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

Not yet, but soon...the 80GB is available at a 20% premium it seems.

 

i missed the 80gb one for 200$ two days ago because i forgot the auction (there where only 5 bidders). now i wait for the 160gb. my samsungs are fast enough. i just want an intel for having an intel )

 

That hints at the core problem with OCZ, no pun intended. They're a great example of how NOT to design a product imo. OCZ should have created clear and distinct testable requirements that the companies they outsource their work to could've tested before ever shipping anything to OCZ, and to which OCZ could test further before shipping to customers. Sadly OCZ chooses to have loose requirements and testing, instead opting to respond to issues their real testers (customers) find. I suppose there's nothing wrong with buying OCZ ssd's as long as you can accept that you're literally buying a prototype. That's not me. I'm well past that stage. Now I'd rather buy a product I can forget after I install it.

 

When will the x25-m 80gb price cut happen and how much will it cost on amazon?

Also, how can I be sure to get an x25-m 80gb with the latest firmware? If not, is it easy to flash it with only one laptop?

 

yap it's easy to flash, but i guess afterwards your disk has lost all it's data (but as you're thinking of buying it, you'll have all your data on your previous disk anyways).

you'll need a usb stick or a cdrom to boot from it into dos or so, to flash the disk.

 

I heard about some people having a hard time flashing an OCZ vertex and it requiring a desktop to plug the drive into and a spare jumper. But I assume the Intel X25-m doesn't need that stuff, right? thx

 

Intel makes it extremely easy to flash, in fact you do not even lose the data on your hard drive. It flashes and keeps all data intact. Intel makes good stuff.

 

I saw an Intel 160 on Ebay new for 650. Good thing I do not have 650

 

i am broke already

 

why doesn't intel make a firmware that actually improves the performance. Just like how OCZ is constantly making firmware update to better their vertex series. Why doesn't intel do that with their M and E lines?

And im not talking about a firmware the fixes degradation issues.

 

I'm no expert but, I think the Intel is already fast enough. Considering it's faster than the Vertex, OCZ should be releasing speed updates.

 

Newegg dropped the price already...

Intel 160GB $629.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167015

Intel 80GB $319.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167005

 

Are there any firmware updates for sammy?

 

the current one is good enough as it is and it might just be more efficient to concentrate on the next product. OCZ:s previous firmwares were buggy that is why they had to keep upgrading their firmware.

 

nICE baby nICE.

Now, if they can put up that $30 instant rebate and get it to $290, or heck, even $300, it would be money!

 

That's nice, still, a backup before flashing is what every good guy does

anyways, losing all data doesn't matter for him anyways as he wants to flash the new buyed disk before using => no problem.

Still, great to hear what i thought i've read out of the articles, but wasn't sure

 

Does anyone know where to get Amazon cashback savings or a coupon? Once Amazon drops their price I will order because of their return policy.

Ebay has 14% cashback but do you think it's safe to order a HDD through ebay?

 

Still $4/GB. I'm still happy with my G.Skill Titan 256GB at $2/GB. Unfortunately it looks like NAND flash prices have been steadily increasing the past few months...

 

But the Titan has a significantly higher power consumption with its Jmicron controllers in RAID.

 

No protection there. You're at the seller's mercy. Amazon, they have that great policy as you mentioned.

 

That price still seems high...by the end of the year I hope to see 512GB SSDs for that price...I know..a man can dream!

 

Here is some benchmarks for a Samsung 256GB SSD...

This is on an established OS with software installed and running in the background, also dual booting so got some space used up.
ZoneAlarm and Avast AV were left running so it's an 'as is' kind of benchmark.
All default settings.

Performance went down a little over time but not much and the real world performance is great. Having to deal with slow transfers to non SSD storage is real downside to SSD's.

System:
Studio XPS 16
Windows Vista64 Home Premium
C2D 2.66
4GB DDR3
Samsung 256GB PM800 (firmware:VBM15D1Q)

 

HOLY! aren't those number better than intel's x25M?

 

Not any publicly yet available.
I just got a drive from Dell and it has the VBM15D1Q.
There is a newer firmware out there that drives are coming with - VBM1801Q (25/03/09).

One light at the end of the tunnel is the Corsair seems to be using identical firmware as stock Samsung, I've seen Corsair models using VBM1801Q. So if Corsair provides updates regular Sammy owners should be good to go to.

I think all people that have a Dell SSD should call Dell to provide firmware because they have the power to push something like that through. If you push up the channel and talk to a mgr you should be able to talk them into pushing a request to engineering. Have them send you a reply email about the response. This is what I am waiting for.

Reasons to give to Dell - performance, stability, data retention, wear leveling algorithms. educate them that because the technology is new it needs updates, and other firmware MFR's are providing updates for these reasons. Mention that newer firmware has been made by Samsung back in March and we want access to it.

 

It'll beat an Intel on some real world aspects, while not in others, what we lack is a good scripted real world test. Some people won't allow you to get away with a statement like that around here because it's Intel.
These canned benchmarks don't tell enough of the real picture for my liking.
There's also a pretty big difference in testing it as your OS drive compared to an addon drive.

Once I am done installing software most of my day to day I/O is reads and the throughput does quite well, and is a far departure from earlier generation drives.
.2ms access time is kind of nice too.

Also, it would likely do better in a desktop environment and better SATA controller, atleast other tests seem to indicate that.

P.S. It cost me only $325 upgrade over the base HD when I bought my Dell laptop.

 

Those 4K writes are kinda pitiful, isn't there a firmware for the Samsung from Dell? Are you using that version?

 

4K writes have never been a strong point of Samsung's controller.

 

would the 4k writes really matter in real world usage? I do a lot of batch processing using photoshop. What would be the effect of low 4k write on that?

 

From my understanding 4k writes would be plausible in OS stuff specifically.

 

From what I have seen the algorithms seem to either favor the small random writes or favor the sequential large data. It seems to be a trade off, and the choice for the consumer becomes what would be the best for their needs. Sure it would be best to have both worlds, but so far it's been a bit of a trade off. Pretty soon with the SATA bus saturated they can focus more on writes, at least until the new SATA spec rolls out.

For instance, a fast write drive would be best for database updates, while a fast read would serve great as a data server in large file reads, etc.

People do get hung a bit too much on writes and ignoring the rest, it's a product of benchmark numbers I think people like to see the big difference in numbers. I'm aware of the necessity of small random writes and their importance but the other numbers cannot be ignored either nor do they tell the whole story. And then there is the case of latency, not only throughput, latency plays a big part in the performance between SSD's because of the nature of quick random read/writes but it's not too quantifiable in benchmarks as a specific metric.

Case in point...

Compare the Intel X-25M and Samsung PM800 below:
------------------------ Intel_X-25M_80------------------------------------------- Samsung_PM800_256-------------


People would say the 4k writes make the Intel far superior but then look at PCMark05 which uses real world applications for it's HDD test.

PCMARK05 HDD TEST


The Intel often is considered Superior but in real world applications the Samsung scored better in performance in PCMARK05 HDD test.
But if I went by 4k write 'benchmarks' the Intel looks more than 10 X better, but apparently not.
PCMARK05 HDD test uses the following real world applications:

If you are constantly encoding or compiling audio/video then I'd swing towards the Intel, same with excessive database updates.
If you are mainly read based in your use then I'd swing towards Samsung, also Samsung works well as that second SSD for data storage with it's fast sequential R/W.

The fact is both are geared towards mainstream and mainstream is usually slanted with more reads than writes so with the additional size of the Samsung it makes it a compelling option in the competitive market. Seems like almost every month is bringing a new SSD king of the hill, neither Samsung or Intel is king of MLC, though they each have their strengths. I think Samsung is good for the price/performance/storage, definitely at $325 I paid for sure.

 

It's funny as, in reads, the intel is both faster and has lower latency.. the only thing where it is slower is sequencial writes.
so it's quite fun to see those test-results from pcmark.

oh, and i have a samsung with that speed, and it's much less snappy than the mtron with half the speed was in the slower notebook. the mtrons numbers where all lower, except i think random access latency of reads.

i can not comment on samsung vs intel yet, as i don't have an intel yet. but once a 160gb 1.8" is out to buy, i'll consider it.

 

The point in performance is whether you can maintain that performance. There would be no point of a fast CPU if after certain usage the performance degraded to half the original. Yet in storage that is true. And so is real world.

So the questions for performance on an SSD is this.

-Are the minimum levels of performance high enough not to be ridiculous(like a stutter)?

50-100 IOPS should be enough for a VAST majority of people

-Are the minimum IOPS high enough for your usage requirements?

If you use the system hard, IOPS is pretty important. The thing is that in PCs, storage isn't used too intensively. But of course you'd want certain minimum.

-Can it sustain that high IOPS?

-Do you need that high IOPS?

It really does not matter at all if an SSD can get 100K IOPS but can degrade substantially. It's the degraded stable performance that matters in the end.

According to CrystalDiskMark, the X25-M can reach 48MB/s in 4KB random write. CrystalDiskMark has a flaw that it shows the highest of the 5 as the final result, so the average is probably 40MB/s.

40MB/s in 4KB writes is equal to 10,000 IOPS.

Yet the Intel site puts 4K random writes as only 3,300 IOPS, or 13.2MB/s in 4K random writes. What's going on here?

See in normal PC usage, it never stresses the SSD enough to show that much of a "degradation"(especially with the new firmware). But put it in a server and you will see it. Of course, we are PC users here and with the new firmware its pretty much impossible to max out IOPS that reach several thousand(Give it a thought here. 20 FF windows are really like 40-50 IOPS).

(In SSDs though, random write numbers are also tied to reliability features and the high IOPS of the Intel drives do matter here)

This is the reason why the X25-M sometimes lags behind in benchmarks even though the 4KB random write is high. Sequential speeds DO MATTER after all.

 

The SSD Workload Performance Analysis : Performance Hazards For Flash SSDs
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-power,2279.html

 

Looks like the X25-M 80GB is now $320 on Amazon.com.

 

Nice article, points to some interesting concepts in SSD comparisons.

Although, I would have like to see if the reviewer was using the older Samsung VBM15D1Q firmware or the newer VBM1801Q. Not that we have much recourse in changing it 'yet' but it would have been interesting to note which was being used, the newer one seems to be benchmarking better but their is not much data on it or comparisons.

The h2benchw write throughput comparison of the x-25m (old & new) compared to the Sammy is interesting.
Another thing clear from the article is the new Intel firmware has really bounced the x-25m drive back into being a great drive.

 

btw:

http://www.dailytech.com/OCZ+Launch...und+Limits+of+SATA+Interface/article14967.htm

prices are acceptable actually.. for the performance.

thinking of one of those *stop it, dave*

 

Looks sweet but won't work in my notebook..

 

But really, how is this going to be a big difference over a good SSD like an Intel, Samsung, or Vertex in real-world use for the vast majority of users? And how would it be much faster than two or three Vertex's in RAID 0? It seems to be more for status than real-life benefit.

 

wasn't it you that didn't want a raid setup with several disks but a raid-box-with-the-disks-inside? so this is more or less just for you

the trick is, this can beat s-ata2 limits, which (at least onboard raids) probably don't. don't know exactly, but still.

and personally, i hope for the s-ata team to get their **sses kicked for the crap they'll deliver with s-ata6gb. a 2x speed enhancement for the next spec, that just won't cut it. we'll reach that easily with ssd's even during that year (and if we have to, with 2 in raid0..). so the spec will, once in mass deployment, allready be a limit again.

so i really hope for the pcie way to grow, as well maybe in the notebook marked (with a chance for pcie-plugin gpu's ).

we see it at the low end (eee notebooks) and at the high end (that disk). now bring it to the middle: the mass market.

 

Yup, that was me. I have made some changes to use the motherboard RAID and it seems to work well but I lost my data when I upgraded the firmware on the Samsung drives. Not sure if that was because of a RAID issue or the Samsung firmware upgrade caused the data loss.

I thought onboard raids would be able to exceed it because it is using multiple SATA ports.

Yes, but how much of a difference is it really going to make in real-world use?

 

hm. professional answer: it kicks *ss

no clue. take a look at the 24 samsung ssd video to get an idea.

and yes, it was the firmware upgrade that caused the loss. same happened to all my mtrons sadly. happily, i have a backup.

and onboard raids MAY exceed sata. but most don't have that raw raid0 performance by itself. they never where planned to have a raid0 of two disk at 600MB/s. they thought of two raptors most, and so 240MB/s works great (all in the ordinary sata spec). the raid controllers that greatly exceet sata2 are not that cheap mostly (again, see the 24ssd video for such controllers at work).

anyways, i don't think we care about "real world difference" for such products. what we like is, they push the edge. the edge of disk-as-the-system-limit gets pushed much further than during all the years that i know pc's actually in that last year(s). i love ssd's for that. and these ones will push further again by a big step. i'm thinking of waiting for the first >1GB/s ssd for my pc. possibly an i7 or so then, possibly with larrabee..

at that speed that ssd's evolve, they soon get into "slow-ram" possibilities. that'll bring me hibernate back hibernate in 64bit worlds (8gb ram or so).

a 2GB/s disk could restore such a system in 4sec. would be cool

about real world, hm.. my ableton live + project in it take quite a while to load. i could use a speedboost there

 

guys, i have both a ssd and a mechanical drive (windows vista), what should I put on the mech drive (pagefile is obvious)?

 

nothing. (pagefile is an obvious _not_, cause you don't want the slow hdd speed when the pagefile has to "act like ram").

just put on there what doesn't need to be fast, but can be big: movies f.e. or all your old data (photos, what ever, etc) that you won't need or won't need often.

but anything that is part of the system, or the programs, or the data you daily use: all on the ssd.

 

really? Well, im still going to try to move all my outlook stuff to the mech drive.

 

I'm interested in this also. Should I move my Firefox profile and Thunderbird profile to my external HDD?

 

maybe yes if you have a jmicron drive otherwise no

 

Should keep that on the SSD. Outlook 2007 is blazing fast on my SSD... especially the search. I love it.

On my mechanical HD, I just put backup stuff and big files like backups, music, video, photos, etc. My OS and apps go on my SSD.

If you have a jmicron drive, then you might want to look into a ram drive like Dataram's Ramdisk. Heck, I even use a RAM disk with my Samsung SSD to put browser cache files on it and some other temp files... like some working and output directories for my development environment.

 

Do you think a RAM disk would help the X25-M with Firefox cache?

 

Yeah, 80GB seems to be $319.99 now
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001F4YIYY

Hopefully amazon will dropped 160GB price soon, it's still $724/ $780

 

Ramdisk would help everything always, I also use it on my non-ssd platforms and ssd alike. Don't care how fast SSD's get, they won't be close to as fast as RAM in any foreseeable future.

You can get fancy with them or just use them for cache and user/sys temp. A ramdrive will be one of the driving motivations behind me upgrading RAM, I want a 4GB ramdrive so I can actually load programs on it of my most used and slowest loading, then the CPU and memory subsystem would be the bottleneck.