SSD on ICH7 controller

In order to decide which SSD i can put on my P945 laptop (ICH7 controller)
i wanted to know what are the hardware limitation.

So, because some claim that the ICH7 limitation is ~80MB/sec,
those Intel SSDs are not a good buy, they will be limited by laptop controller.
Also, Vertex might have same problems and Samsung too.

Is that true? Have anyone tried them on similar laptop?

What interestes me is to invest to a SSD with a good controller (not JMicron), but with
the read/write up to the speed the laptop can take, so as to spend less money.

 

So it's the Host Adapter (Controller) on the MoBo that causes the limitation?

I can't speak for notebooks and desktop use but the speed limitation is definitely evident on my netbook. I am not sure whether it's a BIOS or Host Adapter issue in my case but I guess the BIOS, Host Adapter (on MoBo) and Host Controller (on SSD) all work hand in hand.

See my post #22!

PS: I personally believe the limitation issue would be fault of the Host Adapter on the Mobo or the BIOS. It wouldn't make sense for the issue to be the SSD.

 

You will be fine. I ran a MLC SSD on my asus and it has a 945G chipset. Average speeds were over 100mb/s peak at just over 120mb/s as the drive specs stated.

 

So, an SSD that can run with read greater than 100MB/s is not a good buy.
A Barefoot MLC will be my choice then.

 

Yes and no. Say you've got an Intel or Indilinx drive; sure you can't take advantage of the 100MB/s + sequential speeds, but you can still take advantage of the relatively fast random speeds on both of these drives. You most likely won't be utilizing that full 100MB/s too often, either.

Probably a good choice.

 

I agree with your idea, no need in spending more for a item faster than your laptop can handle. However also keep this in mind -

SSD are supposed to last a long time ~5 years for MLC and much longer for SLC, im sure you wont keep your current laptop for more than 3 years or so, so if you get a faster one now you can just install it into your next laptop.

Of course by that time SSD will be much cheaper & faster so you may just want a new one anyways.

 

and, the main thing about ssds is their latency. i have a samsung with 100MB/s readwrite, and one with 200MB/s readwrite. they behave the same as they have the same latency. max troughput doesn't really matter much.

the mtron, while only having 80MB/s in my elder notebook, had lower latency and performed more snappy and much faster than the samsungs. maybe an slc/mlc thing, too.

but besides the possibility of stutterings that may appear if one throttles an ssd, the fastest ones (intel ones) would still perform fastests even when max speed is capped.

 

Yes, i agree you are talking about the controller and iops factors.
Some say that iops in every day use is only noticeable in crappy jmicron.
Between barefoot and intel, benchmark can show the differences.

 

I have made my choice.
I would get an Intel MLC for my desktop.
I picked a Samsung 64GB (90/70).

 

The Samsung SDD read is at 97 MB/s on the laptop, so there is not a limitation,
at least on my HP 6187.
The SSD is on SATA bay of course, replaced the HDD.
PATA (or UDMA 6) in theory can reach 133MB/s if i remember correctly.
Note that i have also AHCI enabled in bios.

 

Sounds right for a 100/80 Samsung SSD.

ICH7M is full 3Gbps capable, but some manufacturers lock down the link negotiation to 1.5Gbs to give a slight increase in battery life, or in Lenovo's T61p case, to provide generalized 1.5Gbps speed across both their primary HDD bay and optical bay caddy solution. Two ways I can think of if you want to see if 1.5Gbps, rather than full 3Gbps speed capping applies is:

1/ Benchmark a 220MB+/s SSD link Intel X25-M/OCZ Vertex/G.Skill Falcon

2/ Check the CAP.ISS value of your ICH7M SATA controller using baredit as outlined here.

 

I posted my results with the 128 GB Corsair on thinkpads forum. This is on T60.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=75015&p=512315#p512315

 

Your T60 would only start seeing capping with newer drives capable of > 150MB/s or so. The Samsung/Corsair doesn't hit those interface limits as is a slower SSD.

The 1.5Gbps cap that Lenovo have imposed meaning the interface is slowing down streamed reads that SSDs like Intel X25-M, OCZ Vertex of G.SKill Falcon, which can at over 220MB/s or better.

The good news is that the 1.5Gbps cap imposed by Lenovo is being addressed, moreso by users than by Lenovo. Hopeful with a good result. See Thinkpad SATA 1.5GB/s limitation (with SSD) thread.

 

I was well aware that the Corsair is slower than the interface speed on T60. That is one of the reasons I did not want to drop too much on a bleeding edge ssds that you listed. Still it is fast enough to allow the user to feel the speed increase and provides quite balanced performance as the small writes are not annoyingly slow.

I do not feel brave enough yet to resort to more radical hacking of the firmware so this performance will have to do.

 

I have T60 with ICH7M. Which SSD is the best for me? I wanted to buy X25-M, but it seems like waste of money when I am limited to sata I. Thanks

 

X25-M is the best consumer SSD atm. You'll have sequential read/writes capped to < 130MB/s, but the 4kb read speed, which the X25-M dominates when in AHCI mode, will be unaffected. 4kb read speed being indicative of boot/app responsiveness.