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

Whoops, I FELL out of my chair!!!!!!!

 

I believe they all do

List of Intel chipsets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

except the desktop H61

 

I am waiting for a return from an Intel contact but there are, apparently, a few special things about the new boards which doesnt even start with the fact of on board graphics. Specific to RAID and SSDs however, I have been told that RAID 0 scoring with SSDs is much better on this chipset.

 

Intel G3? Anyone? Quit being coy, Intel!

 

ces 2011 is gone, and no intel G3.
damn intel

 

Yeah, they are being real jerks at this time! Amazing how easy it is to not be an Intel Fanboy when there ARE NO INTEL SSD's!

 

even apple and Verizon have released new iphone4

 

Precisely. Then again, they may have been waiting for that dust to settle before announcing the new SSD! Hey, a man can dream!

 

Phil, how did the Samsung 470 compare to other drives (Intel, Nova, Force, Vertex 2, Agility 2) for battery life in real world usage? What type of workload is your real world usage?

 

My testing was too short to make any exact comments, but it seemed to be very good. Even better than Nova.

I've had mixed experience with Sandforce drives. Most gave good battery life but one didn't.

 

I think this confirms htwingnut's contention that idle consumption is what's relevant during those low volume small file writes during light usage. And really confirmed with the 470 since it has very high write consumption.

Which are the good and bad Sandforce drives for power?

Did the V+ do better than the Nova in real life?

 

You can read some observations on battery life in the review in my signature.

________

OCZ Vertex 3 showcased on CES. According to the ATTO disk benchmark that was running at the time, the drive hit its sustained read and write speed targets of 550 and 525MB/s, respectively.
Next-gen SandForce SSD controller shown in OCZ Vertex 3 - The Tech Report

 

hope you didn't hurt yourself. i can see the result: i'll love the pc, visit my dad, give it to him, drive home, order myself a new pc..

damn it!

 

they don't give release date to finish selling stocks ....i just bought one intel 120g x25m with thefear of seeing the 160 coming out !

One question guyz how do we know this is a postville ?
page 812 of the thread i posted some infos about my drive ....

 

there is just one 120gb drive. s it's second gen (that's postville, right?).

and the 160gb postville is out longer than the 120gb one, actually.. but you think of a gen3 one, right?

 

I don't know about the first ...

yes for the second .....i don't know if G2 = postville ...or not !

 

Huh. There's an Sandforce-1222 OCZ 160GB for $270 (289.99 - $20 MIR) on Newegg.

I'm not in the market for a SSD right now, but that does seem like a good price at about $1.70/GB.

Then again, I'm not sure how that particular drive performs. I notice the Intel G2s are still about $400.

 

But Dave what changed your mind? You always liked only Intel SSD's. Is it like me that you are mad they did not announce a new drive?

 

That's probably true, but sometimes companies will give false, early release dates so consumers will wait for the new product instead of buying from another company. But maybe Intel doesn't worry about their competition. Anyone know what SSD market-shares are?

 

I'm on my 3rd SSD now. I've noticed that the Intel gives me the highest WEI disk score. The Corsair Nova was 7.4, the OCZ Vertex 2 was 7.6 and the Intel X25-M 120GB gives me 7.8. So that's an Indilinx Barefoot, a Sandforce and an Intel controller. It makes me think that the Intels have firmware that's better optimized for Windows 7... but I'm just speculating to explain the results. It makes sense to me since Intel and Microsoft have some pretty serious connections and have had them for a long time.

 

IMO, it is just that Intel's SSD is more suitable for typical Windows usage(that is what the WEI is measuring).

Windows is heavily skewed towards heavily random read/light write.

IOW, there is no such thing as 'best SSD'(talking about those benchmarks or reviews), but SSD that best meet individual needs.

I have seen people on the OCZ forum that do heavy video editing and found that Sandforce outbeat all the other SSD he tried(and Intel cannot compete due to the limited write throughput).

 

i tooked the intel simply because of the maintenace they make (software , firmware ect ...really serious) when it comes to pro usage ...i stick with the good vs the best .....

 

Yes, you're right. I don't do any heavy video editing. Just Windows programs and games. I can say that my load times for games is vastly improved which confirms your post.

 

hey everyone i have a question.

I installed my ocz vertex 2 just recently... it came with 1.25 firmware (latest), i have the system running on ASCI, but i wanted to know... what exactly are Intel's RST drivers? do i need them? Should i install RST 9? i heard RST 10 has issues with the new OCZ toolbox?

What do i do ?? im lost.

i use my Vertex 2 as a boot drive and have a secondary 500gb hdd as my storage drive in my Alienware M17x laptop. Thanks for the help!

Here are some numbers... do they look ok?

 

Very nice indeed...

 

postville = gen2 (the one with trim, silver case).

available in 80gb, 120gb and 160gb. g3 is not there yet.

nothing changed my mind. i just buy what's worth buying. and in this case, i guess it's worth it. curiosity, too. i still think for the ordinary customer, intel is best. but this is a specific setup.

 

Victorinox Secure SSD | Uncrate

 

:laugh:

 

Duuude!
what is this monster ?

 

it's a monster with bad 4K results


right?

 

something like a RAM disk ? but the random(i.e. 4k) number is not too impressive if that is the case.

 

random 4k have a big communication overhead. depending on the protocol and connection technique used, this slowdown is expected and can't be fixed.

there will always be overhead for 4k data => it will always be slower. the faster we get, the more we'll notice it, i guess.

 

Not too impressive? I'll take it instead of my 20/40 mb/s!!!

 

Do you see the size of the sample file? That is why the 4k randoms are such. He wont pull that out of normal tests....Its a fallacy test as I had posted once upon a time here.

 

you mean it's the 50mb file size ?
i bet it won't reduce dramatically with larger file sizes, or will it ?

 

Maybe one day, SSDs will show us some numbers like those...

Don't you wish ?

Meanwhile...

Horrible 4K scores are due to the Intel PM55 Chipset, whatever Drive is used...

Here's the result with 9 passes and 2000MB (second pic):



So basically, this was just a matter of entertainment, you all figured those results do NOT reflect an SSD, but my Samsung's RAM chips (4084MB = 4GB out of the 8GB I have)...

Which is, as chimpanzee guessed so well, a ramdisk...

So, apart from benching, what's the purpose of a ramdisk your cleverly ask ?

Well, what about putting there all the (small) writes you can, be it cookies, tmp files, logs, pagefile, and so ?

As a matter of fact, this prevents wear out of your SSD and on top, you get a faster system, overall...

As I stated here many times before, Disk's access are measured in miliseconds, RAM's access in microseconds, and CPU's cache in nanoseconds; therefore, you want to use as much as possible firstly your CPU's cache, on which you have absolutely NO control at all, then you want to use your RAM, which you can partially control with a ramdisk, and then you want to use your disk...

Most of us know Eric G and how helpful this guy is; I strongly encourage you to visit this page and scroll down to the ramdisk portion of his blog... I personally use the Dataram flavor of ramdisk, which is free and allows up to 4GB of RAM to be used as a ramdisk in this free flavor, which is great, being half of my total RAM...

Now, I just can't wait to try that with 24GB out of the 32GB I'm gonna put in my M1 8X in march or april (no april's fool there...)

 

it is the QD32 number that I found not impressive, it means the driver is not written to handle multiple random request.

As for usefulness of a ramdisk, has to remember that the RAM would be fully utilized as cache which overtime achieve more or less the same result.

As for the speed of write, if you enable the aggressive write cache policy, it usually is not the bottleneck of either a HDD or SSD(so long there is some cache) for the typical Windows write pattern.

 

AFAIK, the limiting factor of the poor 4K scores is the Intel Chipset not being able to properly "manage" those 4Ks...; see here...


AFAIK, RAM is barely NEVER fully used; windows would crash way before... On top, if you put your pagefile to the ramdisk, it's gonna be hell faster, while in my case, with 8Gb of RAM (and it works perfectly with ONLY 4Gb of RAM too), there's absolutely NO NEED for a pagefile in W7 with 4Gb (or more) of RAM, unless of course you use multiples VMs, or work with very huge & large raw files, weighting many GBs each... And, even then, I would certainly put my pagefile on the ramdisk drive because, again, access in RAM is *WAY* faster then drives)


What is exactly your point about the aggressive write cache policy you're talking about ? I never said the RAM is a bottleneck, I said that because access to the drives are *WAY* slower than acces to RAM, it just makes sense to have stuff loaded in RAM vs DISK, be the disk an SSD or an HDD; micro is always faster than mili, which is my point...

Make sense ?

 

why would a RAM disk has anything to do with the chipset ?

When I mean fully used, I mean used as cache as needed(and released when they are needed for programs), I saw that on all of my laptops. You don't put a page file to a RAMDISK, that makes no sense.

by aggreesive write cache policy, it is the 'enable cache' and 'disable flush'. This effectively means you trust that the device(HDD or SSD) will finish the write eventually. In technical term, it is 'write back' rather than 'write through'. The later is much safer in that when the drive return after your write call, the data is safely written to the actual media, 'write back' isn't.

If you fire up the resource monitor and check the disk activity, you would see that there are lots of small write going on all the time and for a properly configured HDD/SSD, the response time is below 5ms(mostly 0/1 on my screen). And I doubt anyone would notice the difference between 0.01ms and 1ms in actual usage.

We all know that RAM is way faster than SSD(an order of magnitude or two) but it is hardly noticeable except for specific programs.

 

Where did I say that RAM Disk has something to do with the chipset ?
I said: The Chipset (Intel PM (& HM) 55) is preventing optimal 4K speeds; did you even check the link I provided ? ( here)

I know what aggressive caching means, I just don't get your point on this one.
Even with write cache enabled, and/or cache flush disabled (or enabled), access to RAM is still way faster than acces to disk, again, would it be an HDD or an SSD; still don't get your point on this one...

If you can get all those small writes to a ramdisk instead of the disk itself, disk is free for access (reads or writes) while those writes occur to the RAM, therefore, speeding up the whole rig... Now, this might be barely noticible at a certain point, but things happening at the same time, there's less queue depth involved if things can be done simultanously, no ?

Lastly, when you say:

You don't put a page file to a RAMDISK, that makes no sense.

I think you're shooting yourself in the foot as I bet you you won't be able to support this with any evidence...


I can provide handsdown two reasons why it DOES indeed make full sense:

1. RAM access is way faster than disk access; why would it then makes no sense to access my pagefile faster ?

2. SSDs get used (worn) as you write to them; why wouldn't it make sense to do your best to wear them the less you can, to write on them the less you can ?


I encourage you to read this and this, and I will gracefully accept to retract myself if you can provide me with erroneous things I might have stated here...

With no offense at all,

eYe

 

if you have so much RAM for RAM DISK, you don't need page file. Try to disable page file and see what happens. page file is just 'slow RAM'. putting page file in RAM disk is technically like this:

RAM -> RAM Disk(over head 1 and remove a large chunk for other programs) -> page file -> extended RAM (over head 2)

To the OS, RAM and 'extended RAM' are still just RAM, why bother to go through that ? What you have done is to limit the usage of the RAM as RAM disk then going around 2 translation and put them back as RAM.

try to read some fundamental materials of what a page file is and how modern OS(well not so modern as that is like a 30-40 years thing) memory system function, don't just believe some 'windows gurus'.

 

I understand you are trying to make your point, still, I totally disagree as I even feel you did not even understand what I said, my bad for not being clear enought, lemme try one more time...


1. Pagefile is a reserved memory that windows blocks on the disk to palliate the (long time) lack of real memory, RAM;

2. Today's systems, with 4GB of RAM or more, DO NOT NEED ANY PAGEFILE, unless, as previously stated, you either work with a bunch of VMs, or, with huge large files like raw pics or so, weighting many GBs each;

3. Yet, say you still want to use a pagefile, which again is nowadays totally useless, and even worse, it slows down your whole system, you'd be better off acessing it from your REAL memory, your RAM, because it's access time is measured in microseconds instead of miliseconds for any HDD or SSD;

4. Because RAM's access is always *WAY* faster than DISK's access, it makes sense to write and read data out of the RAM instead of out of the DISK;

5. On top, when using an SSD, this allows for fewer writes on it, therefore, to prolong it's lifespan.

As per the above, am I so misinformed about pagefile ?

rgds,

eYe

 

try to envision this scenario

you have 8GB physical RAM, you slice 4GB for RAM DISK, you put a page file on this RAM disk. How much total usable memory Windows see ? 12GB ? If that happens, you would get a Turing award. If that doesn't happen, what is the point ?

 

As a matter of fact, I do have 8GB of RAM, but it's been kind of more then 8 years I'm not using any pagefile anymore; 2Gb of RAM was perfect within XP, 4GB is perfect within either Vista or Seven, again, without any need for a pagefile. But let's get to your very valid point.

8GB is 8GB, no matter how you partition it, it's not gonna make 12GB...

So what's the point you ask ?


Well, again, speed and capacity.

Guess you did not even take the time to read this...

Simply put:


SPEED:

Data in a RAMDISK pagefile will be accessed in MICROseconds;
Data in a DISK pagefile will be accessed in MILIseconds.


CAPACITY:

WRITES to a RAMDISK pagefile will not impact SSD's capacity;
WRITES to a SSD's DISK pagefile slowly but surely wears it faster, leaving you sooner with unusable cells to write to.


Make sense ?

 

the point is, how much memory Windows show in the 'task manager' ?

 

Guess you don't mind the french, quite the same in english...

What are you expecting ?

Of course, it's gonna show 8GB, here's for you:

(FYI, my C drive is a RAID of 2 Intels SSDs, and my E drive is my RAMDISK...)



So basically, I have:

4GB → RAMDISK
2GB → Windows
2GB → Available
8GB → Total

makes sense ?

 

So what gain you get ? Your windows still can only accomodate at most 8GB RAM usage, anything more would boom(say your situation of one 8GB image file in photoshop).

 

Nice question.

Again, I don't use any pagefile since two thousands lightyears, so I won't be talking about that. And I totally agree with you on this, putting a pagefile in RAM will in NO WAY actually increase the total available amount of RAM. We have an agreement on this. I was only saying that if I did use a pagefile, I would rather put it in my RAM instead off my SSDs, again, just a matter of wear and speed, not capacity.

So I have a ramdisk, and I'm not using any pagefile; what do I gain you then cleverly ask...

Well, imho, it all depends on what I use the ramdisk for, and the best way to benefit from it is to use it instead of my disks which, again, be them HDDs or SSDs, they are any system's bottleneck because they have the slowest access time; thus, the best componant to upgrade for overall responsivness, would it be from a 5400RPM to a 7200RPM HDD, from a single drive to a RAID0 array, from an HDD to an SSD...

So, best usage is to force windows to use my RAM instead of my DISKS to store stuff.

Next question is what does windows store to the drives that could be written in RAM instead ? Obviously, there's what this guy-you-so-called-some-window's-guru but, hey, by all means, if you think of something else, I'll gladly consider it carefully...

I'm upfront thinking of ANY TMP file that can be created by ANY program on my SSDs, pure garbage for them...

My 8Gb of RAM would never be fully used by windows itself; providing I have the power to force it to, for free, why wouldn't I ?

Speed and Capacity (SSDs) are the major benefit to use RAM as a RAMDISK, especially with SSDs, which is the whole point of this thread, because RAM access is faster than even SSDs and, on top, less writes to SSDs = longer their lifesspan and better their speed.

Makes sense ?

 

I think we have to first clarify the term 'RAM DISK'.

In your case, you are creating a RAM DISK using your computer's physical RAM. Under such situation, it makes no sense of putting the page file there because you gain nothing(and I am not even sure you can do it, can you try). If you still don't understand what I mean, I don't know what else I can say.

Then there is another form of RAM DISK that plugs into a PCIe slot which really is presenting itself as a block device(just like HDD/SSD). There, you have every reason to put the page file because it would be faster than SSD(but slower than RAM).

 

There is one reason to put a pagefile in a RAMDisk using your computer's physical RAM (well, apart from possible 32-bit vs 64-bit silliness). Some programs will not run without a pagefile. They absolutely, categorically refuse to run unless a pagefile is set (it's a game, but an example of this is Dawn of War II; it _requires_ a 1.5 GB pagefile no matter how much memory you have, 10 GB in my case). In this case, it could be worth making a RAMDisk to store a pagefile just to satisfy this "silly" requirement, especially if you have a SSD and would like to minimize write cycles. These are, admittedly, special cases, though, and depend heavily on the programs you use.