mobo to OS hand-off. Windows has no need for drivers or a reinstall regarding its change.