Best SSD for M17X?

Ok this is wrong. The later firmware releases offer a background garbage collection for the Indilinx drives.

Yes we need that firmware and the SSD tool box Intel had. Still waiting for the re-release.

 

My SSD shipped. Hopefully it will be here by tomorrow.

 

The new Intel firmware should be re-released very soon.

I will stick with the Samsungs if they have the newest firmware, but I plan on staying in RAID 0. Even if they don't, I will still probably wait until the newness wears off before ripping changing too much.

I reserve the right to change my mind any time I feel like it.

 

lol don't we all.

 

Going from a traditonal HDD to a SSD can I just clone the drive over or do I need to fresh load it?

 

Depends. It's best to just reload IMO.

 

yeah i'm sure that's what I'll end up doing.

 

I went for the Crucial M225. Trim firmware works great. No issues here! 232 mb/sec seems to be the top read speed from HDtune

 

hi mandrake you recomend to do this to stop the cache writing on the ssd? Firefox - Use memory cache instead of disk cache
Description: If you use Firefox, there's a way to write cached files to RAM instead of the hard disk. This is not only faster, but will significantly reduce writes to the SSD while using the browser.
Instructions: Open Firefox -> Type about:config into the address bar -> Enter -> double-click browser.cache.disk.enable to set the value to False -> Right-Click anywhere -> New -> Integer -> Preference Name "disk.cache.memory.capacity" -> value memory size in KB. Enter 32768 for 32MB, 65536 for 64MB, 131072 for 128MB, etc. -> restart Firefox

 

If anything could be reconfigured to use memory instead of disk I would do it assuming you have the available memory.

 

ok but how many mb. i should asign to firefox for speed

 

Wish I could tell you. It's going to depend on usage and available memory. All I can say is test.

 

ok thanks i am browsing and playng youtube with 256mb i guess is good

 

Got the Intel drive from Newegg today. It has the older firmware on it. So whoever said it had the latest unfortunately was wrong.

 

The update is suppose to be out by the end of the month.

 

This is the end of the month...lol

 

I'm hoping this week they come out with it.

 

mandrake i need your opinion...$480 for 2x 128g samsung MMCRE28G5MXP-0VB

or 160 intel X-25M SSDSA2MH160G2C1 GEN 2also for 480 maybe 460...

thanks in advance

 

I wish I could give you a straight forward answer but there are a lot of factors that play into it. Overall the Intel drive is the better SSD. It's also hard to beat the price point Samsung offers. The problem is the Samsung drives are not user flashable and if you don't get one with one of the later firmware revisions it will eventually become much slower.

If it were me I would get the Intel and a bigger platter drive for the second disk...which is what I did.

 

I agree -- My 2nd 250GB drive is getting filled. I might be swapping it out for a bigger WD drive.

 

i thought i could get 2x samsung and put them in raid0 but wat u said scared me...urgg

 

The fact you can't flash to new firmware would scare me.

 

Lovin the Intel SSD so far. I'm using the Windows 7 driver versus the nVidia driver and it seems to fly. You can really see the difference when you go from SSD to platter back to SSD.

 

Why would you go for the intel over an OCZ? Something like a vertex?

 

Nothing wrong with the Indilinx SSDs. The vertex was an option. I took advantage of the newegg sale price on the Intel drive.

 

heres wat confused me about intel x25-m models , theres 2 specs, Sequential Access - Read up to 250MB/s Sequential Access - Write up to 100MB/s ,but some of them came with only 70mb write speed...i couldn't tell which is which..(ssd noob) care to explain?

 

Mine is benching at 260/100.

 

My M17 should show up today. Checking hte firmware on the Samsung drives will probably be the first thing I do.

 

The Gen 1 were 70MB. The Gen 2 is 100MB.

 

What are you using to Benchmark it Mandrake?

Also are you having major DPC issues under windows 7?

 

CrystalDiskMark. Haven't checked DPC since the new SSD but before the SSD it was the same as my old system.

 

Do you game on your m17x or do you just benchmark?

Windows 7 runs terrible on my m17x.

BTW under Vista64 I'm pulling 230/105.

Did you turn AHCI on?

 

The 160gb Gen2's with the latest TRIM firmware get 100mb/s seq writes. The G2's with the older FW get 70.

 

Yes, AHCI is on. I've played FO3 with no issues. No audio or video stuttering.

 

I'm showing the older firmware on mine...then again I only went by what was written on the disk. I'll check the hardware ID when I get home tonight.

 

Mandrake, OT but what is your WEI memory score with the HyperX 5-5-5-15? I have noticed the Nvidia chipset gets lower memory performance than Intel chipsets particularly in the area of latency. I wonder if that is what is causing the DPC latency issues? Can you see a difference in DPC latency with and without the faster memory?

 

I'm one of the few not testing out the DPC latencey issue because it hasn't affected me in any way. I haven't tried WEI, I can when I get home.

 

You really won't see any difference on performance between firmwares for awhile, unless of course you want to write and delete a bunch of crap just to dirty up the drive to test it out.

Sucks because I am really interested in how the Samsung cleanup performs in RAID since there isn't a TRIM solution for RAID currently.

 

Native or Legacy AHCI Settings?

 

this trim solution works for my samsung, some one else post it before http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64753

 

If the Samsung's garbage collection is working, I won't need a solution.

If it doesn't work, I will replace the drive with something else over having to run anything manually.

 

I tested both and performance was very similar. The option that loads the bios (don't remember which it is) was slightly faster but I'm assuming this would give problems with TRIM as soon as it's an option. Don't know for sure until it's tested.

That's really a garbage collection solution since Windows 7 wouldn't be required. Have you tested it?

 

yes i test it and you can see a performance increase on the ssd

 

I just checked and it's 7.2. The hard drive is 7.8.

 

What was WEI memory score with the stock 4gb kit? Did you check which FW your SSD has?

 

I never checked with the stock memory and I forgot to check the firmware, thanks for reminding me. I'll do it right after my current Vantage run.

 

Hardware ID still says 02G9

 

The firmware on my factory installed Samsung's is 19D1Q.

I am going to stick with the Samsungs since I am running in RAID.

 

Seems like their old stuff is gone now.

 

Some firmware updates came out for Samsung and Intel SSD drives from Lenovo last week. It doesn't say what it actually adds though and only has a few models listed.