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Need chipset drivers & BIOS experts to help in optimization
I have spent hours on benchmarking my current system and scoured the net for hours on this topic. But, before i proceed i would like the opinion of people who have seen upgrade efforts fail. I bought a new Samsung EVO 850 SSD (SATA iii) to upgrade my system. Current Specs are given below:
- Samsung PM 810 SSD ( which is the same as their 470 line) - a Sata II drive
- Dell E6420 with intel i5 running Windows xp and 4 GB RAM
- Nvidia NVS 4200 display adapter
- BIOS version A06 (current BIOS available is version A23 !!)
I have spent hours on benchmarking this system and found that SSD are not optimized. Probably because my drivers are not upto date and AHCI is not enabled in BIOS. But, before i attempt all this, i want to give some data here, hoping for feedback. I used Passmark, CrystalDiskMark and NovaBench and all were in consensus that both SSDs were not yielding expected results i saw from several others on the internet. For a sample, here are the results of both SSDs :
The new Samsung EVO 850 performance
The original PM810 that came with the laptop
Following are my questions:
- System was never updated in about 5 years, and dell website only lists BIOS versions starting from A12. So, i am not sure if it would be safe for me to jump from BIOS A06 to A23 directly, since i do not have all the details about versions until A12.
- For various reasons, it is not possible to upgrade the current Windows XP Pro and it is not possible to reinstall and start from scratch. The only option i am thinking about is to update everything - in the order prescribed by DELL here. I would like to know if i am safe, by updating the chipset drivers, followed by Intel storage (RST ?) driver to deal with the SSD. I would like to do all this prior to enabling AHCI in BIOS.
- I have made a disk image of the current SSD (onto the new Samsung EVO 850). I need step by step instruction on how best to optimize everything without crashing or burning this system, which is critical to me (for another 6 months, when i will be able to migrate everything onto a newer platform).
FYI - i am not a newbie, and have built barebone systems from scratch, but that was before 15 years. The one thing i remember from those days is that the order of chipset driver installation could be important. (Separately, i also need to start another thread to find out what exactly are the chipsets used in E6420 - if you know a link, that would save me some time spent on the net to find this info).
Thanks for all replies.
ejn63
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February 21st, 2016 09:00
#2 says it all - if you can't move beyond XP, you'll never see optimal performance from any solid state drive -- XP was never designed to run (or updated to run) with an SSD. You really need a bare minimum of Vista -- and better, Windows 7 -- for that.
seekingbuddha
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February 22nd, 2016 11:00
Sry ejn63. There are plenty of XP systems reported on the net running at SATA 3 speeds. I can quote you a few links, having done hours of research on this topic, but don't have patience to quote now. Did you know that many Corporates stuck to Windows XP even after release of Win 7 because the at 64 bit level, the performance was the same or better on XP ? Again, google will reveal this truth. The question at hand is different, and seems like not much interest on older systems from the support guys here in the forum.