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

Out of all of those you quoted above, the XT is the only sensible option for you. Mostly because I can't recommend such small SSD's (in a single drive configuration).

When you do get the XT, make sure you flash it to the latest firmware SD28 and be ready to be impressed (more than you will be impressed in three months from now with the SSD's and their puny, performance robbing capacities (especially if you fill them over 50%...).

A power tip: use a 100GB (max) C: drive partition and move the Users folders with the tips from the following link. (Even if you don't move the users folder, if you partition C: drive to be 100GB or less, you will notice a big increase in the O/S responsiveness vs. installing to the whole 465GB capacity.

You may also want to wait a few weeks to see if the new 750GB XT with 8GB nand cache will hit the streets.

Good luck.

Oh boy! davepermen is delusional.

What schedule? What track? They're simply giving us all the information they know that sounds 'cool' to hear.

23 yrs(?) working on a new type of memory - still not here yet. That's not a schedule - that is showbiz (in grand HP style).

Still, prove me wrong HP, prove me wrong. I can already hear davepermen singing and dancing his victory jig!

 

if I bump my budget up to $200 and the Intel 320 120gb and crucial m4 128gb enter the equation, is the recomendation still momentous xt? I suppose I should take my questions about the xt to the proper thread but how much of an impact on warcraft loadtimes could I expect over a traditional ssd?

 

This is not comparing the M4 nor the XT, but 20 seconds in this example (and I assume you meant traditional HDD):

See:
SSD vs HDD World of Warcraft load times - YouTube


I would still recommend the XT (especially if you wait for the new one...) and a proper partitioning strategy.

Unless, you can install both an SSD and a HDD together in your system.

 

Thanks for the video link. Yeah, warcraft benefits huge from ssd, but I wonder how close the XT can get after a few WoW restart.

 

In case somone is having issues with OCZ Sanforce based ssds,

SandForce Identifies Firmware Bug Causing BSOD Issue, Fix Available Today

 

Yep. SF released new firmware which fix BSOD issue and it works.

 

Too late. Nobody trusts OCZ and SF anymore

 

Lol... how is this 'fix' any different from the previous (year's worth) of 'fixes'?

I thought that they were blaming Intel for the 'bugs'? Or Microsoft?

Or, Mike down the street or Sandra because she used mascara on Tuesday?

For the sake of the people who have been guinea pigs for the last few months, I sincerely hope that this is indeed fixed now.

However, I still want SF to disappear (because I don't see them able to do a complete about-face) and let the real SSD guru's bring real improvements in storage subsystems once more (and they will, when their sales go flat and they need to see the upward climbing graphs again).

OCZ, by backing SF so blindly, is not too high on my list either - I'm hoping that they will learn from their 'marriage' to SF and return to providing real value and service to their customers. But I want to see real proof of that before they're my vendor anytime soon.

SF on the other hand is all about smoke and mirrors, broken promises and deceit. In all ways they conduct themselves.

SF? Not even on my death bed.

(Now, watch me proved wrong).

 

Sadly, I doubt it. OCZ release an alleged fix for BSODs a few months back that fixed roughly ZERO of the cases. Granted this is Sandforce releasing a fix, but still.

And wonder of wonders, they claim the issue is in the firmware. After 8-10 months of saying the issue was definitely NOT firmware.

BURN SANDFORCE, BURN! Take OCZ with you...not just for their blind lemming-like follow-the-blind-leader mentality. Some of the worst customer support people I have ever had the displeasure of working with...liars too! /RANT

 

Its going to be interesting to see if people here recommend intel when they start using sanforce in the 520s.

 

If it's Intel firmware running - I'll probably be the first to recommend them.

My 'line' won't have changed - it will still be 'buy Intel'.

 

LOL. This is too funny. But unfortunately, too true. Good stuff Tiller.

 

Wow a lot of SandForce hate in here!!!!

I have a 2nd gen SandForce drive and several of my developer coworkers do as well. We have all been running our systems without any problems. Both of my coworkers have Sandy Bridge systems and I have what is in my sig.

We are completely happy with our drives performance and reliability so far. In fact I was at the point of selling my laptop until I slapped a Corsair Force 3 120gb SSD in it. Now my laptop is the system of choice for me to use again (since my desktop does not have a SSD yet).

FTR both of my coworkers drives are 60gb OCZ drives.

 

Nah, not hate: just trying to protect ourselves from immature/beta/alpha products passed off as retail.

Consider yourselves lucky then that you have had no reliability/dependabilty issues.

OCZ/SF would not have released this latest Firmware specifically for this problem (again) if there were no issues to fix.

 

Right!

And of course said issues have dated back to the first drives they released, and they kept saying the problem didn't exist...interesting that they finally changed their story.

 

I left for a while, and I'm back now. First scan reveals: nothing new, same old same old.

my ssd plans are the new win7 samsung tablet (same as the win8 tablet), with 128gb ssd in it. i guess it's a samsung ssd in there.

 

Welcome back davepermen!

Ah, Samsung SSD in your future... you're slumming, huh?

What will/can you use the new tablet for - and - will you be putting Win8 on it soon?

See:
Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

 

well, i guess i can't replace it as it most likely be fixed. else i would put an intel in, of course

and yes, the plan is to run win8 on it, but maybe i'm using win7 on it first.

with the dock, it'll be my pc at home. without the dock, it'll be small on the go.

so i'll use it for everything (the only way i can accept a tablet, and why i will never get an ipad)

 

iPad... yeah...

I played with one for a few minutes again last week and couldn't believe how 'childish' I felt with it in my hands. Very cartoonish experience to me.

Then, a 2 1/2 yr old took it and looked at/loaded/swiped about 10 programs in and out of the foreground until he found one he liked - all in the time it took me to start Safari on that thing to check out the NBR forums.

Pwn'd by a kid! Lol...

But really, that is where the iPad belongs (in a child's hands).

Give me Win7 or give me a pencil and paper!

But, I did like how fluid and responsive it was (even though I didn't know what I was doing or how to do it).

 

don't diss a platform for not knowing what you could do with it. it's a great platform and has tons of great things one can do with it.

but it's definitely on the hw level way below a pc. this tablet will be a core i5, it will have higher res than the ipad, and thus it will fit MY needs. for those that can use an ipad and i serves them well, it's great to have all the options.

and besides, being a childs toy is a great thing to be. and still being a kid, even while you're at an age where you have to behave grownup and adult, that's important, too.

but as it doesn't serve all my needs, and i'm in search for something that does, i won't explore it further. i do enjoy those needs that it does serve. not enough to buy it, though..

 

Wasn't really 'dissing' the platform - more like making fun of myself.

As you though, the iPad offers me very little and convinces me even less to own it.

Doesn't matter what it is capable of - it doesn't feel like a very professional tool at all to me. Mostly because of no keyboard, mouse and the huge (cartoonish) user interface that is like a backhanded slap when I was using it.

(TOUCH ME HERE, TOUCH ME HERE! Blink, blink, zig/zag wiggle.... Aahh!).

 

So I have my 128GB M4 turning up tomorrow. As I'm going SSD to SSD I'd prefer to clone than re-install so what's the best freeware cloning program around currently? As I partitioned my 64GB Kingston, I'll want to do some partitioning too.

 

hey guys been out of the loop for a while.... what are the top 5 ssds you guys can point me to, without causing a brand-war? Sata 3 that is...

last ssds i bought were the intel x25 and then the vertex 2... but i am now in the market for sata3 ssds...

Is intel still the slower one of the pack, with the most reliability? Is sandforce still implementing durawrite crap and getting only like 30% of its advertised performance? Is samsung and crucial still leading the benchmark war? Thats how things were when i last checked lol.

+rep to anyone who can help me catch up! Thanks guys!

 

Intel 510
Crucial M4
Samsung 830 ( i doubt you'll find this though, preety new on the market )

none of sandforce based drives

 

Basically, yes. Sandforce is still distributing beta drives and taking 10 months to fix glaring issues. And the random die-in-2-months issues are still very prevalent. Samsung is still great, Crucial has the true fastest drive on the market, and Intel is still solid. Any of those 3 are your best bet (all are very reliable), though the Samsung 830 literally came out days ago and so isn't widely available yet.

 

The Intel 510 Series 250GB model is the fastest overall SSD you can buy. And, rock solid reliabilty.

Period.

Top 5? Lol... Intel doesn't have that many SATA3 models, yet.

Intel is definitely not the slower one of the pack - especially in real world scenarios - it just costs more and people think that by costing more it should equal more performance (the 'more', for me is the gain by having a fast and reliable system with the least down/maintenance time).

Of course, a specific usage scenario could point to a different drive as being a better fit than an Intel - but without knowing your usage model, the Intel 510 SSD is the single best SSD that $$$$ can buy at this point in time.

 

SF is sold - good or bad?

See:
LSI Set to Acquire SandForce in $370 Million Deal


If this means that the damage SF controllers can do to the general public will be decreased (by limiting SF to LSI products), this is a good thing.

 

hmm, might be good, if LSI is doing some research and fix the problem of the previous sandforce controller...

 

I think its a good thing, LSI is a mayor provider of server HBA/RAID cards, and pretty good quality stuff, even a lot of sub vendors sell their stuff like Intel, IBM, Supermicro, i hope LSI can bring Sandforce to quality users expect from an ssd.

 

so touchscreens are a general childplay thing for you, then? welcome to the grumpy old rant land, then. enjoy it there. and then, get off my lawn! have fun with your fast harddrives, there

still can't preorder my samsung tablet here

 

touch based computing only fits in a very specific segment comparing with say a notebook. It has its advantage in certain scenario. I just watched 60 minutes about iPad and Autism which actually is a very good use of iPad.

 

Looking forward to buy ssd for laptop. It has sata3. But i am thinking to buy a sata3 120 GB or larger sata2(160-2xx)? Does capacity filled to 80% slows down sata3 ssd so much that it would be slower than large sata2?

Now looking OCZ VERTEX3 120gb and Intel 320 160 GBand m4 128 GB
P.S.
OCZ droped, it takes too much power and battery lfie is important for laptop

 

Simply filling it to 80% doesn't slow it down - it is what you're doing with the remaining capacity that will determine if it slows down or not.

If your usage is anything like mine, it will not only slow down below a larger SATA2 SSD's speed/performance - it will be slower (overall) than a mechanical HDD and certainly slower than an XT Hybrid for example (when the XT is properly partitioned).

However, if your system is SATA3 capable and you want the maximum performance for this system only consider an SATA3 SSD with enough capacity/performance to give you an overall performance increase (not just in some specific and narrow areas).

A SATA3, 250GB SSD or larger is highly recommended for maximum performance as it will have all the controller channels fully populated and also have each channel optimally interleaved with nand chips too - in addition to having the necessary capacity to allow a usable capacity for you and the necessary free space for optimum GC, TRIM and other internal nand cleaning functions to be carried out with minimal WA (write amplification).

The best way to achieve all those goals is by partitioning the SSD and leaving the unallocated space, unallocated. The more capacity you can give up like this the longer the SSD's high performance will be sustained, over time.

See:
Write amplification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I see you say you dropped the OCZ, here's another reason to drop it (off a tall building): Sandforce drives are flaky at best. They like to die for no reason...

Since you have a SATA 3 system, get either the Intel 510 or Crucial M4 (or Samsung 830 if you can find one yet).

 

Thank you! I will probably go with m4 128GB . Intel is 100$ more.

 

What does everyone think of the Samsung P180 128GB SSD? From what I see, its the OEM version of the 470. Is it good?

I ask because I got a laptop with it (E6220, Core i5 2.5 Ghz, 4GB RAM, fresh W7 install) and am not too impressed.

 

Samsung SSD's just don't have the 'wow' factor for me too.

But then again, most SSD's fall into that category (Intel 510 Series 250GB model excepted - with the right partitioning).

 

Outta' the loop here too. How has maintenance changed for the new/next-gens? Still letting Win7 run garbage collection? Or is there a single-instance run for TRIM? Is it different per brand/model?

 

just sold mine x25-M 80gb (got pretty good deal,couldn't stop myself)....
i was almost set to go for M4 128GB..... but now that intel 520 series is so close to release..... confused what to do???

 

If the new 520 Series performs like the current 510 Series with regards to sequential compressed/uncompressed r/w's - then it is definitely worth waiting for.

The M4 is lower in performance to the 510 right now (overall), so the 520 might even entice me to upgrade my SSD's to the 480GB capacity point.

Does anyone know the release date of the 520's?

 

among 510 and M4.... i would simply go for m4 because of great price to performance ratio........

but now with 520..... no idea what is coming... no preview , no leaks nothing....

 

Depends the deals ($$$) you got and the performance you require from the drive.

See:
AnandTech - The Crucial m4 (Micron C400) SSD Review


If performance (first) and reliability are a prerequisite for your storage sub-system(s) and high R 4K r/w's are not a large part of your workload, then the one time cost of paying slightly more (depending on the deals) easily puts the Intel on top and keeps it high on the list.

Of course, that makes the Intel 510 Series (250GB model) a great performance to price ratio 'buy'.

 

Yeah, different depending on brand/model with Intel having a huge step up with it's just released Intel SSD Toolbox v3.0 software which monitors, does weekly (manual TRIM) maintenance, updates select SSD firmware within Windows and also can perform a Secure Erase on an Intel SSD which the system did not boot from.

The common maintenance/setup hasn't changed though for all/most SSD's:

1) Windows 7 SP1 Highly Recommended for TRIM to work in real-time.

2) Leaving as much unallocated capacity as you can sacrifice to allow the built-in GC (as determined by the SSD's Firmware) to do the necessary cleaning of the nand cells with as little WA increase as possible.

3) Non-RAID setup - although with the latest IRST drivers TRIM will be passed to SSD's if the system is configured for RAID; but the SSD(s) themselves are not part of any RAID array.

4) If using RAID - simply SE the drives and rebuild the array every few weeks/months for maximum performance.


Keep in mind that currently only Intel and SF based drives do any 'real-time' GC, with most other controllers being much more 'lazy' and requiring inordinate amount of idle time to perform such mandatory internal housekeeping chores.

This is why an Intel 510 Series SSD can sustain a higher avg. performance with sustained use (real world use; not on a synthetic 4K R r/w scenario) than an M4 does. The M4 is waiting for the drive/system to go to 'idle' before it cleans up its mess and posts impressive 'scores' initially while the Intel is continually cleaning the dirty nand and outperforms every other current drive in the long run.

Hope this helps.

 

It does, thanks. I'm looking for random-read performance and sequential read-write as I'm now doing server backups weekly (4 GB+ copied to an external through USB 2.0 green drive = slow as crap on my 7200 HDD) and so on, so my workload has changed. I DO still have some esoteric SLC x-25E's lying aroud in a RAID-0 array, but I haven't used them since i bought them and installed win7 on them. I don't expect those will ever get the TRIM support they need, being that they're first-gen I think, SLC, AND they're in RAID lol...

 

almost every site showing this info regarding 520 SSDs
"up to 530 MB/s read, 490 MB/s write sequential performance; and 40,000 IOPS reads and 45,000 IOPS writes random performance"

Intel Readies SSD 520 Series SATA 6 Gbps High-Performance Client SSDs | techPowerUp
New Intel 520 Series Ready for Q4 Launch
considering current 510 SSDs are 500MB/s read, 315MB/s write , 20,000 IOPS read and 8000 IOPS write..... and still doing good..... i guess 520 SSDs are going to be pretty great at launch.....

and you really think M4 is lower performer than 510???
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-320-crucial-m4-realssd-c400,2908-11.html
i guess PCMARK Vantage says it all.... 510 is having hard time even beating x25-M here... and all i care about is real world testing

 

Some news!

See:
Intel SSD 710 Tested: MLC NAND Flash Hits The Enterprise : Intel On Enterprise Storage: No More SLC; Meet HET MLC

Okay, with SATA3 capabilities, this is what I would be upgrading my 510's to. In a RAID0 config with up to 6 drives (uh... $1200x6=$7.2K in the storage sub-system per workstation).



Finally, RAID0 makes sense again for SSD's. Thanks Intel.

I may have found a new way to spend more money. lol...

 

this one fits your usage but is of little interest to most notebook/desktop users. eMLC is specially tuned to have very short 'live' in order to get the endurance number. Perfect for scratch disk or say database cache etc.

 

What is a very short 'live'?

From what I understood of the article, it get's it's high endurance numbers by having 40% over-provisioned spare area - in addition to being hand picked (die screening) and increasing the page programming cycle (by making it longer, the nand cells last longer...).

Speaking of the 40% spare area Intel also states the following:

I guess my research, direct experience and my gut feelings with various systems and SSD's (including the latest SNB platforms) guided me fairly accurately as I'm mimicking Intel's recommendations for high write scenario for a few months with my Intel 250GB 510 series drives partitioned to use less than 43% (100GB out of 232GB) of the available capacity. (If we count the percentage more accurately - it is 100/250 or 60% spare area - just like Intel is recommending in the quote above).

 

eMLC is a specially tweaked NAND that has PE cycle that is not on the same league as MLC(not to SLC level but one or two order of mag more than MLC). That comes at the expense that if the cell doesn't get refresh, it would lose what it remember for I think within 3 months(forgot the exact duration but around that).

IOW, if you leave your notebook there and not using it for a while, you stuff can disappear.

That is why it is not marketed as a general purpose SSD but solely for enterprise where it is expected to be bang 24/7x365 and would be replaced, mainly for very volatile usage like the mentioned database cache, log or things like that.

 

Great point (which I read, but promptly forgot)!

Thanks for bringing it front and center.

+rep!