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

out of curiosity, what is that B5 line saying ? The raw value seems to be pretty large.

 

SMART documentation here. (No idea what it's supposed to be since I thought it's already aligned.)

 

I haven't chosen the Intel X25-M yet - I will buy the next SSD with 300GB or greater capacity (actually, I had both the Intel G2 and the Inferno SandForce based drive at the same time but I returned the Intel; the Inferno felt much, much faster - boy! was I fooled).

I didn't fully test, but simply tried the Intel and the Inferno together. The Inferno felt much faster (initially) and I returned the Intel 160GB G2.

However, after a few short weeks, the Inferno was not only slower than the Momentus XT that was in the system previously, but also slower than the Hitachi 7K500 (which is noticeably slower than the XT in my experience).

Understand that my usage scenario is a very 'high write' one. In around 30 days I had written ~3TB to the drive (according to SSDLife, anyway).

What this did is enable the DuraWrite and Lifetime Write Throttling mechanisms built into all SandForce drives. This is what slowed the SSD down to a crawl and even slower than mechanical drives.

Right now, this SSD drive is being used as a big 'USB key' in an external enclosure. What replaced it (a $400 SSD, btw) is a $59 Scorpio Black which I'm still using.

Hope this helps?

Good luck.

 

I was forced to get the Corsair Force60 instead today for pretty cheap...sadly the G2s were sold out like cakes

 

Thankss !
I ordered the Intel X25-M this afternoon. I am willing to give up a little speed for reliability - I've seen so many bad reviews about the OCZ failure. Also, after using for a while, the performance of the OCZ seems to be degraded a bit, I dont know if it is true (even with TRIM). Intel also has better support. And, for a R2, SATA 6GB/s is useless, so I think intel is the best choice for me.

 

yay 400$ usb stick

 

For the record, the Vertex 2 isn't SATA III (6 Gbps). The only SATA III drives out currently are the C300s (except certain OEM versions) and the Intel 510 series (are they released yet?). The main attraction of Sandforce over Intel is better write speeds (by a fair amount, although depending on your usages you may never notice, and if Durawrite kicks in, you'll lose that), and often better pricing (Intel still often tends to hover around $2/GB, while Sandforce often drops much closer to the $1.5/GB mark). These are US prices, of course. Intel seems much more competitive with European pricing.

For what it's worth, I've been well pleased with my Vertex 2, although the fact that it's a 240 GB model means that performance slowdowns and such will be further into the future for me.

 

Thanks for the info. What I meant was SATA III is useless so I dont need to wait for the new SSDs coming (vertex 3, intel gen 3, c400...) and the crucial c300 too is gone for that reason. That means the Intel is my 1st choice for now.
I've heard a lot about SF1200 better than Intel, that's for performance for sure, but I also need reliability since data is very important.
Btw, how much is the slow down could you notice? I believe there is some software that helps you measure that? With the OCZ, I heard someone got 78% after 3 months use. That's not very good.

 

After about 2 months of use, I've noticed essentially none, and a CDM I ran a few weeks ago (after my third windows reinstall because I'd been testing a few things) was pretty much within the margins of error of my initial, fresh windows 7 install CDM. I'm running Intel RST drivers, so the OCZ toolbox doesn't detect the drive, but CrystalDiskInfo says the raw lifetime writes value is 280, so that should probably mean 640 GB written (since raw SMART values are usually in hexadecimal). Again, a lot depends on usage patterns. If you heavily benchmark, and run lots of write operations to the drive, you'll be more likely to trigger Durawrite and lose performance. Note that in 2 months with 2.5 installs (one of the windows installs didn't have most of my programs reinstalled) I've "only" written 640 GB; and for the record, my current usage of the SSD is about 33% (70-80 GB). I also did formats between each of the (secondary) installs, which may have used up a full write cycle to every flash cell. Tilleroftheearth had a double penalty; he had a smaller drive, and it was the only drive in his notebook, so when he wrote 3 TB to said drive over the course of, I think it was 2 weeks, he naturally noticed a very dramatic slowdown as Durawrite kicked in.

So, long story short, the Intel is better in long term sustained heavy write scenarios (but pays for it with slower write speeds), while the Sandforce is better for "regular" usage scenarios (and thus can tweak for better performance). There's also the compressed/uncompressed data dichotomy for Sandforce drives; part of the reason Sandforce drives work as well as they do is that they auto-compress data in the controller before writing it to the NAND. This is why except with specific benchmarks or settings (all 0s or 1s for example), you'll pretty much never get the advertised speeds of a Sandforce drive.

 

Can You show us that CMD results?

 

Sure. Took a little while to get home and run fresh ones, since I didn't keep any besides the initial one. It seems that the sequential writes decreased a bit more than I thought, although I think the results from the (unsaved) CDM were more like 115 MB/s or so, which I at the time attributed to probable variations in fill data. I also rolled back my drivers from the IRST 10 drivers to the Matrix 8.9.8.1005, and got slightly better write values. This also let me use the OCZ toolbox again, which says I have 704 GB written to the drive so far. The first CDM is the fresh one, with just Windows installed, as is sort of obvious since only 20% of the drive is used. The second is the IRST CDM. Sequential and 512K writes have dropped a fair bit, but the 4Ks remain strong. The third is the Matrix Storage drivers CDM, with slightly better Sequential and 512K writes. The last was done before I uninstalled the IRST, and it's a 0x00 Fill, to show exactly how much faster compressible data makes a Sandforce drive. I also forget what other changes I might have made to the system between now and then, since I just noticed that the 4KQD32 Read results are much higher in the recent CDMs. Not sure what's causing that, since I've done no specific SSD tweaks (none of the performance boosting stuff in the other threads... I'm "just" using the SSD, apart from moving a bunch of the libraries and User files to my secondary HM640JJ, which wasn't in there for the initial CDM).

Again, though, I don't notice this drop in Sequential performance at all... Everything is still nice and snappy and fast.

Edit - Reminder, these are values pulled off an OS drive in a working notebook, with various extra processes running (Trillian, HWiNFO32, maybe a few that I'm forgetting since I was too lazy to shut things off). As such, they won't compare well with benchmarks done by most testing sites, which test non-OS drives in desktops.

 

Okay so I got an 80 GB Vertex 2 SF1222 SSD in my Latitude 13. It has the latest IRST drivers from Intel's website for my chipset. Yet why does a SF based SSD only get 5.9 when my 30 GB Vertex in my i7 desktop yields me a 6.9?

 

Finally, less than $1/GB ... the best price for a SSD so far this year

 

Guys, I just updated my Intel G2 SSD using the v1.7 firmware and now I cant boot back into Windows 7 Pro 64bit. Please help me out!!! Please refer to this dedicated thread for more details.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...d-after-intel-ssd-firmware-update-v1-7-a.html

Help will be greatly appreciated

 

Try deleting all files from C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT and re running the assessment.

Don't worry too much about WEI, as long as other benches are giving you expected results then forget about it.

 

are you in ahci mode?

 

Hi, I just installed Patriot Inferno 60GB on my HP Mini 110-1177TU Netbook. When I checked with HD Tune Pro v4.60, it showed up like this below. What's going wrong?

 

It's a good drive for a desktop replacement notebook that would be plugged in all the time. It draws more power than some HDDs so battery life will take a big hit. I have the same drive in my MSI, and it's a great value for the money. I won't be putting one in my incoming M11x, however.

 

Look at the SMART attributes:

CF = Amount of surge current used to spin up the drive

Not sure what 32 and 33 are but probably hard drive specific attributes also. It must not be SSD smart.

 

Does SSD supposed to have CF?
So, do you think the SSD is going bad?

 

the ssd is doing fine. it's just not a good hdd. but that's normal. an ssd is not a hdd.

 

Yup, set SATA mode to AHCI before installing Windows. I know not to base everything off WEI, but doesn't make sense that a SF SSD is rated slower than a Illindex based SSD using the same WEI tests...

 

This thread is too long.......


info is all over the place....

 

^^^^ Yea!! Get A Part Two Going Mods!

 

Actually we are in part two!

Part one is 922 pages long. :yes:

 

What we really need is either a separate forum for SSD or somebody to update the first post with a good FAQ. It's too ridiculous to have to sift through this whole thread. I made the suggestion in the suggstions forum, but apparently not deemed important enough.

Add your disgruntlement to my thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sit...ments/542751-ssd-subforum-under-hardware.html

 

Yep. It would be great to have an entire forum, with specific sub-forums or threads for:
SATA-II SSD Reviews
SATA-III SSD Reviews
Benchmarks by Model or Brand
Competing Technology Discussions (Sand Force vs. whatever....)
Tweaks and Tips

 

added

 

Perfect idea, really it is needed. Just like the time has come for SSD, the time has come for an organized Forum of SSD info!

BTW, I have been around since page 1 of part 1!

 

i don't think we can edit the start of the post, as it's owned by les (and we still have no clue why he got banned).

i'm not sure an ordered organized forum thingy would work. i've seen such tries fail horribly. but it would be interesting to have the stuff in a more ordered fashion.

 

Does this look okay for HM65 chipset?

I heard the chipset had poor 4K scores, but these don't seem to be bad..

 

I do not think anyone is talking about editing, just scraping the almost 200 pages for tidbits of knowledge to put into a proper FAQ and along those lines.

 

Can anyone recommend a SSD for a SATA/150 system?

I've got a i875P-based system which I'm generally satisfied with. The real bottleneck of this system is the hard disk, so I'm considering what SDD to get.

Given my first-generation SATA controller, I'd get about the same STR on any contemporary SDD. So my focus is primarily on IOPS and on the quality of the garbage collection in the drive's firmware. A small drive (32GB - 40GB) will do because the bulk of my files are stored on a network drive.

Any recommendations?

Thanks.

 

Pretty much any 32-40GB SSD will be slower than their larger SSD brothers just nature of the beast. Intel X25-V 40GB or Corsair Nova 32GB seem to be popular choices. You might be bottlenecked a bit by sequential reads and writes, but otherwise, will still add pep to your system.

 

I heard X-25V was a solid contender and had great read/writes.

Try that one out.

Intel X25-V SSD Review (40GB) | StorageReview.com

 

X25V is perfect for OS(and nothing) drive as it has the famous low latency of Intel. If the size is really enough, nothing beat it.

 

I will be replacing the HDD on my Alienware M11x.

Is the Kingston 128GB SSDNow V Series a good drive? The price after rebate is only 125 which makes it in my budget.
I was told it runs hot and actually uses more battery then the current spinning hdd so I would have lowered battery life.

I am wondering if it is worth it to put this drive into my laptop or not. I ordered it, but can of course return it.
It will be used for web design, chatting, browsing the web, and of course some gaming.

 

It is a good entry level SSD
I have done a few upgrades with the V Series and it performs well in laptops.
You will have to pay considerably more if you want cutting edge performance.

 

Just ordered Corsair 64 GB NOVA series SSD from Newegg for 112.99 not the one I wanted, but for the price I thought I'd give it a shot. Should be here Tuesday. Anyone else used one of these, it got great reviews?

 

It is a good deal, And it's not that fast like the sandforce 1200 drives, Still it will be a big jump from an hdd.

Here, I grabbed this from a review

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5113&p=2

 

That info makes me feel much better about my purchase. I'm glad to find out it is lower power so I will have the same or better battery life. It looks like it should be much faster then the HDD that will come in it as well

Is it true that the Kingston SSD is hotter then a regular HDD?

 

The c300 seems to run quite warm..

I think it depends on whether it has vents for the HDD..

 

I dunno, check here as well.

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

I owned a Kingston V-series and put it in my netbook to replace a WD 320GB Blue drive. I got about 4.25hrs with the blue drive, about 4 hrs with the Kingston SSD, and when I went with an Intel SSD, I got nearly 6 hours. Of course this all depends on what notebook you're using. If it's a power sipping netbook that consumes 7-8W in total, it will make a difference, but if in a regular laptop that consumes 12-15W normally, obviously less effect on battery life.

 

warning!

for those who are going to buy a vertex2 read this

complaint about 25nm SSD drives


i can't believe this!!

i ordered one weeks ago a vertex2 and guess what? OCZ changed NAND memories with 25 nm version.

i'm still astonished...this is against consumer's laws, if i pay for something, i must have it as advertised, stop.

I advise you: don't buy from ocz anything

 

.... ^^^ this is funny... LOL

relax bro...

 

What's the effect on the drives if they use 25nm?

 

25nm nand based SSD's:

- much lower write cycles (about 1/3).

- for same capacity, less channels needed; which means less performance.

- not much (if any) cheaper.

- new process node; reliability not known.

 

in general changing process generation is pretty safe(well once in a while there are glitches but those are very rare) as far as reliability is concerned. Because if it flops, the monentary damage is huge, just look at the sandy bridge chipset saga.

What one needs to be worried are those components higher up in the chain like has sandforce tested properly ? has OCZ tested properly. Based on my experience and reading, that is a big NO. So for such a product release philosophy, I would be worried on any change and would wait for the test results(i.e. early adaptors).

 

Is there any price difference with OCZ 25nm and 34nm products? If not they are trying to rip off customers not only price but also by not telling them about it.

 

You can't say it is a rip off. Any business would try to minimize the cost and still maintain the selling price.

SSD is a bit special as far as NAND is concern due to the mentioned issues. That said, they would still insist that the one using 25nm still gives you the same ATTO benchmark and still back by the same 'time based' warranty.