Best SATA III SSD?

How about in the 120GB category,what would you recommend? M4 seems to be the best choice,how is real world performance compared to Vertex 3 and 510? Regular/gaming usage,no intense file copying,just frequent install/uninstalls.

 

Check the Hardwareheaven M4 review, it covers real world performance including games and installation.

 

I'm pretty much convinced. When the 128GB M4 dips below $240, I'm pulling the trigger on it.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Crucial Technology CT128M4SSD2 128GB M4 2.5in SATA 6GB / S

 

D'oh!

Thank you Phil, you kinda caught me off guard, lol. I think I'm going to wait for two things: For the funds to come in, and for more peoples' opinions on the M4. I want to make sure I'm not buying a bad product in the M4. So far people are pretty satisfied with them, though.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Well the feedbacks at Newegg about M4 are ticking in. 5 already now

 

i see the Crucial M4's getting a lot of love

Can anyone comment on reliability w/r/t Crucial vs. say Intel?

 

Crucial C300 have 3% giving it 1/5 in ratings at newegg. And they have been on the market for a long time so they are proven to be just as reliable as Intel X25-M which also have 3% 1/5 at newegg.
M4 use Marvell controller. Intel 510 too. The 120 GB 510 SSD have 6% giving it 1/5 at newegg so it looks promising for this new gen too.

 

Crucial C300 has less reported failures than Intel but has more reported firmware problems. They're about as reliable. Intel, Crucial C300 and Samsung 470 are amongst the most reliable SSDs. (going by Newegg customer reviews)

 

Might be getting this drive as well. Just need the money and probably more comments. Partiularly on how it fairs with the Vertex 3..and yes I read the hardware heaven review. Just want more commnts,in particular from someone who's tried the Vertex 3 and maybe otjer SATA 3 SSDs and compares it with the M4.

 

Based on all of the reading up I have been doing, the M4 256GB for $450 and the M4 128GB for $226 just cannot be beaten in value. The Crucial drives should be just as reliable as the Intel drives. The OCZ Vertex 3 is more costly as is the Intel drive and the only thing the Intel drive wins over the Crucial M4 in is sequential speeds. The Vertex 3 pretty much wins in everything, but it is an unreliable drive.

 

I doubt a human being(i.e. stopwatch equivalent benchmark) is able to tell the difference of a good enough SSD, other than very specific task like virus scanning, SQL server installation etc.

 

That is my conclusion as well, I'm going with either the Crucial M4 or the Intel 510 whenever I have the money and whomever has the best price.

 

I just got my M4 and idk if all SSDs are like this but it is very light lol. I will post benchmarks sometime this weekend if Dell can hurry up and ship my stuff or next week.

 

but what laptop support sata III?
and..does dell's new inspiron laptop support sata III?

 

Any notebook equipped with the Sandy Bridge line of processors will have the chipset necessary to support the SATA-III interface.

I haven't checked the new Inspiron lineup, but if the options offered come in the form of iX-2abc where X is either 3,5 or 7 and abc being a set of numerical digits from 0-9 then it's confirmed the new Inspiron lineup supports SATA-III.

 

Hey Guys,

I just bought a Sony Vaio SA and will be upgrading the HDD to SSD. Also, I decided that I should have get at least 250GB because it sounds comfortable to me and I hear they perform better than SSDs with lower capacity. I did quite a bit of research and found that these 4 SSDs get mentioned a lot...all of which have significant pros and cons. I did my best to summarize below...though I am not 100% sure if I am correct. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

1. OCZ Vertex 3 - fastest overall, highest failure rates and issues (take the chance? it does have a 3 year warranty and you could always return for refund)

2. Intel 510 - some weak benchmarks that were considered "disappointing," however this is the most reliable safe brand.

3. Crucial M4 - seem like middle of pack..I believe it operated TRIM differently and not as efficiently as Intel or OCZ.

4. Crucial C300 - I believe this has the best access times. I don't plan on doing a lot of installing, downloading, or moving of large files, so this is kind of attractive. However, read/time benchmarks weren't as impressive.

5. Other - Read My Post! Perhaps, just get SATA II since performance increase isn't that noticeable..maybe Intel 320 or Samsung 470?

So what you think? Which one should I go for and why...I need a push me! =)

 

It seems like you've done your research, so I'll just say 250 GB because there are no 160 GB SATA 6.0 Gbps drives At least not yet.

 

good point. im actually 99% locked onto 250GB anyways...160GB is nothing after Win 7 and reserved space.

 

not true. 149 formatted and after install of windows and tweaks should have over 120 gigs to play with. you can get the intel 320 160 for under $300. your next bet for price/peformance reliability would be the 250 gig m4. you should be able to swing that for $450. the c300 is also an excellent even though last generation, but still sata III. it's downside is it costs more than the last gen c300 because it uses 34nm nand.

 

btw, with no games installed and all my tweaks and 16 gigs of progs, data and music i am sitting at 101 gigs left for space. and i only have 20gigs worth from 4 games.

 

Couldn't agree more. My 160gb Intel X-25 served me very well and was plenty of space for a programs/OS drive until I upgraded everything with the M18x.

 

Ok - so let's say 160GB is more than enough. Anyone know what the performance increase would be based on capacity? (ie: 160GB vs 250GB)

I'm pretty sure SSD works better with more free space...im just not sure how much better.

 

Yes, more space is better but it's not terribly significant ... at least with the 2 Intel drives I've used. The Kingston has been fine @ 120gb as well. Especially if this is your first SSD you won't notice the difference at all. You'll just be blown away at how much faster programs open and the like.

Does your lappy have a second hard drive bay? If so, a regular HDD will do just fine for other data.

 

Based strickly on capacity, it should not be any different (both those sizes will fully populate all controller channels).

It will depend on the % capacity filled (not on the stated 'specs', but rather the actual formatted capacity vs. actual used). The higher capacity drive will also be either more resistant to slowdown (assuming the same workload) and/or will last longer (much longer...) with the same daily/weekly/monthly workload.

If you only use ~74GB on the 160GB drive (50% filled) you should not notice any significant slowdown (there is some though) - however, on the 250GB (232GB formatted) drive the % filled is now only 32% filled (with all your programs and data installed too...) and in my experience this is low enough to notice the SSD is (consistently) faster than the smaller capacity version.

Think of it like a big V10 idling in 6th gear @ 1200 RPM but propelling you forward at 70MPH vs. an inline 4 in 5th gear @ 3500 RPM @ 70MPH - they're both 'just as fast' - but the V10 (the 250GB SSD) can downshift 4 gears if needed while the IL4 (the 128/160GB SSD's) can only downshift 1 and simply make (mostly) more noise, and not more 'go power'.

Buy as much (capacity) nand as you can: the benefits are exponential if you really are buying an SSD to really push your system to it's limits.

 

ive been looking into this some more...and i think im going with Vertex 3...here is why...

m4 TRIM support/procedure seems weak...it experiences significant short term performance deterioration (tho yes, it does eventually come back up), until you leave it ideal..this bothers me. i do like the overall performance of this drive and price is great!

Intel 510 is Intel...so its reliable and overall performance is pretty decent..but given that it's less powerful and more expense than the Vertex 3 ...i think i might pass on it.

Vertex 3...ok so this is why i think ill get it...best performance, best trim support...cheaper than Intel 510...and its NOT the Vertex 2...it's failure rate isn't as bad as everyone wants to make it out....in fact...it's basically on par with the Intel 510 from all the reviews i've seen. The only thing I don't like is the power consumption~! seems to be significantly more than the other 2 SSDs.

If you disagree or have a comment - id like to hear! also, if anyone has insight to how much battery life the Vertex w3 ould use vs. Intel 510/Crucial m4 (2 watt vs 1 watt - what's the real world impact?)...id like to know that to....i dont know how Vertex 3 compares to a 5400 rpm hdd...

 

m4/intel510 are basically the same ssd besides the 25nm/34nm thing. i'm not sure if we're reading the same things. isn't vertex a sandforce based controller? and don't sandforce controllers performance degrade over time, and then the reliability issue.

 

If reliability is something important to you, avoid the Vertex brand.

 

Why not take a look at the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G? As good performance as the V3 and not as many problems reproted. Also, their support is supposed to be really good. It also runs on the latest sandforce controller. Reviews have been really good and does not seem to have any problem with TRIM and power consumption.

The TRIM issue and garbage collection is the only reason I am still undecided on the M4, otherwise I think it offers the best performance for the price out of all other choices right now. I know people say you can fix it through patching the registry or shutting off LPM, but it just makes me feel a little uneasy that I have to do that. That's just me though!

 

i haven't heard of OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G...ill def. take a look

 

you dont need to take look, its the same controller that comes in the corsair f3 line, or the vertex 3 line... sandforce

 

is it any more reliable than OCZ? it seems to have some good reviews...

 

Haven't heard stories like with the OCZ drives. Just today OWC increased the warranty on the drives from 3 years to 5 years, putting it on par with Intel in the warranty space. I was intersted in it because it was the fastest performing 120 GB drive I have seen, posting scores close to the Vertex 3 240 GB version. For me the only deterrant to getting this drive is the price since my budget is around 200 bucks.

 

they are basically the same drives specially since sandforce does the firmware and the companies apply some tweaks of their own, its pretty minor.

 

Going by hunderds of Newegg customer reviews, all Sandforce drives basically have the same reliability.

I hope people understand that Sandforce and larger amount of incompressible data don't go together well. This is what happens when the throttle goes on:


This is the Crucial M4 after the same workload:


the Sandforce will recover from the throttle but it it's write speeds are mostly lower than Crucial or Intel 510, except in scenario's when the data is easily compressible.

 

Anandtech 120GB SSDs round up:
AnandTech - The 2011 Mid-Range SSD Roundup: 120GB Agility 3, Intel 510 and More Compared

 

Reviews are kind of incoherent: the M4 is usually seen as an improvement over the C300 but here it's not (the text mentions the test of the 256Gb M4 which was slower than the C300). Then C300 is shown to top Intel 510 by a large margin both in random reads and random writes (THE key point for real world performances of the SSD and an area where new generations drives come usually short)....and the conclusion is that Intel 510 is probably the winner

It seems reviewers really don't agree on what defines a good performing SSD. Basically the 510 is good for sequential operations. In random operations, the 320 (which is even not a SATA III drive) is better but we have no words on that point... I'll probably stick with a HDD because at least I KNOW this is SLOW

 

The M4 is faster than the C300 in every real world scenario:
AnandTech - The Crucial m4 (Micron C400) SSD Review
Crucial m4 256GB SSD (C400) Review - Install Times

I don't agree with that statement. The above benchmarks show why.

 

It's the real world tests that informed the ultimate conclusion about the Intel 510 120gb SSD. It's why he did all those different tests to get there.

 

On a sidenote, what Anand calls real world may not actually be real world because he plays back scenario's at maximum speed instead of real world speed.

That's why I like the Hardwareheaven reviews. That's real real world.

 

AnandTech seems to also have a fairly large bias towards some manufacturers. Especially when some manufacturers (ahem...OCZ) send them pre-production units. Never once have I seen his articles seriously discuss reliability either. Probably because OCZ has a horrible track record. (To be fair, I'm not sure if any reviewer ever seriously discusses reliability in the long term.)

 

If you guys want real real world, insist on the price/performance.... OK I'm gone

 

Ya you re right BIG real world concern is money, well atleast for some people.. .. Anyway, I don't see the prices on these SSDs dropping too much in the near future.. With the current situation where people are starting to take up SSds and with the relative shortage of NAND supply, I think the prices will be kept up for a while. It will still be some time till we reach the coveted $1/GB price. I might be wrong though! Does anyone know if prices will be going down anytime soon? Or any new technology in SSD which will push up performance way beyond what is there right now?
I ask because we are almost at the limit of what the SATA 3 ports can handle - I believe around 700 MB/s is their max throughput. So something has to change to push performance even further. Anyone with ideas/info? Or have I got it all wrong???

 

Honestly....does anyone really =need= more than 650 MB/s at the time of this writing? Really?

Mr. Mysterious

 

Well no one 'NEEDS' that speed, bar a small minority doing some specialized tasks. But that hasn't stopped us from making/buying/using/wanting faster or better stuff now has it?

The industry is always going to strive for more. I did not ask that question because this speed is not sufficient for me; I was merely interested to know in what direction the field is headed right now since I am not familiar with it.

And if you still din't understand, I was asking about new technology coming up now because with the introduction of new technology and much faster drives, the current and previous generations might drop in price and make it easier for people to get SSDs.

 

I can't think of any new technology that could be faster...storage and speed. Hmmm....

Mr. Mysterious

 

optics. or light. there is research and development going on with optics but i don't think it's been realized enough to get info on.

 

Another interesting note. You can see all over the 'net details about the (SandForce) Corsair Force 3 recall. AnandTech mentions nothing about it on their website. They were real quick to put an article up about the Intel SSD firmware bug / recall a while back. Bias indeed .

 

Clearly OCZ fanboys, but their data is interesting nonetheless.

Perry

 

Interesting, but questionable. Seriously, who uses a custom test program that you cannot get anywhere and cannot duplicate the results yourself or review the testing procedure?