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

crsytal clear .....will try to enjoy and jump to G3 asap

i tooked the HP 8540w cheap cause i know its already obsolete ...so will jump on a big baby later ...

 

I'm torn between the 32gb and 64gb Corsair Nova SSD's. Having never used as SSD for more than 10min, I'm unclear whether I need the performance of the 64gb. The drive will be be used in a relatively light usage machine and 32gb is more than enough space for my boot drive having looked at the WinDirStat breakdown of my current 320gb hdd.

Looking at these benchmarks, I'd appreciate if anyone could give an opinion on whether the 64gb's seemingly much greater performance is worth it. I don't think the sequential speed is too important for my usage, but am wondering about the rest, esp 512k, 4k and 4kQD32. There are also a lot of other tests done from this site, but real world tests are somewhat limited:

32gb ($60):
http://www.ssdreview.com/ssd-review/compare/corsair-nova-series-v64-64gb-10,corsair-nova-series-v32-32gb-21/images/corsair-nova-series-v32-32gb.html

64gb ($120):
http://www.ssdreview.com/ssd-review/compare/corsair-nova-series-v64-64gb-10,corsair-nova-series-v32-32gb-21/images/corsair-nova-series-v64-64gb.html

Thanks in advance.

 

One thing to first consider is you say that your useage would fit in a 32GB SSD? What is your total file size because you don't want to fill it to capacity. I'm not sure if windirstat also shows things like hiberanate or page file sizes as well.

 

I already have hibernate and page file turned off so those aren't of concern.

Here's the the windirstat screenshot. That 93.7% is almost all movies and music which will be on the storage drive.

 

keep in mind that the fuller a drive is ...the les performance you gonna get ...so go 64 imho

 

Well, in this case, if it stays at less than 25GB it should be fine. I don't know that you'll notice much difference in performance between the 32GB and 64GB considering what little storage is on the drive.

In this case, of most importance would be 4k reads since you wouldn't be doing many writes to the SSD at all once the OS is installed. And both 4k reads are nearly identical.

 

I'm prone to keep photos on the SSD. Photo browsing programs such as Picture Motion Browser (and perhaps Lightroom, though I installed that after I put my photos on my SSD) will load the images/thumbs much faster. Speaking from firsthand experience and a meager 10GB in photos.

 

Yeah, if it were me, I would get the 64GB, would be best for the long term IMHO. Give you opportunity to do more with it later if needed.

 

just a quetsion about hibernate ...did it in dos and noticed nothing ..how to be sure it's off ?
isn't there a way to do it not in cmd ?

 

OK, did I miss it? DId Intel have NOTHING to say about their G3 at CES? ? ALL these other vaporware crap fast if you use THEIR test are not exciting to me.

Again, did I miss something? All I really wanted from CES was Intel G3 and Verizon Iphone. And the Verizon Iphone is being announced this Tuesday. Wouldn't want to cloud an announcement like that with the lower life forms at CES now, would they? I do appreciate their genius for marketing. They keep the focus on Apple, even when it is a Verizon announcement!

But I digress. What I want to know is WHAT IS UP INTEL?

 

Run the command prompt and then type:
powercfg -h off

Then, you're done. You'll notice that when you access your shutdown menu from the Start Menu that hibernate is no longer an option.

 

Well we've still got a few days left.

 

Oh, I see. NEver mind Still, hoping for some BIG news from my favorite chip company who I want to be my favorite SSD company too

 

is hibernate is the option under restart ? cause if it is ..my hibernATE IS STILL RUNNING AFTER THE cmd prompt....did it twice i ran the cmd in administrator , typed it and then pressed enter ....just got another line of C:....system 32 ect ...

so what's the deal ?

 

Ok my bad hibernate is out i have sleep (checked cause it's in french !) but what hibernate option is doing to the ssd if we never use it ?

 

If you never use it, then you might as well disable it. the hiberfil.sys consumes several GB of disk space. If you're going to use it, that's good. If not, then get rid of it.

 

just hope G3 is cheaper

 

No Intel had nothing at CES as did many others because of a delay in the SF-2000 release. Corsair has a new Marvell controlled drive however won't deny that a second is on the horizon which might keep their relationship with SF. Verbatim just jumped in with a new SSD. The Crucial (C400) looks very promising especially with a 512GB price tag of around $800 which might force other to lower price points on release. Kudos to Crucial as they are the first out of the block with the 25nm NAND.

Super Talent gave me an exclusive opportunity to look over some new prototypes which were only given to the Marketing Director just before CES. Exclusive with piks later but ST will be releasing the first SandForce based USB 3 flash which is a true SSD in disguise. We will be seeing USB 3 drives that have the same performance as SF SSDs before years end. The ST one has 8 channels of Marvell NAND. Oh and as well, ST is just about to release the world smallest USB 3 flash which is the size and thickness of a fingernail....piks to follow!

This is the first chance I have had to get here folks as I have been in meetings with all oems pretty much every day, both enterprise and consumer sides.

Expect March to be a BIG month for SSD releases with exception to the new Corsair coming out in February. I am missing one......ummm.....nope, just that both the Corsair and new C400 are based on the same new Marvell controller.

Below is a pik from the Gigabyte Party...unveiling of the G-1 Killer mobo. I am including this because we will be seeing improved SSD performance at the RAID level with the new P67/H67 chipsets.

Oh and hey!!!!! Would you believe????? Invited to the Earth, Wind and Fire tonight and got right up front for piks....5 feet from the band and guess who walks out for an Encore? Stevie Wonder! I got some AMAZING shots and video of that but still can't believe it...5 feet from Stevie Wonder!

Oh... Intel...... If I were to quote a song that comes to mind, its an ole BTO tune that goes, " B-b-b-b-b-aby you just ain't seen nothing yet!" I can say that because I got the chance to have a one on one with them in the Intel Control Room which I believe is even sound proof. That song seemed to be playing in the background eheh.

 

Thanks to Les' post here I went to thessdreview.com in his sig and ended up reading the article 'The Manufacturers Bluff.' The info in that article was pretty eye opening (and probably common knowledge too most here )

Is random write really what one need to look at for an everyday o/s drive? That 56% of usage is 8k write seems incredible. To me it's also counter-intuitive; why is random read not the most frequent type of access?

Also, what's the breakdown of where that 8k write usage comes from? I have firefox set to cache to ram, would that lower write frequency a lot?

Thanks everyone for the advice so far. I'm now looking away from the Corsair Nova and more towards their F60 for the write performance, while still not compromising power consumption too much according to tests. The ADATA S599 looks like it performs very well as well but seems to be pretty unreliable based on newegg reviews.

 

As I think about it more, is it maybe a fallacy that random write is very important? Looking at diskmon once an application is opened there are a lot of (small size) writes. But to get it open and for what we perceive as drive speed the most, random read is the most important?

So is random read the most important criteria to look at?

While the random write of the F60 is 8-9x faster than the Nova, it's random read is 50% slower. Which to choose? Price difference of $10.

Some of you might be wondering why I'm looking at these drives when there are others that probably perform better for the same price or cheaper. My main concern power consumption, then performance.

Also, can I assume that 4K QD32 is something more relevant in server applications?

 

The data passes from ram or cache (of the device sending the data to be treated) to te cache of the cpu ...you have several caches and each step the data are didvided in size ..from lines to word .....so the 4K (4k Qd 32as well) for me seems the more real life use .....this is a guess not an affirmation ....

 

That 4k is important isn't controversial. I'm talking about 4k read vs. write importance in choosing an ssd.

 

see those things ... Mémoire cache - Wikipédia

 

ok ....the write isn't a concern for me as i use the drive for my os not data and once i make a full install ....i don' usually touch it alot .....anyway the write speedd of my intel isn't crazy but just 20 times quicker than a wd Black !

 

I'll be using the ssd as an o/s drive too. Read post 8170 again and this. When you have 56.35% of access coming from 8k writes in normal usage, one has to stop and examine whether that's an important criteria to consider and how that portion breaks down.

 

I suspect that since the listed activities were using the internet, running applications, and listening to music, that most of those writes were actually writes to cache for his browser program. Really, you might be best off running Diskmon yourself and seeing your own personal usages... this would show what your usage, as opposed to some "average" user is like and would help best in figuring out what is best for _you_.

4KQD32, by the way, is the 4K test, done with a queue depth of 32. It's used to determine how good a drive is when saturated with I/O requests, which most commonly occurs with very heavy multi-tasking (or server environments, for obvious reasons).

 

If you are ok with 25GB of space I'd go with 32GB. I usually don't notice speed differences between SSDs.

 

Hi Phil, I was hoping you'd drop in. Can you please comment on how much random read and random write speed is required for a relatively basic running os drive as I discussed in post 8171?

The Nova is much much slower in random write (but still many times faster than my hdd), but 50% faster than the Force in random read. Will random write get much slower as the drive fills (not past 80% though)?

Nova: Force:

 

what most peope will not admit is that nearly no one is able to tell the difference between a fast SSD like Intel, Sandforce, Indilinx, Samsung.

differences are so small you need a stopwatch or benchmark software to notice the difference.

you'll be fine with the nova.

 

Thanks for the feedback. The Nova looks very impressive in power consumption tests, do you think that'll stand up in real world usage?

 

Don't count on it. I was expecting stellar battery life from the Nova V128 but was unable to observe it in real life.

You will get better battery life than a 7200rpm drive though.

 

Hmm, that's my main criteria. Which drives have given you the best battery life?

According to this comparison between Nova 32, 64, 128 it looks like the 128 has very high write power usage relative to the other two. Could be that the reason for your experience?

http://www.ssdreview.com/ssd-review/compare/corsair-nova-series-v64-64gb-10,corsair-nova-series-v32-32gb-21,corsair-nova-v128-128gb-25-inch-21,24/power_consumption.html

Force F40 also looks like it did very well in StorageReview's power tests.
http://www.storagereview.com/corsair_force_f40_review_40gb

 

Abs correct. The difference you see for tyical apps is simly seek times and they are all the same at 0.1ms.

I dont know anyone who can tell the difference in normal every day usage.

 

i have to SAVE THAT STATEMENT somewhere

 

to get real, the CES was a huge dissapointment for me this year. no surprises, and nothing about any of the tech that i'm interested in..

get a winphone7, they're awesome.. (and over there, hell cheap.. payed much more here)

same as with most others i guess.. but what, i don't know.

 

There are actually some nice surprises in SSDs I think. The new Marvell release was one, Crucial/Micron pricing their 512GB in the $800 mark was another, I will be elaborating soon but there is a new SF SSD USB flash on the horizon, Verbatim jumps in, OCZ ups the ante with their Z drive, Corsair will be No 2 with SATA 3 by releasing in February, and the unspoken word is that March/April will be a big period for SSDs...very big.

We need to remember that although many manufacturers like to pre-announce their product, some like to stay n the bush until release like the Samsung 470.

On top of that, we are seeing a larger entry into SATA 3 with Corsair announcing their new drive and not denying their SF relationship and also A-Data releasing a presentation that speaks of 2 sep SATA 3 releases in the near future, both of different speeds which seem to mimic the SF-2000 and new Marvell controllers.

There is alot not soken of yet that I have in pics and notes but, frankly, this is a hectic lace where it has been rush rush rush... Lets see what I can post here real quick...

EDIT... Dedication or what... Sitting here just giving you guys a bit while the wife packs for our flight eheh.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Intel seems to have the lowest power consumption that I've observed between an Intel 40GB, 80GB, 120GB and a Kingston V-series and OCZ Vertex 2.

See here:
Benchmark Results: Power Consumption : Roundup: The Best SSDs For Enthusiasts

IMHO what's most important is idle power consumption because most users the SSD will be idle 90% of the time unless you do lots of writes. But in that cast you're probably not going to be doing that on battery all that much.

 

Idle power consumption is what I initially thought was important too. But even if you're not doing anything while using the computer (like reading an article), Win 7 is always doing something (mainly those 8k writes Les talked about). The hard drive is just never idle (not related to firefox); this is very evident looking at diskmon and processmon.

My main parameters are write (since most access looking at diskmon is writes) and IO mix (general os drive usage). Here's the Intel in the mix:

http://www.ssdreview.com/ssd-review/compare/corsair-nova-series-v32-32gb-21,corsair-force-series-e-f120-120gb-11a,samsung-470-256gb-25-inch-axm0701q,11,12/power_consumption.html

I'd love an Intel drive since they seem to perform very well for workstation type usage and their trim seems to be very good as well, but the power consumption doesn't seem to be as low as the others.

Could someone please discuss random write performance in a boot drive? Everywhere I read people say this is very very important. I'm now looking at the SF-1200 drives (like Vertex 2, Corsair Force, ADATA S599) also since they seems to perform well while having reasonably restrained power consumption. If someone can give me a reason to stop worrying about random write though it'd make life very simple. Nothing comes even close to the Corsair Nova 32gb's power consumption and it's the cheapest by a long shot.

 

To clarify, when the does the heralded random write performance actually come into play?

 

Well whether it's writing or not, the total mearsured "idle" power is what it is. That means the system was idle and that was the average power consumption, I don't care what was taking place.

I've also witnessed this first hand with the SSD's I've acquired. On my Hannspree I went from 4 hours with an HDD to 5:15 with an Intel 80GB. That's over a 30% increase in battery life. The Kingston V-series was about same as the HDD, and OCZ Vertex 2 about 20% battery life improvement. On my M11x I went from 6.5 hours to 9 hours, that's over 35%. Pretty impressive.

 

Great now I have to reconsider everything. You're positive about about Vertex 2 vs. Intel power usage?

Only the Intel 40gb is in my budget and I don't need larger capacity so I guess time to wait for G3 and maybe do more research.

 

Will you be installing programs to your SSD as well, or only the OS? My OS only configuration is about 8-9GB. Once I add in programs and stuff, not to mention system restore, I'm at 25GBish consumed. I've read here that it's not good to fill past 50-60%. So the 40GB SSD really is only about 37GB, so you would only want to fill to up to about 22GB or so to keep performance optimal.

Someone with more knowledge, please chime in and support/correct me here.

I think you should wait for the G3 and get more storage for your $. It's right around the corner, I hope.

 

anseio, I've read 80% fill. I'm not concerned about max performance so I don't want to sacrifice 40-50% of the drive's space. I'm at 20gb for OS+apps.

 

Keep in mind that battery life will be affected based on your machine's total power consumption. If it's a netbook consuming 8-10W, then obviously saving 0.5-0.8W will be affect battery life considerably. If it's being used in a larger laptop with a larger power consumption (15W+), then saving 0.5W-0.8W using an SSD will offer diminishing returns.

 

That's a good point. When on battery my computer fluctuates between 8-10W just browsing, etc on screen brightness 10/15 with this Scorpio Black so I'm trying to eek out as much as possible. I suspect the SSD will be much more efficient.

 

In most cases, yes. Just don't get the Kingston V-series (SNV425), it'll eat your battery for breakfast and not leave much for lunch.

 

i think i'm ordering a c300.. for a new sandybridge pc i'm building. the 128gb version.

 

davepermen, nice!

Can't wait to hear your impressions about that setup.

 

sandybridge i5, 8gb ram, c300@sata3, usb3 for external drives. will be a nice station for my dad for video conversion, recording, moving around and such.

 

Does anyone know if or which Sandy Bridge chipsets actually have SATA III?