Dell D630 stock HDD vs aftermarket SSD (OCZ Vertex)

I needed to build a case (not a physical ATX case ) to promote SSD vs HDD, showing benchmark numbers doesn't mean much for the people I have to present this for, best way to show the difference is just by doing that: showing.

http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=923

Installed two Dell D630 with identical OS (WinXP test 2, Win7 test 1) and compared conventional HDD to OCZ Vertex (30gb edition). The difference is massive to say the least

If you're wondering about upgrading to SSD, you have to check this out;

any and all feedback is most welcome!

 

Something is wrong with your XP boot, it takes me 12 seconds to reach the desktop on XP with my 30GB Vertex, and another 3 seconds for all my startup programs (Antivirus, RivaTuner, Steam, Trillian, mIRC, Logitech SetPoint, cFosSpeed) to load.

It takes your system 30-35 seconds just to reach the desktop, and that just doesn't seem like normal behavior from my experience.

 

mcafee or other driver might be the issue here; Win7 was clean install; WinXP is preconfigured image with a lot of background apps (not all are listed)

 

I bet it's the disk image. The people over at OCZ's forums seem to think that most of the problems they're seeing with Vertex drives are when people restore disk images on them. I configured my drive by running the Vista installation DVD to align my system partition at 64KB, then installed XP directly to my 64K offset partition (used nLite to slipstream AHCI drivers, etc). That's supposedly the preferred method for putting an OS on these drives.

If you still have the system handy, care to run a Crystal DiskMark default run on that drive?

 

So the vertex requires the same tweaking as all other OCZ drives (i.e. alignment and such?)? I know its not too bad to do but its not worth the effort for me as I don't have installation disks and it does seem like a royal pain to do anyway.

 

It doesn't require it, I just did it anyway because I figured it wouldn't hurt. People are still under the impression that all OCZ drives suffer from stuttering. If you read the Ananadtech article, you'll notice that 4KB random writes are what kill JMicron drives. They average 0.02 MB/s 4KB random write. The Vertex does not suffer this problem at all because it's using the Indilinx controller. Here's a Crystal Disk Mark run I just did:



Outside of an X-25M or E, nothing even comes close. 4KB Reads/Writes, what kill JMicron drives, are 5-8 times faster at minimum than mechanical hard drives. Here's the same benchmark run on a 7200 RPM WD desktop drive:



It's not even in the same league. Only an X-25M or E is faster than the Vertex.

 

Nice, I may have to consider getting one or the new supertalent with the same controller (i think its cheaper right now than ocz)

 

very possible, but also notice that the normal HDD also hangs at the same moment

I no longer have the systems available;

 

That system looks impressive, but I have to agree it is a bet slow on the boot part, there maybe too many applications being run during startup..

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=352730

The Samsung 256GB MLC drive is at least equal, if not better, than the Vertex in pretty much all aspects as well.

 

That is old post and is comparing APEX not VERTEX

 

Take the values for the Samsung and Intel in the old post, and compare them with the Vertex in this post. While the Vertex is better than the Apex, the conclusion is still the same.

 

not sure that Anandtech agrees... with latest firmware the vertex may take the cake it seems

 

Personally, I value user opinions from NBR over Anandtech reviews.