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

Wouldn't be shocked at a $999 price tag.

 

hope 320G can boost up more writing speed

 

There is no announced release date yet.

What we know for sure is that Intel started selling the G2 in August. It is now November and Intel has had two recalls: first for the drive itself and now for the firmware. The product still isn't working as was intended (stable and with TRIM). You might take that as a sign that any new product like a 320GB will be later rather than sooner. Intel's SSD division pretty clearly is overstretched.

 

I'd like to hope that the 320GB will be priced where the 160GB is now, and the 160GB/80GB prices fall further down. That is my guess of what will happen.

If the drive is priced at more than $600, not a lot of people are going to buy it...which means the undoubtedly large sums of money Intel has to spend on validation and testing will be a waste of money.

We already know Intel burned all the G1 owners regarding TRIM support, and those people paid up to $600 for those drives. They expected Intel to come up with a solution for degrading performance over time, and they did - but choose not to implement it on the G1. From what I have read, no one is going to trust Intel with $600 of their money after what they did. Not to mention they are burning a lot of people right now with bricked drivers and firmware problems.

The G1 is a good drive, but it was stupid not to implement TRIM on it.

 

ShopBLT.com has the G2 in stock, but only a handful:

80GB for $ 254

 

I got 2x160GB G2's from shopblt.com, thanks to the forum. Had been looking around for sellers who weren't price gouging on the G2's like newegg was, and shopblt seemed to be the best available.
Got 2 retail boxed G2's and they shipped em pretty quick too.

so thats one happy customer from shopblt.com

 

LOL my 32gb SDHC just came in today. got it on eBay for <25us$ shipped. couldn't resist. but lets just say i don't plan on making it my os/apps drive.

However, i do think it will serve the purpose i got it for; just gonno thorw my mp3s and some other random stuff on there.

 

yes it does, trough phone activation.

 

My previous HDD was a Toshiba. Not lucky this time. Thanks anyway for the advise.

 

Nicely said!

Even if Intel cut price of SSDs in half I won't use them because I don't want to loose any data just to have fastest drive out there.

As I said few times already: I bought SSD so I don't need to think about dying HDDs in first place.

 

you all do overrate trim. the G1 runs perfectly without trim and with vista on it since now over half a year. and if it one day doesn't, i clean it, restore my system from the backup, and continue usage.

trim is nice and all, but good drives don't need it. bad drives can abuse it in the future to be cheap and crap, but still thanks to trim good enough to work.

 

davepermen, did You have any other problems with G1 Intel SSDs (8 MB partition for example)?

And does G1 have garbage collection?

 

Apparantly they are testing Samsungs new TRIM enabled FW over at OCZ and are saying that it will not work with drives that have controller level block consolidation and cleaning. They are saying that VBM18C1Q is better than the new TRIM enabled FW which is OS based.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61515&page=16

 

Saw that, and first thing that came to my mind was that this could be a reason why Intel had issues with G2 SSDs and TRIM.

Hope they'll work it out soon.

 

Since intel g2 does not support TRIM currently, should I be getting one?
I'm thinking of getting a 160GB x25-m.
Should I get something else along that price range? like the 256GB one from dell.

And, Mandrake, I read somewhere you're looking for an SSD too and researching on it. Can you please let me know which one you chose after you got one?

 

If you're willing to spend the money, you have to ask yourself if 160GB is enough for you. If no, then get the Samsung 256GB from Dell, else if you prefer higher performance, get the Intel X25-M 160GB. IMO the best combo would be use your SSD in conjunction w/ a large 500+GB HDD.

 

Is the Samsung 256GB SSD still considered good? Do they have TRIM now? When are they going to release an updated version?

 

The Samsung has always been good. You need to compare the good SSDs against HDDs because that's where the major improvement is seen. Going from a Samsung to Intel/Indilinx, despite differences in benchmarks, isn't much in real life situations.

 

that's exactly how i plan to use. I already have 500GB HDD. I'm putting a new SSD in as an OS drive. I'm actually looking for the best performance+space for around $500 and Intel 160GB seems right.

 

Cool. I'm thinking of running two of them in raid 0 in my HP Envy 15.

 

Just note that (I've read this, so I'm not 100% sure but) the HP Envy takes 2x1.8" drives or 1x2.5" drive. So you'll need to make sure you get the right product.

 

Ok, so I rebooted the computer, did a CCleaner, erased all Prior Shadow Copies, restarted, logged off, had the machine "GC" for ~8 hours, restarted, logged off, "GC" for another ~8 hours.

Ran the WEI, still only a 6.9

I'm not really familiar with the scoring on these tests, I just ran them so that I have you guys to explain to me if I got dud Samsung SSDs in Raid 0 or not.

Or these scores good? Like...in terms of comparing them to the famed Intel Drives?

 

Tomy B.

I have read numerous times (on this forum as well) that Acronis True Image does not keep the original alignment unless you are restoring to the exact same hard drive and restoring the whole drive (and not only the Windows partition).

When either of these conditions fail, or you are restoring to a different drive than what the clone was made from, then the O/S partition will not stay aligned. It will default to a 63K offset (just like Windows XP, wrongly (for SSD's) does).

 

Mormegil83,

This will be the perfect way to test eBoostr Beta!

http://beta.eboostr.com/download/

I have to run away in a few minutes, but I will be posting my experience with installing/upgrading Win 7 on a Samsung and an Intel SSD - and comparing it to my Scorpio Blue running eBoostr Beta with the cache on an eSata 16GB SSD.

Stay tuned!

 

MegaMan X,

Please look for a more complete post later tonight or tomorrow, but the quick and the short of it:

Samsung 128 GB SSD; WEI score 5.4
Intel 160 GB SSD; WEI score 7.5

Maybe this is as good as it gets for your drives/system WEI score?

 

I've run the beta for the past little while, but it expired today. To tell you the truth, I haven't noticed a single difference with and without eBoostr.

 

@megaman X

It looks like u don't have write cache enabled. I forget if that was mentioned otherwise I'd say u look pretty good. Really it just looks like ur drives are in a "used" state an don't have gc to clean up...

WE score and benches aside does it feel like something is wrong?

 

well...not really, but its a nagging feeling that I'm running Windows 7 with no TRIM, and I thought I had GC...but I guess the benchmarks say otherwise.

I dont know, I just feel like I wasted money on these SSDs. I wish I had saved my money and bought the Intel or OCZ SSDs instead.

I do have to ask though, without GC and TRIM, is there anything I can do restore the drives back to "new" performance? Like reformat? Or does that not even work?

 

Yeah there is a way to set the drive to "like new". Is it secure erase or something. The thing people use for their intel drives if I didn't have a first gen iPhone still I'd do some research for ya, but this thing is so damn slow

don't worry you didn't get ripped off. I'm sure sammies will get Trim.

 

obviously no, and garbage collection is just a fancy term (i know it from programming since years, coding in .NET) for something that is just logical. yes, intel do gc since day one, they always did. the others just started later, and had to market it somehow.

so i stay with "no, it doesn't" as it does enough to not ever need any of the fancy marketing words, but yes, of course, it sort of does.

 

how's your raid0 set up? might make them under-perform. other than that, samsungs suck as i've stated more than once. they just don't 'feel fast', which is, well, sort of the result you feel like you wasted money. they still are fast, but not in the cases needed the most: they don't deliver the same snappiness as other drives.

still, tell your raid0 setup, stripesize and such. it should be as big as possible.

 

Didn't know that, so I test it and yes, it doesn't keep disk alignment if I clone one disk to another.

So I guess after cloning disk, next step is to realign disk.

BTW: it is 63 sectors, not 63 KB

 

Like You said, fancy term, but to me it just maters that it does "something".

I would really like to try Intel so I can decide do I need something like that or not, but I think that won't happen soon.

For now I'm satisfied with MasterDrive SX (Samsung PB22-J) without GC or TRIM.

 

Yes, you have stated more than once that Samsung drives suck and that you "feel" the Intel drives are much faster yet you have not once posted a benchmark supporting your "feel".

http://pcpitstop.com/betapit/sec.asp?conid=22776670
"see"... it's easy

 

I am actually thinking of buying 2 x Intel X18-M 320G to make a 640G raid 0 for my vaio z. When the hell is Intel gonna move?

 

Thanks for verifying that.

I knew it wasn't KB, but I had to put 'something'!

Guess I hadn't rebooted my brain yet.

 

sgogeta4,

The latest beta I'm using expires the end of this month for me?

http://beta.eboostr.com/download/

May I ask what your setup is with eBoostr?

 

Daveperman, to be fair, weren't your Samsung drives 1st gen MLC?

 

He had a 64gb second gen also, if I recall correctly...

And I'll be honest, tiller, I probably won't get around to testing eBooster, and I can't possibly see how it would "speed" up my system. everything I do is absolutely instant except loading in games, and that is considerably faster than any system I have used/seen. But to be honest all I use my personal laptop for is typical stuff like Internet, email, and hours and hours of gaming (warhammer for the past year, really). Of course that is not everything, but usually that's about it.

If I thought there was a remote chance it would speed up my system I would give it a try, but my storage solution is fast!

 

Seems like eBoostr tries to mimic MS Ready Boost. The laptop being used is in sig. I now am trying Dataram RAMDisk and putting my IE/FF cache folders in there. Doesn't make much of a difference either.

 

Which has less channel because there are less flash chips on the IC, so all speeds are slower compared to the 128GB and 256GB variant.
I wouldn't honestly consider davepermen's experience with the Samsung drive if I'm shopping for a 128GB and 256GB model.

 

That score tells me that the Samsung drive you're looking at is a 1st gen MLC drive. It's significantly worse than the 2nd gen drive.

 

Your benchmark is equivalent of my benchmark of a single 2nd gen MLC Samsung SSD(well, except the read speed, which is about 60MB/sec less than yours). For your reference, I've attached a benchmark of a member in the Lenovo forum taken from his Lenovo Thinkpad T400s, with a 128GB Samsung SSD 1.8" variant. Looking at it will tell you that there's something seriously wrong about your drives (like they're not configured in RAID properly).

 

Wow, that's really really disappointing. For me I mean.

There's no way for me to reconfigure the raid, the laptop came like this preconfigured.

Also, since there doesn't seem to be any GC, i'm just SOL I guess...how would I restore performance? Or is that not even possible?

 

You can try taking the drives out and secure erase them individually and put everything back together.

 

ah....thats going to suck.

lol

Question though...does the degradation ever stop pass a certain point? I'm sure once the drive has been completely fill up to some point and the blocks marked for deletion start occurring, the degradation will stop right? Hopefully?

Darn samsung and your lack of GC!!

 

one first gen, one second gen.

and i don't need to provide benchmarks, i'm no benchmarking site, i'm just a consumer. but i'm not the only one with this experience, and there are benchmarks showing the samsungs are much worse in certain situation than other ssds. all of us read the anandtech ssd articles, and it's, thus, the most well known to us example articles showing how much worse the sammies are.

i can re-repeat that how often i want, people won't learn. the sammies are good ssds, but lack the wow effect, as they sometimes go down to hdd-like performance. and this is not what you want to pay 100s of dollars for, to get the effect of having a good hdd, only.

here, pics from the part "What is wrong with samsung?"

from here


so can we please stop the whining of the ones having a samsung? i have first and second gen sammies, and while from the numbers, they're wastly different, they are identical in usage. same time to install an os, same time to start apps. the 220MB/s read speed, they do NOTHING. the intel and mtrons beat them regularly here.

i still use them in other systems, as they are GREAT HDD REPLACEMENTS. fast hdds that are silent and shock resistant. just not great highend hdd killers.

 

see above post, and, btw, no clue, but your link doesn't go anywhere.. so much for 'easy'

 

My 60gb Summit is about 3 months old 50% full and heres my crystaldiskmark


It has never benched in the 1.2 area for 4k random writes. That Anand article is pure BS...

 

he doesn't use crystaldiskmark to test it, which you would know, if you would've read it. and still, my random writes are MUCH higher than yours, and so are the random reads. which should give you an idea.

pure bull? i guess not. but you just can't stop denying, and it's fine. as i said, they are nice devices, just not wow devices like others. i can send you one of my mtrons, which has only 100MB/s read, 80MB/s write or so, and you still would get wowed by it.

but you won't accept it anyways, as i know. as you call anandtechs stuff BS, i now attack you and say, yours is BS. and by checking 'the gross of tests and experiences', i know i'm right (including my personal experience, of course).


let the fight go on (as i know you could never agree with me, one reason i took a break from here for 2 months or so)