SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

tilleroftheearth has been warned about his ongoing crusade against SSDs that doesn't seem to be based in reality.

From: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/509106-slow-ssds-4.html

tilleroftheearth can continue to discuss the problems he is experiencing here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...79-my-patriot-inferno-ssd-performs-bad-2.html

Vertex LE may be slightly faster but the Vertex 2 might get future firmware updates.

Eitherway, great drives.

 

Yup, can't wait for the standard ATA-ATAPI- 8 to come out, so, with IRST 9.6, we'll finally have TRIM in RAID; can't wait...

 

Regarding reviews on NewEgg: Only those with strong opinions will post a review. Think of how many people bought the drives and didn't care to post one. Those folks most likely have working drives, otherwise, wouldn't they complain?

 

In that case, I'll save myself $40 (every little bit helps) and get the LE, then. As long as its current firmware is solid I wouldn't need an update, anyway.

Thanks again.

 

What do you guys think is the better choice

OCZ Vertex 60GB for $110
or
OCZ Vertex 2 40GB for $115

I'm coming off of just returning a Corsair F40 (which I got for $70... too good to be true apparently) so I'm a bit skeptical on sandforce now...

The extra storage is a plus but not really a big deal for me

 

The Corsair doesnt have that failure rate at all that I am aware of and I am seeing very good things with respect to response on the drive...

Enjoy!

 

That can be looked at both ways as well but I agree with the premise that happy people generally do not write in to say how great. The truth is though I am hearing every day from people whos OCZ (Vertex) has died but I am not from any others...

 

Oh my, guys. I think I may have a bad drive

After applying the fixes from Les's signature and those recommended by Phil, here's what the benchmark programs returned:





I'm not happy

EDIT: The boot time did improve from ~34 to ~17 seconds:

 

Kolosok if your chipset is Intel HM55 or PM55 then it is a know issue, there is nothing you can do about it
It's not the SSD though.

Check here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-g2-160gb-g73jh-why-sluggish-performance.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6628059-post481.html

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19340601.aspx

and many other posts ( I just showed you a couple of them, this affects various manufacturers like Asus, HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc)

 

Oh, well that's unfortunate news - I do have the HM55 chipset. The only thing I didn't do was update the firmware - should I do this?

 

You can try that but it's not the SSD that is slow

 

Alright, thanks! I'll leave it alone for now, since it isn't broken. I guess I'm ok with these benchmarks, was just expecting something a little better. Still beats my original drive by a long shot.

 

Unfortunatelly, two very critical aspects of SSDs are affected (access times and 4K random reads/ writes) and personally I am not happy at all with it, but except from letting people and Dell know about it, there is nothing else I can do.

 

is that issues possibly fixable at all? Or is that going to just be an issue forever for HM55?

 

Power saving features seem to cause the problem (with heavy CPU load the performance increases to safe mode levels but not up to 100% of the SSD's potentials, capped at 18MB/s and 48MB/s respectively), I am not sure if the reduced performance can be fixed with a BIOS update because there is a good chance the design of the chipset will prevent any further improvement.
So far there is no official response concerning this matter either from Intel or from any other manufacturer.

 

eeek, this is making me even more wary of getting an ssd now

would i notice a difference between a vertex and vertex2? I need all the performance I can get seeing as it looks like im already working from a disadvantage with hm55. A big thing for me is reliability too.

 

Upgrading from an HDD to an SSD is totally worth it. Hands down.

Between those two you suggested I would personally go for the Vertex2.
4K random reads and writes are not the only advantage of SSDs over HDDs.
For every day usage you won't see much of a difference because of the 4K capped speeds or the lower access times. If you consider running a file or database server out of your laptop you will though IOPS are a lot lower

 

Thanks for the input. I'll probably use it just for boot and a few apps and try and limit my writes on it. The vertex2 has an extra year of warranty which is nice too, especially seeing how the failure rates in ssds seem to be higher that you'd think for drives that supposed to be more reliable that HDDs

 

You're welcome, yeah use the SSD for the OS and the apps that you use the most so you will benefit from their speed and responsiveness. Use HDDs for storage and backups since they are cheaper for their size.

 

Why did you return it? If it was a DOA I'd recommend to just get another one. DOAs can happen to any brand.

So this will happen on any Intel HM55 laptop?

 

I still like the improved performance with my drive. Sure, the benchmarks aren't as good as some people's, but it runs way faster than any drive I've had.

 

So far Phil all the laptops that I have seen and have an HM55/PM55 chipset display the exact same numbers. Until we find one laptop (with either one of those two chipsets) that performs better than what we see, I have to say that this will happen in any Intel HM55/PM55 based laptop.

 

This is very good to know. I was just considering getting a new laptop. Now I know I will loose some SSD speed. This makes me reconsider it.

With that limit you might as well get a Vertex 1. Until Intel fixes it of course.

 

Yes, in case you consider to buy an Intel HM55/PM55 based one you will, but there are laptops like Clevo that use different chipsets (I am referring to the ones that use desktop CPUs) and don't display the same behavior. Even the Alienware M17x-R1 which had an nvidia chipset was maxing out the SSD.

 

Hi guys,

Seems my technical post got buried under all the other chat; can anyone help with these questions.

I did whack the drive in and installed Windows 7, but there is still a separate partition showing - is this from the original Windows 7 install or for the Crucial firmware perhaps?

So, now I am at the stage of, is cloning the 60 GB SSD to the 256 GB SSD possible, too much trouble? or do I just re-install all my programs etc.???

Thanks, John

 

I recommend everyone to create separate threads, because it will often happen that threads get buried under the other conversations.

 

I always prefer fresh installations although I have had success...limited with Acronis 10.

 

I wish someone would compile a list of such so people would know right from the outset what they are getting themselves into.

 

Your scores are pretty low, IMO.

 

Yeah, I know. We determined the problem - it is my chipset (Intel HM55). No fix available, and no fix may ever be available.

 

I believe you can still get it higher.

i.e.,
Your sequential read is only 201 MB/s. (should be around 260 MB/s)

 

I think that's stunning news. HM55 and PM55 are the most used chipsets in modern notebooks.

So most modern Intel based notebooks can't take full advantage of a fast SSD. What it looks like right now is that all fast SSDs perform on the level of a Kingston V series. (Benchmarks would have to be conducted to establish if that's really true).

Seems as newsworthy to me as when was found out that Macbook Pros were only running in SATA I.

I created a thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...ake-full-advantage-fast-ssds.html#post6641758

 

Judging by other people's benchmarks, you may be correct. I performed all the tweaks suggested by Phil and Les. I wonder if I missed something important.

 

I returned it because I bought it from an outlet that didn't have any replacements. If I wanted to send it to Corsair I wouldn't had to send it to the US so I figured it wasn't worth the trouble

 

Yes, that really is BIG news to me. If I knew my chipset couldn't take full advantage of SSDs I really would have rethought my purchase, although not like there are exactly tons of performance laptops out there that dont use HM55/PM55

 

Not sure which ones you followed. Can you post how you did?

 

I just bought a kingston 64gb v+ series bundle kit for $112. Was this a good deal? I dont know much about ssd's but my 5400rpm hdd just died in my laptop and I didnt want to go over $100 for 64gb. I let the $12 slide.

 

Sure!

Phil's: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...sd-performance-tips-underperforming-ssds.html

Les's: The SSD Review: Windows 7 SSD Performance Optimization Guide

 

Sure. Nice deal!

 

Kingston SSDNow V-Series G2 2.5", 64GB, SATA Solid State Drive 200MB/sec. read; 110MB/sec. write (SNV425-S2/64GB) | Canada Computers

how's this deal? Kingston V-series G2 64GB for 100. How are the random read/writes on that thing?

Better deal than a 40GB Vertex 2 for $115?

 

The Vertex 2 and Force 40 are a lot faster when it comes to heavy usage.

Under light usage the Kingston V series does fine.

For the random reads and writes, there are many reviews to find on Google.

 

I needed at least 60gb. Seems like the kingston is the only $100 deal I could find. I read a lot of the reviews on neweg and everyone who has the kingstons seems to be happy with them. Vertex 2 60gb was $35 more after a mail in rebate so I went the cheaper route. I think we are talking about seconds here and its safe to say that the kingston will be a big improvement from my 5400rpm hdd and that the vertex 2 would be a small improvement from the kingston. Im not a heavy user and am putting it in a 3 year old dv2550se with a 1.5 core 2 duo processor so I doubt I would see a difference between the kingston and vertex2.

 

If they were the same price I wouldve got the vertex 2 though. I will let you guys know my results when I install it.

 

Bought a Kingston SSDNow 128 - budget SSD for my netbook (I knew would be limited by the chipset going in), but after installing an Intel SSD in my other laptop, just needed something faster than the stock mechanical drive.
Improves access time to apps and cut at least 1/3 of the boot time. Overall happy with the purchase. Allows me to use the netbook for travel now versus carrying my desktop replacement.
Can say this at least - now the bottleneck is the processor.

 

What would you guys say best bang for the buck 256GB SSD is? Crucial C300? Crystal Disk Mark seems pretty phenomenal for those drives. Will probably buy within a month. It's $550 at newegg at the moment, I guess what I was expecting to pay. Would prefer to pay less obviously, but it is what it is.

 

On a SATA II contoller Sandforce drives perform better than Crucial C300 in multi tasking situations. See the review in my signature for a couple of examples.

The benefit of buying a C300 is that it will perform better when you get a notebook with SATA III controller.

 

This is not *quite* correct. The htwingnut is asking about the C300 256GB, which (in terms of performance) is not comparable to the C300 64GB of your review !

I have one C300 256GB in my laptop (XPS 1530, T8300, 4GB ram, Win7 x64 Ultimate) and see here some numbers that I get for this SSD : XPS 1530 with C300 256GB (google translate from Greek)

 

Doesn't matter, check the review on Storagereview.com. Sandforce does better on sata II.

 

SATADIMM – Enterprise SSD in a DIMM Form Factor

 

Thanks, so what's the difference between Agility 2 and Vertex 2? Plus the OCZ drives are quite a bit more expensive. $550 is already pushing it. Of course I'd be fine with 240GB, but going much lower really wouldn't suit my needs.

What's a recommended Sandforce brand and why are they more expensive than the ones with the controller (which is what?) in the C300?

I may go with the C300 both for price, and future upgradability if they truly do perform much better with SATA III. I think I'm returning my Envy 14, keeping my Sager for another six months, and will probably move my SSD to the new machine in the future, unless there's some really significant improvements that I *need* a new SSD.