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

Phil, are you getting one soon? Can you do a mini-review of some sort?

 

I would if I could but I still have a ATA based laptop. So first a new laptop, then a OCZ Core
I've seen enough of this OCZ that proves it will outperform any harddrive for my use.

 

Yea, I would love to get one too...but I'm broke because of college stuff :-/

 

Maybe I should wait for a new notebook too. I've been wanting a quad-core in 15" or smaller notebook.

Or I can just order one today...decision decision..

 

I've had a SSD once and it's amazing what it does to your overall speed. The machine just 'feels' so much faster. The boost in responsiveness is hard to express in benchmarks.

So my advice would be: go for it! you can always take it to your next laptop.

 

@PhilFlow: Thanks for your input!

 

Hmmm, I don't know Phil. Let me think for a few more days.

 

As a current owner of the OCZ 128 GB SSD I can confirm this.
My old vaio is as new with this drive.

 

yeah baby

http://www.dailytech.com/Super+Talent+MX+Series+SSDs+Get+a+Speed+Boost/article12452.htm

supertalents just got a speed boost.

it looks like the price-war now starts

 

dave:

Is this a firmware update that will be made available to current owners? If not, how does one tell which is the lower performing and which are the higher performing units.

Also, I'd like to see some real world performance numbers with these updated drives before I will agree that it's fixed.

Best,

 

The Price wars have begun they have.

 

SuperTalent has said that the upgrade is not user-serviceable. However, they did say if you RMA the drive, you'll be provided one (whether it be hardware or firmware) that has the upgraded performance.

 

Chuck:

How does someone determine (at retail) that they have the higher performance version?

Also, if you RMA a drive do they copy the data for you too?

Thanks for the rest of the info.

 

Or more correctly:

Begun, the price wars have.

 

For being a star wars geek I got it wrong. Thanks for the correction.

If you go on neweggs site the supertalent 120 GB drives are out of stock. So maybe newegg is waiting to get the new supertalent drives in.

 

I am new to SSDs, which one do you recommend as far as best bang for your buck now?

 

OCZ Core offers most bang for the buck. You can get some very good deals online.

Reviews:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/ocz-core-series-affordable-ssd-hands-on
http://www.bluefi.co.uk/
http://www.hothardware.com/News/OCZ_Core_Series_SSD_Vs_VelociRaptor_Sneak_Peek/

 

I just saw the OCZ Core 64gb on Newegg and immediately came here to see if it was legit. With $40 rebate - $239 + $7 shipping. Man, this is getting really close for me now!

 

Mtron just released a new firmware for their SSDs.

http://www.mtron.net/English/Customer/firmware_018.asp

Unfortunately I can't get it to work. I followed the instructions. If someone can get it to work please post.

Thanks

 

A review of the OCZ Core SSD:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=200&Itemid=1

 

From what I understand, all retail SuperTalents with the new firmware are labeled as 80MB/s write. There are still some old ones with the 40MB/s spec. Avoid those.

I can almost guarantee they won't copy data for you - I'd definitely do a backup before RMA'ing.

 

so we now have quite cheap very fast ssd's for micro-sata 1.8" (supertalents), and quite cheap superfast ssd's for 2.5" and bigger (ocz).

sweet state of the ssd-marked. and i still wait for the fast zif-ide 1.8" disk i'd ordered an ocz now, else... but for the pc it's not reall that needed.

 

I don't have one yet. I'm asking for those that might

Cheers,

 

It seems like their reviews, asside from the benchmarks themselves, are just rehashes. I read the review for the SuperTalent MX and there was just plenty copy paste. That's alright, if it's just general info about SSDs in general, the market, the technology. But the disturbing thing is, in their conclusion, they list pros and cons that are just assumptions, things they didn't even test, like they'd slap "low power usage" on all SSDs, which is unhelpful and could possibly be misleading.

 

I PM'ed Les about the 9262 I have on order from Xotic, offering to use it for some benchmarking when it arrives. Here is the config:

1x SAGER NP9262
- Processor: ~Intel Core 2 QUAD Q9550 2.83GHz
- Ram: ~ 4,096MB DDR2 800 (2 SODIMMS) D
- Primary Hard Drive: ~ 128GB OCZ Core Series SSD (Ser
- Secondary Hard Drive: ~ 128GB OCZ Core Series SSD (Ser
- Third Hard Drive: ~ 128GB OCZ Core Series SSD (Ser
- Raid: Raid 0-Stripe (Combines primary
- Operating System: ~Windows XP Pro 32bit SP2 w/ Drivers,

All three ssd will be configured in the RAID 0 array. So what test software would you folks like to see run? I'm willing to fart around with this box for a couple of days for our amusement, or if there is something to be learned from this, then all the better...

 

So the review just referred to for the OCZ Core series has a drive which is also faster than my OCZ Core series 128GB drive, which is about 3/4 the performance that they measured.

Any ideas what might be slowing mine down?

I am suspecting that it is not in AHCI mode. On the properties tab for the drive I can enable and disable write caching. I think this implies that the drive is not attached to the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, which is installed and enabled and has AHCI running (because Turbo Memory is running and can only run in AHCI mode).

Now I just have to figure out how to try and force the OCZ drive to be in AHCI mode. I seem to remember this is a BIOS change. Anyone know for sure?

 

Yes it can be set in the bios mode. Once enabled, you will not have the ability to to turn on/off write disk caching.

 

Yeah that is what I thought. Oddly enough, I just checked and AHCI was enabled in both the BIOS and in the Registry. But even after a couple reboots, the boot drive still allows me to turn on/off write caching.

There must be a reason why Vista doesn't realize that this drive should use the AHCI stuff which is in fact enabled and working.

Looks like I will have to try a repair/reinstall?

Edit: Repair does nothing. I think I have to try a reinstall. But I'm trying to figure out how to make sure Vista doesn't use the wrong drivers for the drive this time. This was not a problem with my other drives.

 

Hey Les, great to see you around this thread! I still have not sprung for an SSD yet, but the OCZ Core 64GB for 239 at Newegg is sure tempting me. My heart tells me wait until Intel gets into the game Mtron sure has seemed to kind of be dead in the water, eh? Dave

 

Yes....Mtron has seemed to fade. I'de wonder about Memoright as well but there is a 64Gb GT being my way in a few days. They are a bit behind as a result of a specific part in their controllers.

OCZ is definitely heating things up but wait for it. I spoke with an executive at Samsung last week as well as Dell with respect to the new Samsung release which has just entered production. Pricing is very tight lipped but it appears that it will be an excellent addition.

OCZ is a perfect example though how this industry is still wide open to anyone who has the confidence to jump in. They are not even six months past their first release which was nothing more than a Samsung rebadge in the SATA II.

EDIT: Wanna drool? Check out the system ordered by Pursuvant above. He pm'd me and is looking forward to running tests of all 3 drives in RAID config... This should be interesting.

 

Yes, it still is the most exciting market. Samsung is definitley a major player. I had my eye on their SLC SSD 32GB for 399 on the egg, before OCZ got serious about prices. This is, as I often predicted, happening at a rate so fast it is almost unbelieveable. People were talking 5 years to even minor acceptance of these. And look at all thta has happened in the past 6-8 months. Can you say, power user back to school price war??? Dave

 

In-Depth with the OCZ Core Series Low-Cost SSD
http://blog.laptopmag.com/in-depth-with-the-ocz-core-series-low-cost-ssd
(^ Very interesting)

More OCZ Core benchmarks vs. Velociraptor.
http://www.maxishine.com.au/documents/ocz_solid_state_drive.html

 

i wonder if the new core series 128gb preliminary release "problems" were fixed. or is ocz just gonna continue with it. im not that up to date on it, but i saw as many benchmark reviews as i could and most seemed to have oscillating graphs rather than a smooth line which u'd expect from ssd drives. i know its mlc tech but still that really disturbs me in the stomach area. i just saw both benchmarks from post 682 and i have to say that the laptop mag benchmark justifies my concern while the maxishine review shows different results bu still oscillating graphs somewhat. does ne1 have updates on that?

 

Yeah I am seeing oscillating graphs with my OCZ Core Series 128GB. But the experience of using the OCZ Core Series 128GB is pretty good compared to the Hitachi 7k200 that the OCZ Core Series 128GB replaced. And I think my OCZ Core Series is not running in AHCI mode yet, so when I figure out how to fix that (looks like reinstall Vista is part of the process) it will get about 25% faster.

 

I am still waiting for some thorough reviews between the OCZ Core and the WD 320GB/7200rpm.

It's too bad that Laptopmag choose the 250GB 5400 rpm for their comparison. It's not the best performer. Also I'd like to see different benchmarks more focussed on running different applications.

Sofar it seems like the OCZ Core has the edge in booting and launching application. The WD 320GB/7200rpm may have the edge in write performance and multitasking.

 

The plot thickens....

http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=106

Very interesting review of OCZ Core 64GB

Dave

 

OK I reinstalled Vista but forced it to use the IMSM SATA driver; this had an interesting result. At first, there was a corrupted image and several BSODs.

I then reformatted the OCZ Core Series 128GB drive and reinstalled Vista with the forced driver.

Here now are the HDTune results:

Transfer rates: 104.5 94.9, 64.4 (maximum, average, minimum) MB/s

Access time: 0.4ms

Burst Rate: 50.4 MB/s

3.4% CPU usage.

This is close to other people's figures, and I put it down to forcing Vista to use the IMSM (AHCI capable drivers) during installation. So the drive is now making the performance that I had expected.

And yet the drive still allows me to enable and disable write caching; which I thought indicated that the drive was not in AHCI mode. I am still confused as to what is going on here.

Having considered of the reports of how the Core Series is reported to be slow at writing large files, I actually wonder whether write caching is as helpful as it might normally be, but I have no easy way of testing this.

 

the new ocz core is sataII - my notebook only has sataI. are the read/write-speeds slower when i attach the SataII ssd to my sataI laptop?
i understand that the interfacespeed of sataI is max 150mb/s, where sata II is 300mb/s. but the ssd has a maximum readspeed of ~120 mb/s. so this should not be an issue. or am i wrong?

 

You are right.

 

I have the OCZ Core series 128 GB for a week and I experience the same results as mentioned in steve's link above from cape: programs start and run very fast but with intensive concurrent tasks my system sometimes slows down; in fact windows defender seems to sometimes stop my system ; since I disabled it my system runs smoother.

 

from these reviews and the latency results for writes, it looks like i'd personally prefer the supertalents..

so, we have the ocz now, what's next to wait for? *smile*

 

What's the energy efficiency of the super talent?

 

SAMSUNG! In production now and should be worth the wait although I am not privy to pricing. Im in the midst of trying to get my mitts on one.

 

It will be interesting to see if a "pricing war" has begun. The new SuperTalents and OCZs are running ~ 1/4 the cost of the Samsung introductions just 4 months ago which were significant cost reductions from other products.

No, I don't expect these new Samsungs to come in at 1/4 the price, that would be around $1/GB. But if there's a significant price "incentive" it's going to get very interesting.

 

It's amazing. For the first few weeks you use it, it's normal. But then it changes into a "power saving mode" which uses no power at all! Unfortunately, performance tends to suffer when it does this.

But seriously, look carefully at the various user reviews of Super Talent before you get one. The early examples of this current series tended to die very early. If they have fixed the problems, then presumably the user reviews will steadily improve.

 

I'm talking about the new MX series, not the old FSD**GC25M serie.

 

This will be Samsungs first mlc entry so pricing may surprise many...

 

Cheap, fast, and reliable. That is all I want!

 

Yes, the new MX series is the one that is dying like flies. Mine certainly did.

You can go check the user reviews here at Newegg. Not encouraging that Newegg is no longer RMA'ing the early deadders.

I would assume that if Super Talent fixes the problem with their new MX series, then users will add more positive reviews and it will be safe to try them again.

 

so.. when? how long to wait?