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

is that the next ssd from intel? i'd like to see the next ones being sata3 compatible and 600MB/s read speed

 

I was going to order Corsair P256, but after reading that the performance was crippled as soon as you full formated the harddrive, I backed away. Unable to update the firmware of Samsung and Corsair harddrive are also very discouraging.

Anyway, I ordered X25-M 160GB, I hope it is not going to stutter on my Sony Z like it was with X25-M 80GB on my Thinkpad T60. There are still some reviews out there mentioned that X25-M 160GB stuttered whenever the capacity was nearing full.

Finger Crossed!

 

first time that I heard the intel stutters. How did you manage to do that?

 

I guess I was one of the unlucky one. At least there were two other people that I know experienced stuttering with intel X-25M back in October 2008 I think. I bought the 80GB version when it was USD$800.-

I posted the problem on this thread, but now couldn't
remember which page on this thread. I even did a clean install my system and it still stuttered.

A mystery I supposed.
This guy seems to experience stuttering as well.
http://rawhidewatch.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/ext4-on-intel-x25-m-ssd-needs-nodelalloc/

 

Anand's SSD picks as of 6/24/2009:

http://anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3590

 

I once got stuttering on the X25-M too after I applied the firmware upgrade but using HDDErase fixed that permanently. Posted about it earlier in the thread if you're interested.

From what I hear though, I was an exception to the rule and pretty much almost all X25-M owners are stutter free.

 

Preaching to the choir... ;-)

 

Interior LED bulbs are the future, for sure. i was also speaking of the OUTSIDE light from street lamps, parking lot lights, etc etc. Not that the individual LED's from all the electronics do not light up my apartment like a sunny day. I cover them or I cannot sleep.

 

ah okay jep, I have no electronics in the bedroom anymore, but I had all lights covered. And no, LED bulbs are not the future, they are the present. at least, in my home

btw, no new ssd for me that month I guess. I just got the bill for driving to fast (I had to give my license away for one month). And, well, that money would have given me a nice 160gb intel..

 

Looking at the links, the Samung/Corsair-P/OCZ-Summit seems to have unusually low random write speeds compared to the Intel X25-M and the Vertex.

http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3582&p=2

 

here's the benchmark for the 48gb filego expresscard ssd.

Not a bad SSD but I wish it had a better controller. My mistake to jump the gun so early for it.

 

@Ashura:
Yes I read your recent post about stuttering. Someone else was experiencing stuttering also though.

 

Which doesn't seem to be a problem, unless you make it one... Even Anand ranked it over the Indilinx... (from what was posted here anyway)

In my opinion the Indilinx is still a bit of a wild card and still evolving... Once it matures and they don't need the public to beta test, I think I'll rank it up with samsung and intel.

 

It looks like the new line of intel ssds might be coming out sooner than expected!

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/06/26/intel.34nm.ssds.soon/

 

Braidwood=Successor to Turbo memory featuring up to 16GB capacity based on 34nm NAND.

Update: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storag...Notebooks_to_Reach_1_5_in_2009__Analysts.html

So in Notebooks, where SSD would matter more, it only has 1.5% of the total market. No matter how "low" priced we think these SSDs are, its still nowhere near acceptable, which I would say 30-40% above hard drive pricing per GB. With Braidwood, which I see as a future to SSD, my X25-M in the desktop will be replaced by Braidwood for me, and the X25-M will go to a future Calpella laptop I am looking forward to.

 

I absolutely love my g.skill falcon 128gb ssd. It boots up windows so damn fast! Like after one bar and a half it's finished. It makes my previous corsair ssd look slow

 

I know exactly what you mean.

 

Which Corsair SSD did you have? I have P128 and yes it feels less snappy compared to Mtron 3500. if you don't need anything more than 64GB, Mtron is a great stuff.

 

I still have this OCZ Summit 120GB for sale. Best price on the net. Free US shipping for members of this thread great drive, but I overspent and have bills

http://cgi.ebay.com/OCZ-Summit-120G...DrivesQ5fStorageQ5fInternalQQsalenotsupported

 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Newegg's price is much lower than yours. Only $315 after rebate.

 

Oops. DAMM. Did not see that coming. That is where I bought it! Of course, I got it on my birthday, the 11th. For 389 plus overnight so I would have it for the weekend. Which they only managed 2 day shipping anyways. That was UPS fault, though. No good for rebate. Man, why did I ever buy ANYTHING when it first comes out? So silly. Lights credit card on fire <-------

FYI, I will match Newegg's price before rebate.

 

I'm about to order a Dell and can get a Samsung 256GB SSD for $375 extra. Should I take it, or get a X25-M 80GB instead? I'm concerned about the Samsung slowing down for my OS and App's, is this an issue?

 

I would go with the Samsung personally.

The Intel is one of the fastest bar none, but its amazing random speeds become a non issue after a certian point (as humans cant recognize it)

The samsung isnt the fastest controller, but its been around along time and its stable. Plus you get ALOT more capacity our of the deal to put more of your apps/stuff on it before you start suffering from the drive being full

 

I agree with Kamin Majere my Samsungs have suffered from slowing down.


Ooops I should have said my Samsungs haven't suffered from slowing down.

 

This is what bothers me. I love the 256GB, but I have external drives for storage. A very snappy OS/APP is important as I hate things being slow lol.

 

I guess the best thing to do would be to figure out how much space you're going to need then.

If you need 60+ GB of room just for OS and APP space then the Intel might make it or it might fill up pretty quick and stuffer from slow downs. (not sure what intels down turn point is)

All drives will slow down the more you fill them up. SSD's just slow down because its having to "find" space to move/write information once it starts to get full and cant wear level like it wants to.

On the other hand even a slowed down Intel/Samsung/Indilix drive is still WAY faster than even a fresh 10K rpm drive

 

All SSDs will, but the secret cure for this issue is TRIM. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it's implenmented via a firmware update to all Major SSD drives.

 

So I'm strongly considering getting a SSD for my new laptop (work laptop, below). Didn't spend the $300 for the 64G SSD option because I figured I could spend about the same amount afterwards for an Intel X-25 M. Looking for other suggestions before I take the plunge, though.

Performance is obviously important to me or I wouldn't be considering SSD in the first place. But I'm also very concerned about reliability. If I keep the laptop for 3 years, I'd like to get the drive that has the best chance of providing 3 years of service without incident. I'd actually be willing to give up a bit of performance to get that.

Capacity: The more the better, obviously, but I don't want to go above the $400-$500 range. $300-$400 is preferable. 80GB would be the minimum, 100-160 would be preferred.

Ideas?

Also, which are the "good" OCZ lines? Looking at newegg, there are almost too many to keep track of: vertex, apex, summit, etc.

 

get the vertex or summit. Ignore everything else (apex, core, agility).

 

+1 Thanks for the tip. That makes this one really tempting. OCZ Summit 120GB, $315 after rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227450

Any other recommendations, SSD fans?

 

I love my supertalent drive. But its a little more expensive than the summit/falcon
But the read/write speeds are "i believe" about the fastest in the 128gb drives with 260/195; remembering of course you never seem to get all of the listed speeds from any of the drives

 

Do you mean the S128 that you have in your sig? The Mtron 3500 has slower read and write times i believe than the P128. It does have faster access times though 0.1 as opposed to 0.2 which is nothing really.
I own a P128 and the read/write times are near enough the 200/220MB that Corsair state.

On another note

I was wondering may be i should have just done a clean install rather than clone my old HD to get the best results possible with my SSD drive?


Thanks

 

I always recommend a fresh install. The only reason i use clone images is due to complete system crashes. But a fresh install will almost always be "cleaner" and run better

 

Thanks Kamin Majere, i may well do a clean install now.

 

I tend to reinstall about once or twice a year to generally clean up my systems and get rid of garbage that i no longer need.

The thing i LOVED about the SSD that i got was how fast i was up to a fully usable system. I had my OS and all of my apps and games installed in about 34 minutes. I think my Optical drive was slowing me down more than anything.

I might end up getting another small SSD eventually and storing all of my app/game installs on it as ISO's so if i ever need to do this again (like when windows 7 is released) I can install the OS and then install everything else through SSD to SSD eSATA connection speeds

 

Update to everyone.
Alright I went a little nuts on my SSD purchases and ended up buying 2 Samsung 256GB. They all have the old firmware. One was a Dell pull out and the other was a Dell OEM sealed. I am amazed at the effect it had on my EEEPC. Although the Asus only supports SATA 1, XP loads almost as fast as Leopard on my Macbook pro. I couldn't help doing some tweaks to the XP system and it does make the whole system even faster. I was really only looking for an SSD for my macbook and 160GB wasn't enough for me as I need instant access to a lot of files. After lurking for so long I finally jumped on the Sammy... Twice.

One thing I noticed: The newer firmware on the corsair seems to provide slower sequential write but faster random read and write from all the benchmarks I have seen.

SSD is the next big thing. The narrowest bottleneck in computing is opening up.

 

Lol, i made a geeky video on Youtube of my boot up times. I thought my nieces laptop with a SLC Samsung drive booted up faster than my laptop but i was imaging it. My laptop boots in under 30secs, it was 27 sec till i had a usable desktop. I have a P128 drive and i am running Vista Ultimate. Btw, i pressed start on my camera and the power on buttons at the same time, it was a bit tricky doing that. My times are pretty good considering that i have never ever done a full clean install even with all the bloatware that Sony puts on these laptops.
I don't know what that noise was, may be it was my camera. I know my nieces laptop is a bit on the noisy side but it did not make that noise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdtSwcgvZBs

 

actually it would be easier to let the camera run first and take the whole process. The audience can tell from the video, how long it took to boot.

 

^
I guess everyone has a different way/preference of how things should be done.

However, I deleted the video clip for now. It confuses me personally when i start recording before pressing the on button, but i probably will do one like that of my main setup at a later date to conform to the testing procedures. I will probably do two using both methods if i retest.

 

Right, I think a fair boot count would be after the BIOS boot and the beginning of the Windows bar loading. I did that and got a count of 17 secs on the black notebook you've got there. I think that time is better than mine.

So IMO the time in which you press the camera record button doesn't matter.

 

makaveli72, I thought the video was clear that is why i linked to it instead of just stating my times. Like i said i started recording the same time as I pressed the power button. I have read several people in this thread saying that got around that figure.
Btw, what are the full specs of your laptop. What drive are you using etc?

 

Yea I think you misunderstood my post. I'm was just adding on to what TMC01 was saying. IMO I think a fair boot count would be from the time the Windows bars begin going across the screen. IMO that's when the OS is starting to boot from the HDD/SSD. That's all I was saying...so please don't take offense. I didn't mean any thing against your post...I hope you understand what i'm trying to say.

BTW, my specs are in my Sig.

 

Lol makaveli72, i read your post back and understand it now. I thought you were saying you had the same laptop as me and got a slower time.
So 17 secs from my BIOS, that is pretty fast. I think i will leave it as that.
Thanks

 

ah okay, turbo memory. I don't like it, dunno..

But till memristors, I guess we have to take every solution as .. at least something..

 

I know how passionately some of us hate the Kingston V series , but here is a review just posted:

http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=772&page=1

Fry's has the 64GB notebook bundle on sale for $129 in their B&M stores. That includes the enclosure.

Again, not saying if this is a good drive or not, but it is refreshing to see Fry's starting to carry cheaper SSD's in the stores. It is nice to be able to return it if you don't like it.

 

No Fry's on my coast, what SSD are they selling for $129??

That sounds very affordable, but I also dont think its worth getting a SSD at all if you dont get one of the good ones.

 

I guess it was not clear. It is the Kingston SSDNOW V series 64GB notebook bundle on sale at Fry's.

 

heh.. is the kingston ssdnow v series actually worth it? seems like a cheap deal to me.. i can drive up to san jose and get it for $129+9.25% tax (deal breaker basically).. Total would be $142.01 with tax.

 

So similar price as 7200.4. I'm not sold.

 

apparently it is working as it is advertised, the stuttering issue up till now has yet to be reported for this SSD. For its pricepoint, it would be a good one for those who want to try out SSD and yet do not want to fork out too much to investment in one.