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

It's mainly an optical improvement. It does't really affect real world performance though, except for install times.

The tweaks can shorten battery life and increase heat though.

 

When i boot with and without jjb tweaks, i feel the difference when opening small PDF and chrome pages, nothing of exceptional but the tweaks give a little boost for some tasks IMO

 

Thanks!

Yeah, I agree, that was more about "number hunting"... But the drive feels great so far, really. Well, I can't really compare it as this is my first SSD, but the system feels snappy and quick. Boot times are ok, I didn't tweak around much there.

I'd say Phil is quite right about this, the tweak will help when installing files from the SSD but for daily tasks you won't really see the difference, I don't think it's worth the extra heat.


So far I'm pretty happy with the drive, but I haven't really tested it thorougly yet. A main reason for getting this Intel drive and not a different one was the size, 300GB is nice. The drive isn't cheap at all, but compared to the 512GB or 600GB drives it's ok. I put some money aside a while go with the intention to get a SSD, now I finally decided to get one. I'll see whether it is really worth the money, but as I said, so far it feels great!

 

C400 Reviews are in, Engadget a little late.

 

seems that it is neck to neck with Vertex 3 benchmark wise and based on the past history of reliability, this one seems to be a 'better bet'(all new models are), if the price difference is not huge.

 

Well the hardware heaven has some real life tests, seems there very close to the vertex, i would still give the edge to the vertex though in most test, but just slightly, in real scenarios seems about even. Supebiizz had the C400 256GB for $459.99, my guess is once it hit big retailers like newegg/amazon its going to be around $450, thats should be $50 cheaper than the vertex3 240gb.... and the C400 128GB was $249, thats also $50 lower than Vertex3 120gb, in both cases the micron/crucial offers slightly more storage for $50 less, but overall i still think the vertex also is slightly faster.

 

why I said 'neck to neck', meaning a difference that is a 'yawn' to me. And if you said C400 is cheaper, I simply have no reason to get Vertex 3 at all.

 

Well guessing they will enter the market couple week later than the Vertex3 and they are slighly slower, my guess is they will compete in price. Still here the links for the C400 and vertex3,

OCZ Technology 240 GB Vertex 3 SATA III 6.0 Gb/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive VTX3-25SAT3-240G $528 (was $500 in the morning)
Micron 2.5 inch 256GB RealSSD C400 SATA3 Solid State Drive(MLC) - MTFDDAC256MAM-1K1 $459 (im guesing $449 on amazon/newegg in couple of weeks).

OCZ Technology 120 GB Vertex 3 SATA III 6.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive VTX3-25SAT3-120G $300
Micron 2.5 inch 128GB RealSSD C400 SATA3 Solid State Drive(MLC) - MTFDDAC128MAM-1J1 $249

Personally im having second thoughs about keeping my preorder of the Intel 320 300gb and just go for C400/M4 and save $100.

 

yeh if i can get the 256gb c400 for around $450 i'll be getting that instead of a $315 160gb intel 320.

 

I doubt that anyone would notice a difference between C400 and C300 on SATA III. With the introduction of C400, C300 may become a very good deal.
_____

New firmware for C300 coming soon
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/New-firmware-for-C300-update/td-p/41594

 

Amazon is now shipping the Vertex 3 240GB -- mine arrives tomorrow.

 

when did u order yours ?
mine is still not shipped... i ordered on 3/22

 

I ordered on March 10th.

 

Seems Newegg just got them, OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $524.99

 

Yeah, price - that's the only thing they have to compete with Intel with.

(About $50 cheaper... 'only').

1.65W idle power requirements! - welcome to pre-2002 levels (I'm guessing around 1996/97).

See:
Recommended Hard Drives | silentpcreview.com

 

Damn and the biggest of 'em all appears,

OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-480G 2.5" 480GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $1899

Interestingly the specs are lower than the 240gb (maybe a typo)

 

I've seen the 480GB version available as an option for some Clevo resellers, the price is more than double that of a single 240GB Vertex 3. Interesting that the performance boost isn't anywhere as close as expected if the above quote is reliable.

 

same thing happens in Intel's 320 line. The 600G is not faster than 300G and has a lower IOPS. 256-300 seems to be the sweet spot for the current gen SSD.

 

I ordered mine on 4/4 and it is estimated to ship on 4/20. I suspect they have limited quantities and are doling them first come first served.

 

hey guys what do i need to do in bios and within windows once i install my ssd?

just got my c300 and need help setting it up. something about AHCI and IDE?

 

Just make sure you enable AHCI on your bios before you install the drive, after that make sure you install the latest Intel chipset drivers and RST, after that up to you what drivers for your laptop. I also have very good results using The SSD Optimization Guide, specially frees a lot of space for the ssd, but i didn't do all of them, read each and research if its going to matter for your personal use.

 

Cool. Thanks.

Ahci was already enabled and thanks for posting a link to that thread as that's actually what I was looking for.

 

Just finished reading Anandtech Vortex 3 120GB review. Seems like 120GB drive performance is bad. Specially 4k read speed is worst than SF-1200.

Here's what Anand said about 120gb drive in his conclusion......

 

another question.

i'm at 105gb after a fresh install of my 128gb c300.
shows 119gb total for the partition, so 14 gigs for 64 bit Win 7.

do these #'s seem right?

 

Let's see:

128x1,000x1,000x1,000=128,000,000,000

128,000,000,000/1024/1024/1024=119.209GB

119-105=14GB...

You're right!


Or, you can simply multiply the nominal capacity in GB by 0.9313 to find the 'formatted' capacity (for Windows systems).

 

Vertex 3 240GB benchmarks, fresh install of Windows 7 Pro 64. New laptop, i7-2820QM, SATA III.

 

^ Nice results. Btw, running CDM with 5x 1000 writes a lot of incompressible data to your drive. Not something I would do.

Still looks like the fastest 120GB drive though.

 

Amazing, enjoy this monster

Just a question: does new Sandy bridge chipset slow it down as series 5 did because of cpu power saving ?

 

Seems like all OCZ Vertex 2 owners can exchange it for free to a 34nm version.
And OCZ will start selling 34nm Vertex 2 models with guaranteed Intel/Micron NANDs.

Source: The OCZ Vertex 3 Review (120GB) - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

Finally they have woken up, is it normal that anand had to talk directly to the CEO ? Do they read their forum ?

 

Or maybe it just took this long for their board to finally decide how they wanted to handle the whole thing. It's not clear from the email exchange whether the new approach was prompted by Anand's emails, or something they were already going to put into place, and Anand just happened to be the first person they revealed their plans to.

 

After reading Anand's article, I felt a little less angry at OCZ. I mean if they had left out the cruddy Hynix altogether, I don't think I would've been angry at all. I mean, they are in this strange purgatory of SSDs. They don't make their own NAND, so they are beholden to the whims of suppliers.

Don't get me wrong, though. If I find Hynix in my Vertex, I'm gonna go all Kaiser Soze and kill all of them and their wives, children, neighbors and neighbors' pets.

 

ok here's what i did with my C300 install. let me know if this is all that's needed or if some of these things are hurting my install/ are unnecessary.

1. Clean install of Win 7
2. Installed all Thinkpad drivers
3. Installed Intel RST
4. Ran most of these optimizations: The SSD Optimization Guide | The SSD Review
5. Verified that TRIM is enabled.

 

Follow that logic, if a car maker don't make their own brakes, they would just put in whatever they can find in order to make sure their production doesn't stop and can continue to sell.

 

"whatever they can find" within component and vehicle specification...

 

True. In this case, there is no specification. There is nothing stop OCZ from using 2000 P/E cycle component(as they don't say we would use 5000+ P/E cycle component in their spec) and take the chance. After all, the worst case may be just a small percentage of failure within their warranty period(if there are some heavy writers) but given their excellent RMA operation, it may end up as a net gain to the bottom line.

 

And this is why I said the Hynix was a no-no, but tiny variations weren't a big deal between Micron, Intel and whatever OWC was complaining about. As far as write cycles, Anand already addressed it. Businesses aren't perfect. OCZ obviously screwed up here. I'm not letting them off the hook. I'm just trying to make the distinction on what was "wrong" and what was not a biggie. The Hynix thing is the biggie. That performance is even worse than the 25nm and I might have one in my machine.

This kind of thing happens all the time, though. Remember XBOX RROD? That was a much bigger deal, IMO.

 

No, definitely no a much bigger deal with the XBox RROD. That only affected gamers - this can (and I'm sure has) affected people trying to do work with their gear.

 

Well, notwithstanding the work/play distinction, the level of "shadiness" regarding OCZ's willingness to sell crap gear is just not all that bad is all. I'm just saying there are levels of bad. RROD gets a 9.0 on the bad scale.

OCZ? Ehhh.
6 for the 25nm/34nm debacle (lost space is easily apparent)
7 for the Hynix move (lost SPEED is not so apparent)
And it's not possible to have "both" issues at once.

 

I just got my first OCZ drive. Its Vertex 3 120GB

I dont know why but my 4k write is VERY LOW:



Windows 7 clean install. TOtal data writen ~90GB

Any idea ???

 

Torai, both 4K read and write seem low. Have you tried the intelppm tweak?

I suggest using CDM with 3x 100MB instead. AS-SSD writes about 15GB on each run.

 

Hello,

As Phil says, you should try either these or these tweaks to boost you 4K's.

It's the Intel chipset that prevents your SSD to work optimally by bridling the processor's fuel injection intake...

 

Hey welcome back! Haven't seen you around in a while!

 

Thanks Phil and eYe, I did the tweak and here's the new result:



Compare to the old one



I think 4ks are pretty much still the same

 

Read the anandtech review. 4k writes are pretty normal to me. Anand said 120GB drive is not good for 4k.

 

Oh oh, so that confirms that Intel HM67 Express Chipset still suffers from low SSD performance.

 

Here's a 120GB Vertex 3 from a dutch user. Double the 4K read and writes of what Torai posted.

 

Just tested with CDM:



Seems like my 4k is significantly low. I asked in OCZ forum and someone said its because Im using it on a laptop

 

That CDM result looks a lot better. Your 4K read is good now, the write a little low.

I understand what they're saying about laptops, usually laptops don't get the same performance as desktops.

 

yeah, did u try stamatisx's tweak as well ?