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

it's the fastest MLC. X-25E is SLC.

 

I know some of you are against massive tweaking but I thought these were good to know (especially for 32gb drives)-

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=387086&postcount=2

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=390748&postcount=1

 

Rule Nr. 1 about Vista (and XP): DON'T touch the WinSXS folder.

even while the utility appears to work, the os-system files are altered, and i don't want to know what subtle issues that can give. there is a reason WinSXS is there to fix the dll hell from the past 15 years or so?

anyways, nice links for the tweakers out there that don't care if they **** their systems.


edit: and i won't ever get why people want to reduce writes on their ssds, except for ssds that really suck at writing (at least, it's from the ocz forums haha). everyone who does it for reduced wear'n'tear is just utter paranoid. there is not a single report in here about a disk that got at it's life end due to it.

usb sticks, yes, they can die due to too much writes (or what ever other reasons they died on me). but ssd's, no. not even the worst one die, thanks to the wearleveling.


edit2: still, the junktion thing is nice to know for certain special cases. but reducing writes on a disk is just paranoya.

 

There is a safe way to reduce WinSXS folder, run VSP1CLN.EXE (it reduced it by 1GB for me, not that much).

"The only way to safely reduce the size of the WinSxS folder is to reduce the set of possible actions that the system can take – the easiest way to do that is to remove the packages that installed the components in the first place. This can be done by uninstalling superseded versions of packages that are on your system. Service Pack 1 contains a binary called VSP1CLN.EXE, a tool that will make the Service Pack package permanent (not removable) on your system, and remove the RTM versions of all superseded components. This can only be done because by making the Service Pack permanent we can guarantee that we won’t ever need the RTM versions."

 

A very nice review of the G.Skill 128 Falcon:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/gskill-falcon-128gb-ssd-review/1

very tempting at $309, WOWOW.

 

Thanks for the review, FYI for this month I managed to find the 120 Vertex for $307 its in the deals thread.

 

Solid review. I'd like to see review sites start using Crystal DiskMark a little more, but that's a small nitpick.

 

I am freaking close! If I have a good week I may just spring for it. Would love to get the Intel, but need more space. 128GB is just about right for me as I tend to between 80GB and 100GB.

 

I wonder why they didn't include the Intel drives...

 

Yeah that was my single thought also, wish it was there.

G3D always seems to give "good" reviews of products, so that may include taking "better" products out of a review.

 

Not that this is any kind of real test or anything, but I just replaced my Intel X-25M 80GB with a X-25E 64GB and my HDTune.exe (v. 2.55) benchmark results (reading only?) were not that great...

I did, however, get consistent 175-180 MB/sec results from the X-25E, with the X-25M with minimums of 110 to 220 MB/sec.

The X-25M graph showed major spikes in the beginning, but once the drive figured out what was going on, it remained sort of flat.

The X-25E was almost flat throughout, with very small peaks and valleys...

 

Yeah HD Tune is really not going to do much for SSD testinng other than show you if you have some kind of system bottleneck.

There is so much more to SSD than just the raw throughput, Intels largest boost over the Falcon I do believe is that while showing lower raw numbers, it has much faster numbers when dealing with small file sizes (and small files is the vast majority of what makes up your computer files) so you need a bench like ATTO to show this, or real world tests.

 

OK - I was just surprised that the X-25E was overall slower than the X-25M, in terms of max throughput...

Thanks for the feedback - no time to really test using other suites!

 

Oh the E vs M, I am not sure why the throughput is lower. I know it has many native benifits being SLC (longer life, lower power use, etc) its not targeted for the end user but for enterprise so its probably highly optimized for a server environment.

You may find some interesting results if you run both of them through the vantagemark tests where it trys to emulate different work environments and gives it a score value.

 

Yes, I would agree that it probably is optimized for a server, as this HD (the X-25E) didn't even come with a spacer on the top, to keep it's height at the same level as normal 2.5" HD's, while the X-25M's did...

Interesting fact - that the SLC's are lower power use? Is this correct, and by how much - do we know??

 

Im pretty sure I read SLC is lower power, as it only has to power a single cell rather than two. How much would depend on each device im sure, or rather it takes less voltage to read the data.

Here is a good page on MLC vs SLC - http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=5

Another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-level_cell

 

there where some tests that have shown the E to be slower for desktop usage than the M, while being overall much faster. reason, as stated by intel, is the configuration. the E really isn't ment as a desktop drive and thus not optimized for such accesses.

but i don't have it at hand.

i can now find x18-m 160gb on ebay *horray* spending tons of money soon

 

Send me some while your at it I'll add it to my $4.23 SSD fund.

 

I noticed lagging (delays) when moving the mouse around during general computing, which could be due to MLC slow write or something...will test the SLC (E) version soon.

However, I did not update the -M bios, maybe I should!

 

i would have some elder ones to sell soon, vicious..

that is, once i get my x-ms..


superflyboy: there should be NO such lag. you're sure nothing's wrong with the installation? and yep, do the update anyways.

 

I cloned my X-25M HD to the X-25E using Acronis, and now there is no lag at all.

It was barely noticeable, but since the install is the same, this probably has to be attributed to the hardware.

 

very strange.

what mouse-device-thingy do you use? (and what os).

because i noticed huge lag when a friend used a bluetooth mouse on his notebook, when ever the hdd kicked in. i only use onboard devices => don't have had such lag on my systems, ever.

 

I think it's not an OS-related thing at all, because after the switch, everything is normal...

XP Tablet Edition 32-bit, on Toshiba M700, 4 GB RAM, onboard devices normally...(touchpad)

 

i just wanted to ask, as it's very strange. still, while it gets triggered by the x-m, it doesn't mean it's its fault. else, users all over the world would notice that.

another tablet user *happy*. have you tried vista on a tablet yet? i love it. it learned to write my name when i just draw a long line with some wiggling in hehe

 

btw, for the interested ones:

80gb intel for 295$ on ebay, maybe even with some live-rebate or so?

 

You might wish to post on the Tablet discussions, but I never venture into the HP forum, so wouldn't know!

However, have you compared the HP to the Toshiba?

I was thinking of the HP, but it has a AMD chip, and prefer Intel...

 

no, i still post here, as i don't have much tablet-related stuff going on. and here, there are great topics about os' and ssds (and other stuff).

i have an hp, but with intel. just google my sig..

have only tested out a toshiba for a short time. i'm an hp supporter (and an actual "hp friend", thus getting reductions on their products hrrhrr). and a big fan of their elitebook line. sort of, what the macbooks should be nowadays. rigid, a great product palette, lots of stuff for artists and professionals. and shiny, but not for loss of quality

looking trough the 160gb listings on ebay currently.. sadly, all the nice x25-m 160gb are usa only i hate that.

 

SSD's prices cut in half by Christmas: http://www.dailytech.com/SSD+Prices...+Controller++32nm+NAND+Flash/article14176.htm

 

I have been waiting for some sort of sweet spot in the price vs perfomance benefits ratio for SSD, they are still too expensive and too buggy for me to be an early adopter. That might be it, although Jmicron has such a stigma.

 

Yeah it's mostly from Jmicron's. They came to the market with such a low price (compared to other SSDs) and performed worse than HDDs... so people assumed all SSDs were like that.

 

You may have seen this by now, but this one says it ships worldwide.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150347327424

 

its... so... beautiful...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609415

and a good chunk of change
but really at just over 3 dollars per GB its not that bad of a deal

 

ok, big ssd testival:

i've installed sp2 yesterday on my pc and tablet. the results:

pc has mtron 3000 in raid0, maximum 220MB/s read, 200MB/s write or so. it took 9min to fully install vista sp2.

tablet has samsung mlc, rated as 220MB/s read, 200MB/s write, too, i think.
it took 22min to fully install vista sp2.

i'm interested, what intels disks would have as numbers.

and i checked, cpu never was at max during the setups at all.

 

ordered..


.

 

Nice... let us know how it goes.

 

i will. and i'll soon order the 2.5" version afterwards, hrrhrr

 

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16979/1

interesting review of used vs fresh ssd

 

Yes good article, but what it is really missing is them getting off there lazy bums and retesting the vertex with the alignment change or testing it under vista to see if it still has those horrible drops in speed.

So they need to post the results of that retest rather than just talk about it.

 

The Vertex EX (SLC Vertex) has hit Newegg. This seems weird to me, since Ultradrive LEs (also SLC) haven't made it to Newegg, yet have been out much longer. What's even weirder to me is that they're priced very closely to Intel's SLC drives, I would have thought OCZ would try to undercut them more to bring in more sales.

 

they have a wierd product line right now anyways.

they have indilinx slc and mlc, and samsung mlc (and slc, too?). and of course still all the jmicron mixup.

they have sort of a "uh lets get everything on the planet" policy.. instead of fixing on one thing and then perfectionice..

 

The OCZ is a tad cheaper but ..

# Sequential Access - Read: up to 100MB / sec
# Sequential Access - Write: up to 80MB / sec
# Max Shock Resistance: 1500G

Its rated about half the speed of the intel... no thanks.

Plus honestly I think MLC is the way to go $600 can get you 256gb instead of 64gb and similar or faster speeds.

The SLC's strongest advantage in my opinion is the life expectancy, but if a MLC last about 5 years like they say I would be more than happy to buy a new one in 3 years before its even close to dead rather than invest in a slow SLC now and try to use it for like 10 years or so, tech is going to move so fast, better to spend less now and upgrade down the road.

 

I have to wait for the intel drive to be able to say MLC is way to go. so far, all MLC drives i had where slower then my SLC drives, even while rated much higher.

 

I'm guessing you only looked at the first OCZ SSD on the list in the link I posted, rather than the ones I referred to in my post, the Vertex EX line. I haven't seen many benchmarks, but from what I know the Vertex EX is better than the Intel X-25E at random reads, but worse at random writes. They run about the same at sequential reads and writes.

 

But if everything is already "instant" on the MLC drive according to you why get faster?

Even if the MLC was say 20% slower why would you pay over 2x more for the SLC when you can buy a new MLC in a year thats faster than both for still less than the cost of the first SLC drive.

 

no, i always talked about the SLC drives i have. the mlc ones are not that instant.

and f.e. sp2 installation took over two times as long as on the slc.

my first ssd was the mtron. it set the bar. everything slower, even just half a sec slower when clicking something, gets noticable afterwards. i don't want to step back on a newer system. and i had to, when i got the samsung ssds. they just aren't as snappy. it's sometimes just some milliseconds, sometimes some seconds, sometimes minutes of difference.

but most of all, it's just overall less performing than the mtrons, which are technically the first fast ssd's that came out, and over 1.5years old (and i got the most cheap version of them).


and even if it's only 20% slower, if it's "too slow" then, for me, then it's worth paying 2x as much.

you have to realise that those slc disks are over a year older than the sammies i got, and still are faster. so no, i can not just get an MLC now or in a year that's faster. so far all mlc are slower. i now get an intel and hope that it gives me a better experience than the mtron in the first place. it should, from all that i've read.

 

interesting stuff
did you try some slc versions of sammys, like the one I have ? 64gb sata2 slc ?
what do you think about them ?

 

no i haven't.

what i have/had.

MTron 3500 1.8" 32Gb (which is the same as 3000 2.5"). at a friend currently
MTron 3000 2.5" 64Gb. 2x of them in raid0 currently in my desktop (together 220MB/s read, 200MB/s write, so the "same2 as the typical modern vertex, samsungs, etc).
Samsung MLC 1.8" 128Gb. 100MB/s read, 80MB/s write. was quite okay in performance, but slower than the first listed mtron (in a newer faster system.. but 4x as much storage)
Samsung MLC 1.8" 64Gb 220MB/s read, 200MB/s write or so. performs in real usage about the SAME as the one above (but benchmarks show the 200MB/s readwrite speeds). It does not feel any faster than the half-as-fast 128Gb version.

then i had a very old samsung 64Gb, that was 600$ or so, bought about 1.5 years ago I learned the hard way that 1.8" ide disks can have two different connections it was not zif, which i needed. but it was terribly slow anyways, showing the same jmicron behaviour revealed over a year later thanks to ocz. the disk was for some time in a desktop system, but showed the typical jmicron behaviour: nearly can't install an os, terrible stutter-freezes (up to 1, 2 minutes nearly dead). it's now lying around somewhere at my old place.

internal ssd of the Asus EEE 900 (4gb + 16gb). those are crap. jmicron style behaviour, but less terrible. slow, occasional stuttering, but okay for a first-gen-netbook. loading a music track (normally 7 - 12min long) into traktor took 2 min. on my ssd's it's a matter of seconds at most .

got one of those replacement-ssds for asus eee notebooks. don't remember the name. plugged it in, saw 128gb storage, was happy, dead during setup.

i spent over 1000$ on crap ssds, yepyep.

thats one of the reason to not buy cheap ssds anymore

but i never had the slc samsungs. from what i've read they're quite fast, but still not as snappy as the mtrons. but better than the mlc ones.

can't wait for the intels now. hope to finally find a modern replacement for my mtrons. espencially as my old notebook with the mtron is at a friends place after his pc died and he had to get some schoolwork done. my new notebook just isn't as snappy at all better cpu, gpu, and more ram can not help . if not for music production, i would've switched back to the old notebook.

 

just pulled the trigger for 2 corsair 256gb ssd drives.. that are samsungs rebranded. can;t wait for raid 0!!!!

 

DROOL....

Plz post some benchz when you get it...

 

I am wondering, is RAID 0 really overrated? I mean, you get in theory twice the data transfer rate, but what's really important is the access time. I mean, how big is the executable for the apps anyway? Can't be bigger than 100MB. So does RAID 0 really matter? I'm thinking of getting one, but I'm having second thoughts.