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

are the samsung 128GB MLC SSDs any good?

their prices are better than intel's and also @ a good memory capacity

 

They are stable and provides a good alternative to either the indilinx or intel drives.

 

have fun with your SSD. and no, I'm on page 134..

 

I would even say that samsung controled ssd-s are the best one due to the fact that they can refresh them self alone
so on need for trim and stuff like that on sammy-s

 

BTW, the 34nm Intel drives are still going to be using SATAII-300 interface. Yes, there will be enhancements, but no interface changes.

 

Man this is a long thread! I have read about 75% of it so far. You guys are providing some great info for us all to educate ourselves on.

I installed a new Intel SSD 32Gb-E over the weekend. Coming from an Hitachi 7200K 320Gb HDD that I truly loved. I am running this on a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30, Intel Core 2 Duo L7500, 4 Gb Ram, on XP Pro.

I have all of my programs installed that I need and still have 16Gbs left, so I feel good about the size. I really thought I was going to kick myself for not getting the 64Gb. I am going to install W7 later on this year.

My tests are showing an average of 201.5 Mbs.

Are these drives not capable of showing the true temp? I cannot find a program that will show it, only 1 I found showed 32 degrees which of course was not correct.

Please feel free to ask me about anything you might want to know!

 

Don't worry about temps, most SSDs (except a few Jmicrons) generate very little heat (so it will basically run at ambient temp).

 

will be hard to beat those new numbers from OCZ, then:

OCZ Vertex Turbo.

but i still hope they do. will be another great roundup on anandtech soon, i'd guess

 

anybody know when we will be able to buy online the new OCZ vertex turbo ssd drive?

thanks

 

Those numbers don't really mean much. Jmicron drives stuttered because of small file write latencies, which is an area where the X-25 series still dominate, as far as I'm aware. Also, small file writes.

 

Here are some test results after benching with IOmetre degradation setup...
It's my samsung slc 64 gb first generation controller
what I'm trying to do here is show that samsung was aware of performance degradation long time ago and took care of that long time ago

ssd performance degradation was performed using the following IOmetre setup:

Code:

2.) slucaj
-Transfer Size Request: 512B
-80% Read, 80% Random
-Access Specification 100%
-Number Outstanding IOs: 256 (fixed, no ramp up)
-Number of workers: 4
-Run Time: 20 min 

test was performed on my dell d620 with windws 7 x86 7264 installed
ssd has system and data partitions, and all tests were done on data partitions
I was running it from safe mode to minimize the OS effecting on test itself cause test was run on disk who had system booted on itself

here are results:


before IOmetre:


right after IOmetre:

about 30 min after IOmetre:


write performance is clearly shown for 512k write and random write, and you can see that all went normal again after 30 min, what is very interesting for me because, I thought that sammy will need lot more time to repair back itself

you got to luv those sammys

 

they are indilinx based, which is a very good chip, and espencially in small file writes. i wouldn't post it else.

 

should be next week. newegg even had them listed during the week, i saw the 270MB/s and thought it was a typo.

 

270/210 is pretty fast, but thats not really ground breaking for the indilinx controller.

My Supertalent Ultra ME runs at 260/195, so their "premium" cache doesnt do much better than the best firmware it appears.

I'm still waiting for something that makes SATA II the bottleneck

 

Intel is still the leader because they have the most extensive commercial microprocessor design expertise and experience that makes their controllers the most effective.

 

jeah, right, that's why they suffer performance degradation

 

Unfortunately all solid state memory devices suffer performance degradation. In fact I dont know any commercial device that does not suffer performance degradation over time.

My abovediscussed mention is not a rule as such. Simply a commercially demonstrated fact in the current moment in time. The research and development capabilities of Intel for semiconductor microprocessor design is still unparalleled by any competitor.

 

(10char)

 

While Intel is one of the top 3 commercial drives, I dont think they are the "best" They have very impressive stats, but when you have eleventy zillion IOPS but no one can ever use but a small fraction of that the preformance is basically unneeded.

So far it looks like top tier is Intel/Samsung/Indilinx. All are better than each other in certain areas. But they are all head and shoulders above the competition.
(not counting professional grade drives)

As stated all SSD's will have performance degradation. Intel suffered from that but their firmware update made it alot less of an issue

Exactly

 

all suffer, but sammy is the only one that regenerates itself very quick....
and it is so quick that users don't even notice it

and best of all, it is all done by controller itself, so, users don't need to do ANYTHING

 

OCZ Tony said next Vertex firmware will introduce background idle performance refreshing (I think his term was something like background idle garbage collection), so at that point not only will the Vertex have its own idle regeneration, it will also have TRIM on command.

 

I have a question.

Since Samsung SSD's have the ability to refresh themselves, does it apply to all Samsung drives? MLC and SLC alike.
Also is this function also brought over to other rebranded drives like Corsair, OCZ and Supertalent which has drives using the Samsung controller?

TIA

 

It got a firmware update, it's no longer a problem. Get over old stuff and don't spread the past as if it's a problem now.

All SSD have problems when they have to handle much random written data, as they have more work to do. there is some degradation there (but not feelable, only measurable).

But the bug the intels had was fixed with the latest firmware which is now at least a month old, if not older.

 

no mtrons recover as quickly, intels with the actual firmware just as well (and before, just as well, except if they started to mess up due to the bug, then they couldn't recover). indilinx just as well. even jmicrons don't degrade much. they just sucked by default.

sammies are actually quite slow, so you won't ever feel the degradation, they just run in degraded mode all the time (yup, had them, dropped them away, even the newest sammy version. mtrons and intels are much more snappy, haven't had indilinx myself yet).

so, no, sammies are not great. they are good. stable, quite fast (compared to hdd's they are great), and solid. but they are not the best, nor the only "good" one that "do it right".

 

the premium cache isn't clocked much higher => can't really do much. but they do get the crown right now (intel next week back at the top, i hope ).

you can buy different ssds right now that laught at the sata2 bottleneck. all pcie based ones, up to 1GB/s read speed. there are ones from OCZ, from Supertalent, and some others. They're not cheap.

 

yap, all samsung controlled drives

yap, mtrons as well, forgot about those drives already

well, indilinx won't recover it self, and, no matter what people say, vertex and indilinx STILL suffer from degradation, and those drives don't even need to bi crushed with IOmetre or somethink like that, they simply fall over time, and those ocz trim solutions just don't work, so, for indilinx dave, sorry but you are wrong

as far as I know for Intel, they did not recover them self with first version of firmware, after firmware upgrade it maybe is ok, but, the way I see it, no manufacturer should even THINK of selling ssd-s if they didn't test them all the way, and, in the intel case, they didn't, so, I don't trust them anymore when ssd-s are in game

sammys may have slower file copy speeds, but, random access times are about the sam for all drives, around 0,2 ms, so, they should be all very snappy when they don't stutter as jmiscrons were

 

intels always recovered from degradation but they had a BUG where it sometimes failed and accumulated to quite bad performance. but they documented how they fight against degradation in the first release documents.


random access is quite slow on them. i have them side by side with intels and mtrons and they're much worse in snappiness. i don't have an slc sammy, though.

and btw, the intels have 0.08ms latency, so while the sammy is still at the first access, the intel can be at it's third one

file copy speed doesn't matter much to me. the 200MB/s sammy was a much worse performer on the 1.86ghz c2d than the 80MB/s mtron on my 1.2ghz c2d. so the only thing that CAN be the problem, then, is the latency (and maybe the amount of parallel processed accesses it can handle. and there, intel is king).

 

It would be interesting to know how many parallel channels do each of the different drives have. I know how Dave felt as it was the same when I tried using the Sandisk Contour Cruzer along with my Xporter XT 32gb thumbdrive. You can feel the difference.

But then I dont work fast enough to overwork 1 channel so having a Sammy is good enough for me at this point I am still waiting for Intel's rumoured 320gb to surface before I decide to get another drive.

 

just wait over the weekend

i know (from brain, which has much holes and such, espencially after a hard work day) that the intel one has 8? 10? parallel channels. the indilinx has more than one. jmicron has 1? the rest, no clue. and all are guesses.

you don't have to work fast to overwork 1 channel. when ever you start an app, tons of files get loaded. registry accesses, config files, user configs, application file, content (images and such of the app), dlls, etc. so even when starting a single app, which is just one click of you, having tons of parallel lines is great. espencially for jmicron it would have been great, as one file request that blocks long blocks all other requests, resulting in a full halt. a blocking intel drive would still allow the rest of the app files to load.


and btw, a single ntfs file access is more than one disk access. it goes around in the file system to get there, reads the file name and the file itself, properties of the file, updates the timestamp f.e. etc. what ever.

just to say, the intel is worth it everytime. the very low access time and the many parallel lines really gain you very much.

and as you said, it's feelable.

can't wait for next week hope at least a bit of the rumours get some truth

 

any word on the new intels yet?

 

Still about 7-9 days away for the announcement (assuming the 2 weeks statement is true)

Patience

 

I know that intel has 10 channels, indilinx sammy and others, no clue...
I think sammy has 4...
but I don't see how number of channels is related to snappynes ?!?!?
more channels = more IOps = more snappynes when you have 50 programs opened, but, if there is only 2-3 programs opened at the same time, I don't see how that can be an advantage...

 

Intel 10 - Tom's Hardware
Indilinx 4 Channels - PCperspective
Samsung PB22J 8 channels - Tom's hardware

With this in mind, I rather take Intel or Samsung. More channels and more stablility, and refresh function for the sammy too.

 

Not sure which samsung your using but if it is a pb22-j based one then you must have gotten a bad unit..lol

I have read many different reviews and test setups an they all have nothing but praise for it. Most reviewers also noted it IS in fact faster than the Intel's.

I could unserstand if there were mixed reviews and some had the Intel ahead in benchies but the sammy wins out.

Especially now that you can get the 256GB version for $479 if you know where to look

 

Though if the Indilinx can get similar performance with merely 4 channels, its more efficient?

 

The Samsung also uses the least power, which on top of the better performance makes it the clearest winner, particularly on notebooks.

 

you have more than one core in your processor for what? exactly, more snappiness.

same here.

 

it may be faster (and is in certain numbers here, too), but it's not at all as snappy as the intel. and THAT is what the wow effect is of an ssd. swapping from a hdd to an ssd, no matter what brand, is night and day. then swapping the sammy (if you have one) out for an intel is again night and day.

on anandtech they stated the same: sammy = solid but less snappy.


edit: and yes, i know where to look. having sammies, having had once a jmicron *shudder*, having mtrons before the sammies, and having intels now, i will from now on never look at samsung again. they just dissapointed compared to a half as fast mtron, and only the intel so far has beaten my mtron-raid0 (or came close to beating, depending on the situation). i only talk about reallife daytoday usage, don't care that much about benches.

i'm interested in trying an indilinx based one once. but currently there's no use for one of them, intels are in the same pricerange here in switzerland => no real gain to try.

 

if you're talking about Dell

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...oductdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=19&sku=341-8981

according to the specs these drives are SATA-I only, 150MB/sec max speed. Doesn't seem like a good idea...

 

are there different sammy controllers that deliver 220MB/s readspeed? because my sammy delivers that. still it's no faster in boot, app starting or what ever than the previous 100MB/s sammy, and both are way slower than mtrons or intels.

 

Probably a typo. The 256GB Samsungs use their 2nd gen controller. Although the sequential R/W is faster, what makes things boot faster is the random R/W, which is far slower - hence even on SATA/150, it would be fine. On average HDDs have a 4K R/W at <1MB/s (or even 0.1MB/s), good SSDs can be anywhere from 1-50MB/s.

 

You guys are a bunch of ssd weenies. Geeks eheheh. Its amazing though when you think about it. Here we are, just a bunch of geeks from Switzerland, Canada, Granada, Uk and LA talking about ssd specifics.

Go ahead and keep it up...expecting my new Studio 13 with 256Gb ssd in a few days...so whats the thread concensus on this baby?

 

well yeah... and we all blame you for it

The 256GB you're getting should be the Samsung. I've always liked them. As Daveperman says they arent as snappy as the indilix or the intel, but they are still very fast IMO and have a GREAT storage capacity

 

I have the Samsung 256 GB in my thinkpad and it rocks under Windows 7.

 

For those that contend Samsung drives are snappier than Indilinx:



100% random, 100% write, 4K, 4 outstanding IOs, 200,000 sectors, 1 minute.

There is not a Samsung drive on the market that can put up those numbers.

 

I don't understand why everyone argue with davepermen, especially people that didn't try so much different SSDs.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609460

Supposed to be using the newest Samsung controller, fantastic price too. I'd like to see some IOMeter runs on it though.

 

My opinion is that Indilix and Intel based drives are faster then Samsung, but I didn't saw why to pay more for something that I don't need.

Honestly, I don't need SSD, but I want something reliable. Plus it's less hot, less noisy, consume less power and self refreshing.

I got it for 201 $ including shipping to Croatia.

Could You send me .icf file and I'll run IOmeter on it when I have some time. Both on SATA-I and SATA-II.

 

Definitely, as with any hardware you should buy what you need, not what's best.

 

Tomy

Can you run some tests to see if your drive can refresh itself when performance starts to dip? TIA.