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

I don't think so, at least not anymore. It'll have to be until Q4 for Taylorsville. I'm not hopeful on massive performance boosts though. Intel seems to be wanting to lower prices for mainstream acceptance. If there's anything, the X25-E should become more mainstream pricing with MLC chips, and X25-M even cheaper with 3-bit MLC.

I think they'll introduce TRUE enterprise SSD with SAS interface.

 

Sounds good if you're a newb. I hate anything 'automatic' on my computers.

Way too many possible issues (this is software based, after all).

 

Agree, plus PCI-E slot speed is too slow.

 

I think that Intel is currently happy with the way their SSD's are selling and will not release a higher performance model even if they can. No reason to - keep the prices up as high as possible for as long as possible.

I also do not believe that they have much more performance left in the current controllers - unless they can give us a version with 20 channels now.

I do hope I'm wrong though!

Cheers!

 

That's why it's in the Ideapad line, Lenovo's consumer laptop line
While I agree that this is for people who may not necessarily know a lot about SSDs, it helps exposing people to SSDs and their benefits.

 

zephir,

we're agreeing, but it is actually helping to 'shield' people from the SSD's, while giving their benefits.

Cheers!

 

I would guess SuperFetch doing its job?

 

They don't need 20 channels in order to increase performance. There's still lot that can be done with controller optimization. If you compare the older and the newer OCZ SSDs, it didn't increase channel count. The X25-M G2 uses very low cost flash. Better controller can get write performance on par with reads, and newer flash can bring everything up.

Looks like X25-E will have to do with people looking performance Intel SSDs.

 

I hope you're right IntelUser, but I just think that because the on board cache is not used for caching Data, it is limited to the write speeds it has inherently.

That's why I was hoping to see a 20 channel controller.

 

*waits to see I jumped the gun*

 

I don't think superfetch would affect benchmarks in any way.

And this is after Trim...


My random and parallel reads are slower than after 100GB of writes without Trim?

The other feeling I get with benchmarks is that they are very "volatile" - they differ from day to day, between every time you run them...

 

Well, I think SuperFetch can skew benchmarks. Only way to test that though is to disable it (which I won't do).

I agree with the 'volatile' nature of benchmarks too - but between systems. The three benchmarks you posted are all within 2 or 3% of each other (except the 4K 64ths) so they are all within the margin of error anyways.

Cheers!

 

And cooked the drive at temperatures of a thousand degrees and above for a few minutes.

http://technologizer.com/2010/01/09/iosafes-solo-ssd-survives-one-disaster-after-another/

 

how fast's the individual chip? 20MB/s write speed if you write a full cell? then, the 10 channels would allow up to 200MB/s write speeds if the logic works well enough to spread it to the chips quickly, and "clean up'n'collect" (tm) afterwards..


but intel doesn't care about peak performance, but about a great balance. i guess they won't touch the G2 speeds anymore.

superfetch shouldn't skew benches as it won't matter on non-cached data. and disabling it just for testing is a very simple task, so why not? "net stop superfetch" do the bench "net start superfetch" all as before.



in other news: i just bought my new pc components, will get them tuesday. and, because i can't do any better, i saw in the shop that the 40gb intel with trim is available...

damn..

i now definitely have much more ssds than actual systems..

 

There is a newer version of HDTune Pro -- 1.4, it will give a 15 day free trial even if the previous version has expired.
http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

 

I read on another forum that selecting a solid color desktop background would cause hanging at welcome screen for 15-20 seconds in Windows 7. I tried it and sure enough it did but Restart - Time showed my computer restarting a couple seconds faster? Tried it with performance selected in visual settings and it did not hang.

 

Best not to post links to software that is possibly not legal.

 

LOL@tm

The chips used in X25-M G1 is used in Kingston's DataTraveller 101 flash drives. They reach only 10MB/s reads and 5MB/s writes.

OCZ Agility series also use the same chip: http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_agility_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd

SSDs using Intel 34nm flash chips(same one as G2)

OCZ Solid 2:
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid_state_drives/ocz_solid_2_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd

So its not really straightforward (chip x channel)=total

Another thing, about Lyndonville, the next gen X25-E based on MLC. The rumored capacities of 100/200/400GB tells me either they are using Sandforce controllers or the overprovisioning will be really large(93GB usable out of 160GB chips? That is a LOT!).

 

well, it would be the best case only, yes..

i guess it won't be a sandforce.. would not be intel style

 

the G2 320GB are out ish, another member just posted it in this section.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=449582

 

I am selling my G2 160GB on EBay Times are tough, and I always think I am rich when I am not. Darn. Question is, I am us9ing Active KILL DISK to write 1s to the drive. Is this enough to protect my data? Also reformatted and re-partitioned.

An hour left if you want to follow the action

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330393706541&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

Thanks, Dave

 

i wish i could help making this not needed at least it looks like a nice price you get right now. how much have you payed for it?

 

I got a good price, just about where it is at now. So, with ebay and fees for paypal. I should just about break even, not quite. but I figure there are people in places where these are harder to get, and therefore listed Worldwide on EBAY to try and get a good price. And think, I did not even have my chance to do a fresh install

 

at least you had some months of fun for about no money. which is a nice deal, not?

next time you'll get time for the fresh install, i'm sure..

 

i am broken to, just spent 5k on my camera and lens

 

So true Dave, so true! I had some great fun. Luckily, my spinner I have as my only drive now is also very quiet. WD Black 1TB.

 

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0911/09111902hasselbladh3d50ms.asp

 

Sorry for posting this again, thought it more appropriate to be here than in the AW side topics.

I could really use a hand with this. I got the Samsung PM800 256GB SSD in my Alienware M17X and have been reading around the forums and saw other peoples' Crystal Disk Mark scores with this SSD and mine dont even come close! Also Im only getting a 5.3 for my Windows Experience Index.
View attachment 43250
I keep my hard drive pretty clean and have only had to reinstall Win7 twice as a clean install. I just don't get it.
What might be the cause, and is there an easy way to get better scores, these seem terrible!
Thanks for any tips!

 

Apologies if this has been asked before. I get no results on a thread search for "samsung" never mind samsung pb22 which seems strange.

I have an Alienware M15x with a 128 GB Samsung PB22-JS3 VBM19D1Q. DriveControllerInfo sez it's using the Intel PCHM SATA AHCI controller. I've been reading about it since I got my M15x in Nov but to be honest I'm out of my depth. Any words of wisdom re drivers/firmware/performance/long term prognosis?

My Crystal disk scores are

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 224.534 MB/s
Sequential Write : 167.880 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 166.965 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 107.867 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 14.188 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 7.097 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2010/01/12 19:14:42

Thanks

 

Official Samsung firmware and updater for Samsung OEM SSD driver is ready to download: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/products/flash/ssd/2008/business/business.html

 

^Sweet, thanks for the link
Edit: Still won't work on my Vaio Z

 

1) What SATA controller is showing in device manager? If you are using Nforce Serial ATA Controller I would suggest right clicking on it, select uninstall then check the box, "delete drivers for this device". The default MS SATA drivers will install. There is a bug where the Nvidia drivers will show the drive as an SCSI device. Make sure you have AHCI enabled in BIOS. Also enable ACPI 2.0 and S1 Sleep. If your BIOS only supports S3 sleep do not use sleepmode because the controller will get out of sync with the OS. You can check this by typing powercfg.exe /a from an elevated command prompt.

2) How much free space is on the drive? The controller needs at least 20% free space to maintain performance depending on the amount of overprovisioning the drive has. Drives with more overprovisioning maintain performance at lower levels of free space.

3) When you upgrade to the latest firmware, I would recommend doing a clean install because the fw upgrade is destructive and you will be starting with a clean like new drive, might as well start new with the OS.

4) To restore performance should your drive get borked again you can open an elevated command prompt, type defrag c: /x download AS freespace cleaner and run it with FF box checked. http://www.alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?cat_id=2 Immediately after it finishes, completely shutdown your computer and start from a cold boot. Go to sleep mode and after everything shuts down, press the power button and resume to the logon screen and leave it there for an hour. I am told this procedure works with all Gen2 drives with GC firmware be it Intel, Samsung or Indilinx based drives.

 

it looks like someone in my area has alrady got intel 320G SSD.

http://sacramento.craigslist.org/sys/1548668133.html

 

No, just means he's ordered it. When he gets it, is another story.

 

but from where?

 

Only the Shadow knows... (dramatic music rising in volume here...)

 

well, by tomorrow, i have 360gb worth of intel at home. i don't care about the 320

i really don't.

you know..

i don't




i just wait till it gets available here in a shop.

i just hope i won't buy it, then..

 

I probably need to run some benchmarks on my 80GB Intel G2 SSD. I installed it few days ago, and I am running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. For some reason it doesnt' "feel" that fast and snappy. When I moved from a 5400rpm HHD to 160GB Intel G2 SSD on my MBP, the difference was very dramatic. I may need to tweak some settings (as outlined above) to make the most of the 80GB boot drive in the desktop. The desktop was running a 7200rpm WD Black drive before, and it has lower CPU power compared to the MBP.

For instance, if I click on Firefox, it launches immediately in my MBP, where as on the desktop, I get the green spinning circle next to the cursor and then it launches. Both versions of FF are identical in terms of add-ons, settings, etc.

Which benchmarking software I can use both on the PC and Mac to have comparable results?

Thanks in advance!

 

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/18272

The above report clearly indicates intel is going after mainstream ssd market. I would love to see 320GB intel ssd < $500 ,160Gb < $250, 80GB < 150 and 40GB < 80.That should force other ssd makers to reduce price as well. currently price for > 128GB drives are too high.

 

Its impossible due to the high demanded flash.

 

Don't forget that the 160GB G2 is about 40% faster than the 80GB model, so this may have to do with the slower 'feel' too.

 

Hm. So it seems I'll have to upgrade to the SATA 3Gbps-saturating model at the end of the year and then to a SATA 6Gbps/whatever in 2011, I guess. Still, however, I don't see the upgrade being that big of a deal, seeing the refresh in the late half of the year will be even cheaper.

 

Hmmm... I did not know that. I just assumed they were the same except the size.

 

Can someone give me the low down on 1.8" SSD's? As far as I know the X18-m 160GB is the largest around, right?

Are there any cheaper value 1.8" SSD's out, or coming soon?

Does OCZ have any good 1.8" SSD's?

Thanks!

 

The 80gb 1.8" Intel is pretty reasonable, Newegg had it for $199 as a shellshocker awhile back.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820157021

 

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...-storage-brings-flash-redundancy-to-ssds.aspx

 

Do you think it's wise to upgrade an Envy 15 with dual X18-m 160GB G1's (raid0) for $550? Since Trim isn't supported in Raid0 anyway, I assume I don't really need G2's?

Or do you think new products will be out in the next few months with more storage and better prices in the next few months?

 

really??? I didn't know that either, there product listings say they are the same...

 

I would, you don't need TRIM -- Intels version of GC works fine afaik. I have been checking out the Envy for the heck of it and it seems the knock is it gets very hot. Some reviewers say it is too hot to hold on your lap. I wonder if the battery slice helps with that?

 

The 160gb gets 100mb sequential writes where the 80gb gets 70mb/s sequential writes. I doubt that equates to 40% faster because they are about equal where it counts in random small write performance. One of the major points of getting an Intel SSD is it's superior small random write performance.