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

why would one want SLC SSD on a notebook ? It is way overkill and money not worth spending.

 

cape loves them and says himself all the time that it's worth it for no apparent reason other than, years ago, he learned that slc is better. till today he can't accept the "think about the ssd as a black box, if the numbers of the blackbox fit you (including lifetime numbers), then it's fine". which would mean, mlc is fine, too, if it's a quality ssd.

so he still wants one. even though it's stupid and useless for an end user. not for a db-server or something with thousands of users on it at the same time. but for his laptop, definitely.

but no one can change his mind

 

LOL, you crack me up! Yes, I like them and think they should not have disappeared. And yet, it is a known fact that SSD's have not been around long enough to really tell us about reliability. And if I had a datacenter, there would never be an MLC anywhere near it, I guarantee you that.

For my personal use, I would like a Crucial, Intel, or a samsung just fine. My Nova got sold on Ebay as I need cash for bills. Time are tough here

And BTW, Dave P., are you over your "Intel is the only SSD ever worth getting", or do you yourself now subscribe to the Black Box theory you stated above???

 

it's a "right tool for the job" thing. slc is not the cost effective (and storage size effective) tool for the job of a home user / workstation thing. it's the right one in a datacenter, so i would use it there, too, obviously.

well i do have a crucial c300 or how it's called here on a sandybridge sata3 port. it's for a video editing desktop workstation.

other than that, i want a brand that i can trust in. intel delivers. ocz definitely (again) doesn't. samsung would, but it's not that snappy in usage.

 

given that crucial, samsung and intel are used(or once used) in HP/Dell optional offering, I think all three can be trusted reliability wise. OCZ(and I believe any SF drive) seems to be not able to get any endorsement from these tier 0/1 vendors.

Not sure about Kingston.

 

I think it's more of a size issue for the Tier 0/1 vendors; all of the Sandforce vendors are incredibly small companies compared to Crucial/Micron, Samsung, and Intel. Just like a major automotive manufacturer is less likely to go with a small, boutique company (unless they have a previously established relationship) than a larger supplier, at least for a major line. Also, as smaller companies, they're less likely to be able to provide competitive OEM pricing to the major vendors than a larger company due to economies of scale.

 

I don't know, that is not the impression I got from reading OCZ's earning conference call. They are talking about shipping quite some number of SSD. I have no idea how many SSD equipped machine is sold by Dell/HP but the quoted number by OCZ is not small.

edit:
Beside, I know someone who once is in this hardware trading business and said Dell has no such thing as previously established relationship. In is all based on price and they use the spot market a lot and would not blink an eye if this week's shipment use Hitachi and next week becomes Seagate.

 

Dave P, two, OK three, questions. Do you like your Crucial? And do you think that the Intel 120GB is better in any way than the Intel 160GB, except for being smaller/cheaper? And last, you think the Samsung is not as snappy to a degree that I would notice in totally normal usage? Thanks, Dave

I ask because I may be setting up a client with an SSD, first one!

 

Well, without the numbers, it's really difficult for either of us to say. I will note that the OEM SSDs supplied by Dell/HP were not offered for sale by retailers (Samsung P800s, OEM Micron C300s with SATA2 interfaces instead of SATA3) apart from Intel (actually, did HP/Dell ever offer Intel SSDs? I know boutiques like Xotic did, but I'm not sure about Dell/HP), so it's even more difficult to tell exactly how competitive pricing for those drives might be (they're obviously not the same as the upgrade prices that Dell/HP offers). Don't forget the vendor integration aspect as well, Dell/HP need to offer driver updates and firmware updates for the drives they use, and these are often vendor/OEM locked (note how hard it is to flash the P800s with new firmware, for example), and given how tight Sandforce has been with the details of its controller and firmware, Sandforce just may not be willing to give Dell/HP that much control. It's also worth noting that with how quickly Sandforce firmware changes, that instability may contribute to a tendency for Dell/HP not to use them.

 

the 120gb is as far as i can see the same as the 160gb in any way except storage size. i use it on a bitlocked system, though. so i can't verify it's performance any more.

I don't think normal humans notice the difference to a sammy. But for me, they always felt just like an ordinary hdd without the blocking moments. Not that snappy, not that instant. there's a reason why intel loves it's 0.0 latency. it's really noticable (for me).

mtron (slc, 0.1ms latency) to samsung was a huge performance drop (but mtron was 100MB/s, sammy 200MB/s). mtron to intel was actually a performance gain (1st gen, 0.085ms). first to second gen wasn't much of a gain anymore.

so i prefer intel by far over most others still. they're a company that knows chip development, and a company that knows how to test, measure, and evaluate what's important in a design. that's why they don't hunt for the big MB/s. they hunt for good parallel performance, and fast response. by now, they're not the best anymore. but they're still very good, and reliable, too.

 

Believe me, I feel the same way about Intel. They are I think one of the most accomplished and fascinating companies on the planet. They manufacture with damn near perfect precision one of if not THE most complex single part ever devised and produced by man, and they do it well. I always have and always will "tip my hat" to Intel.

No others seems to have withstood serious scrutiny. Sandforce is flaky depending on Firmware, Marvel is nice, but really untested, Indilinx is dated, etc etc etc.

I know this client wants to FEEL a big boost, and I can easily recommend Intel to him for all the reasons you, I, and others have mentioned.

Thanks for your input, Dave

 

the only faster experience i had so far was the c300 on sata3 with a high end core i5 sandybridge cpu on a clean installed win7 with 8gb ram.

then again, i guess it's the whole thing that's just fast in that case with sandy bridge, it's like with ssds: the focus on responsiveness got massively pushed again. the quick overclocking helps tremendously.

how could they make sure anandtech does not go off the ocz-is-so-great trip during the slow-flash debacle of this week?

exactly: send him a new vertex:

ocz vertex 3 pro preview the first sf2500 ssd.

so he's happy again, doesn't hear the whole mess happening, and can report how great they are.


but the drive performs nicely, that's true. for enthusiasts with a LOT of money, this might be it. but for this price, no thanks, i guess i could just raid two cheaper ssds

 

which is why I said, I can only say impression based on what I have seen and read. Though it is not as if OCZ was not trying, that question came up in multiple conference call and each time they said they are working on it but no tier 0/1 vendor has qualified or use their product.

As for firmware changes, that usually is a sign of instability when it has changed so frequently.

 

Forgive my ignorance, guys, but I'm reading you sing praises for Intel, while review publications seem to all talk about slow write times from their SSDs. I do understand the reliability factor; few companies have as much experience with chip manufacture.

Surely, Micron (Crucial) would also qualify as a huge company that understands chips. When I think of silicon fabs, I think "Intel, Micron, AMD, Motorola, Texas Instruments" as the "big 5". Is there a reason to suspect that Crucial c300 drives are less reliable? Or, I guess, the new c400 units, compared to the new Intel models.

The more I read, the more I feel like a hungry infant in a topless bar: Confused.

If you were going to rate SSD units, which would you say was:

• Most Reliable?
• Longest Lived?
• Best for photo work?
• Best for video?
• Best for 3D Modeling/Rendering?
• Best for gaming?
• Best for general computing (Office suites, etc.)?

I know "Best" is a poor metric, but I'm interested in the trade-offs involved, I guess.

 

Both Intel and Crucial is more likely to be using the same IMFT NAND.
When we talk about SSD reliability, NAND is the last you would concern but controller bugs.

Vendor like OCZ do shop around(usually for price reason like lower bin NAND) but that is compensated by the controller architecture. NAND reliability is not a concern no matter what.

There is no 'best' SSD, but best SSD for 'X'.

 

Yup - according to Micron/Crucial, my HP OEM Micron C300 cannot be upgraded to Micron's latest firmware because it's vendor locked even if it is identical to the Crucial C300 in SATA2 configuration. The frustrating thing is that as a consumer you don't know whether or not the omission of the latest firmware by Dell/HP is the result of careful consideration (i.e., stability/compatibility concerns) or slow/poor product support. Completely aside from pricing, that's a pretty good reason to not go OEM.

 

After reading these last few pages, i went ahead and bought the intel x25-m 120gb!! going off from all the comments i think i made a good decision for $230.

 

you must have had one of the first samsung MLC drives, pretty slow back then.

todays Samsung 470 series prove to be top notch, I'm considering getting their 256GB model right now.

also, mtrons were quite power hungry

 

Thanks, rep'd

 

For most reliable, off the top of my head I'd go with Intel, Micron, Samsung, and Western Digital. Toshiba probably is right up there too, but we don't hear much about them (I think a lot of them might end up in Macs, and are largely OEM). Sandforce has a lot more instances of "disappearing drives" than I'd like to be recommended as really reliable, although if you get a good one, they work quite well.

For longest lived... there just isn't enough data. NAND production comes from so few people that except for the vendors that likely use their own NAND, the NAND pool is pretty much common usage for everybody, which means longevity (from a NAND perspective) is pretty much equal (given usage of equal quality NAND... cheaper, lower spec NAND would obviously reduce life). This of course ignores such obvious data as SLC lasting longer than MLC and the like. On the controller end, Sandforce may actually be the best controller for controlling life for a given NAND quality, given their compression algorithms and subsequent reduction of write amplification.

Best for Photo Work/Video Work - Well, not Sandforce, due to their issues with incompressible data. From what I understand of this sort of work, there's a lot of heavy writing involved, which would mean that the Samsung 470 or C300 is best for this. Although, of course, given prices, you're really better off with a RAID 0 array of spinners for the sequential writes and the added space. 3D modeling and rendering probably also fits in this category.

Gaming, well, doesn't really benefit much from SSD technology, except that levels will load faster, and the game itself might start faster. Overall, though, gaming bottlenecks have always been the CPU and GPU in terms of actual playability.

For general office tasks, Sandforce can often come out with a small advantage, due to the fact that many of the simpler general office applications involve easily compressible data, which works quite well with the way Sandforce works. The argument that Sandforce has made all along is that they're "designing for an O/S drive", and that's why this shows as one of Sandforce's strengths. Still, for most office tasks, you're not heavily using the I/O interface (much like gaming), so just about any SSD will do quite well.

The drive is an excellent choice. I am, personally, not fond of the pricing, but that's an individual thing.

 

Thanks Judicator! That helps me clear things in my mind.

I suppose that if read/write cycles wear down the drive, it would be wise to put any swap files on a HDD, not the SSD with the OS and Program Files?

 

If you're so inclined, yes, but for the "average" user it's pretty much a non-issue; you're not going to write enough to the drive that it's going to matter. I do admittedly not know your usage habits; if you're one of those people that spends 6 hours every day torrenting multiple gigabyte files, then yes, I'd send those files to a HDD.

I wrote my numbers somewhere else, but over about 2 months of use, I've been listed as having written something like 710 GB to my 250 GB SSD (this includes 2.5 installs of Windows, because I botched an "optimization" or two), and my drive health is still listed at 100%. This is admittedly with 34 nm NAND, though. Even so, I agree with davepermen that worry over your NAND wearing out is largely overblown. Apart from "super" writers like tilleroftheearth (3 TB in 2 weeks!), you're not likely to wear out the NAND in less than 5-10 years, even if you did no optimizations at all.

For an idea of the numbers, Intel claims their drives last at 100 GB a day for their 5 year warranty. I don't remember if this was for 50 nm or 34 nm flash, though.

 

Seen this? Stolen from another thread. Gen 2.5 Intel's. Kinda want, but need a 160GB. Sounds better than Gen 3?

 

Is it true that this 510 series is rumoured to be not using the same controller family as the x25m but a Marvell one ? Or in a sense, something similar to C300/400 ?

 

darn! i just ordered from amazon the intel x25-m 120gb, if i were to return it and wait for the 120gb 510 ssd, would the speeds still be fast on the sata II interface compared to the x25m? i know buying a sata III ssd isnt optimal to run on a sata II interface but if it is faster, i wouldnt mind paying the extra 50 bucks.

 

Last month;

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...marks-brands-news-advice-281.html#post7092100

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...marks-brands-news-advice-281.html#post7101816

 

Oh...

 

Don't worry, it's a big thread, things get missed easily.

Edit - Oh, and to pacson; noone has any actual reviews on these yet, so we have no idea how well they stack up, or not. And even though they've been announced, we're not certain of release dates either.

 

Ahh I see, sucks having buyers remorse though, but at least the ssd arrives on friday and i just ordered it at midnight on thursday xD.

this is like the first step into breaking the bank

 

Why are the Intel 120GB super expensive again? Granted I got one over the holidays effectively for about $160 with rebates, etc. But still, $229? I was hoping with all the new drives coming out that they'd drop in price pretty quickly. I'd like to buy one to put in my Sager and put the 80GB that's in there into my netbook, but alas, cost is way too high.

 

Supply and demand. Inventories are probably drying up with the G3 drives around the corner. Combine it with lots of folks jumping ship following the fiasco with OCZ, and prices start to rise.

 

Darned OCZ, I think my next SSD purchases will be from another vendor **cough**Intel**cough**

You know you could sell me one of your Clevo notebooks for 229, and that would be just enough for that Intel 120 GB SSD...LMK

 

If you're thinking of buying an intel SSD, you might want to wait a month, see if this is true or not.

PC Perspective - Intel 510 series of SATA 6G SSD coming March 1st?

 

ocz vertex 3 pro takes the lead as the new title holder

OCZ Vertex 3 Pro hits the test bench, sets the new single-drive speed benchmark at 550MBps -- Engadget

 

Darn, I want that Intel 510 BAD!

 

i got mine for much less, has to be the market.

 

No! Don't return it!

Buy both and let us know which is truly faster.

You're already on that slippery slope of purchasing SSD's for your system - you may as well let them do you in quickly (but not painlessly).

 

Haha, well buyers remorse, and im sick of the waiting game. i would buy both but REMEMBER! broke college student! (cant wait for it 2 arrive 2morrow, cant believe it took one day.) I <3 Amazon Prime

 

It would get more post too long if it wasn't close.

 

Hi Guys, just thought I might get some help in choosing my first ssd. I'll be putting it into my Alienware m17x r2 as the primary boot drive for os, games and day to day software ie: light photo editing, blu ray ISO playback as well as downloading stuff off the internet.
I have these ssd's in mind so far the Corsair F120gb, OCZ vertex 2 160gb (not the new 25nm one), Intel 160gb x25-m g2 or the 120gb version.
Thanks for your help.

 

There's no way to tell before opening it if the Vertex 2 is 34 nm or 25 nm (and at this point, it's about 90% likely to be 25 nm), so you'll probably have to cross that one off your list if that's important to you. You say it's your primary drive, but you also mention the photo editing, bluray playback, and internet downloads; are you going to have a secondary drive as well, or just one drive? If you have a secondary drive, I strongly recommend moving the ISOs and downloading to the secondary drive, and probably most of the photo editing too. If you just have the one drive, and you need the SSD "now", I'd go with the Intel 160 GB. If you can move the items I mentioned to a secondary drive, the Corsair is a good choice, and I'd prefer it given that it usually comes at a better price point than the Intel (same Sandforce controller as the Vertex 2, although with less IOPs). Or, if you can wait, you can see if the new 510s will drive down the prices on the G2s, which might make the Intels more attractive.

 

Thanks for the info. I do have a second hhd (500gb) and will be storage I'll just the software loaded on the ssd. I was thinking to wait out for the G3's but then I thought will they be any better in the m17x r2 since it's SATA II. Saying that though you do make a good point about waiting for the G3's to see how far the price will drop on the G2's.
Thanks.

 

SSDs harder to securely erase than standard hard disks - Flash! Saviour of the universe | TechEye
and here is the research
http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/users/swanson/papers/Fast2011SecErase.pdf

 

"God invented SSDs when He realized there were still computer enthusiasts with money in the bank."

 

Intel next-gen 510 series solid state drive are too expensive . 120 GB and 250 GB, priced at around US $366 and $767, respectively.

News Source

 

Sorry my bad didn't see it.

 

Got my intel x25-M 120gb ssd from amazon 3 hours earlier than expected. Its fast as the advertised speeds. Best $230 dollars ive spent on computer hardware for sure.

 

The techpowerup link is an european retailers thats probably trying to hype and get preorders, i doubt its going to be like that, the original news from vrzone seems to be or at least hoping to be accurtate, still expensive.

Im just wondering what would be better, to wait for the G3 or just to go with the 510s, seems some companies having issues with 25nm, and with G3 rumors puttign the speeds lower, im not sure its worth the wait, probably will be cheaper, but slower......