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

I agree it seems good. But all of those benchmarks are synthetic.

If I remember correctly these are the same guys that initially thought the OCZ Core was the bomb. Just like Legitreviews.

 

Dell just hiked the price of the 256GB Samsung SSD to $790, a $310 hike from yesterday. They must be in short supply, as they are no longer available as a configuration option for new systems, and they don't have product to ship for part orders (341-9999 & 341-8981).

At that price it is cheaper to get the Corsair P256 from Newegg at $699. Or the Intel 160GB of course.

 

I guess the word got out...

 

Noooooooo. Why did they do that? Now, I've missed out on getting it (not rich enough) and with the Intel drives still not shipping, this is going to be agonising.

 

does the agility support trim/ocz's new GC firmware? After 20% cashback from bing, the 60gig is $160 which looks pretty enticing. Still trying to decide whether or not to just get the G2

 

No response Dave? I'm not used to that

And are you sure this was not placebo effect ?

 

newegg.ca has the supertalent ME 64GB for 149.99 today, free shipping. So tempting!! I haven't seen an indilinx based SSD for this cheap, tempted to try it out, just to see how much difference there is between this and my Kingston V-series SSD.

Edit: ah, the heck with it, purchase time!

 

I need to sleep sometimes, too.... (good morning everyone.. yep, it's 13:20 here, and i just got up. heck, i have holidays !! )

no, sir, no placebo effect. you know my path: core2duo1.2ghz with mtron, kicking my quadcores ***. two mtrons in raid0 for the quadcore, kicking my 1.2ghzs ***.

then i got a new laptop, core2duo1.86ghz, newer mainboard etc, all faster all in all. i got it with a sammy (1st gen, 128gb.. actually not first gen per se, sammy had even older ssd's.. but the first known gen), and it performed okay, but was slower than the mtron in the 1.2ghz laptop.

(and btw, the mtron had 80MB/s read max on my core2duo1.2ghz, the sammy at least 100MB/s on my core2duo1.86ghz, still it performed slower side by side).

so i got, now the important part, a gen2 sammy. with 220MB/s read, 200MB/s write (and i benched it, it reached those numbers. still, it felt 0 different to the 1st gen sammy. nothing performed faster. nothing felt snappier, and it was stilll slower than the 80MB/s mtron config on the core2duo1.2ghz.

so the sammy was, side by side, like this (from head)

mtron config:
core2duo, 1.2ghz (ULV)
2gb ram at around 533Mhz
on ide, with no support for max speed:
80MB/s read, 70MB/s write at max
rather low IOPS actually

sammy config:
core2duo, 1.86ghz (LV)
2gb ram at around 677Mhz
on sata2
220MB/s read, 200MB/s write at max (210MB/s write once)
similar iops to the mtron


AND THE SAMMY WAS SLOWER THAN THE MTRON. MY NEW LAPTOP WAS SLOWER THAN THE OLD ONE DESPRITE BEING FASTER TECHNICALLY EVERYWHERE.

the only thing that could be it, was the sammy.

then i got the intel ssd. it kicked the mtrons ***. now my laptop is faster than my old one, now it's more snappy than my old one. and it has more storage as i got the 160gb one (up from 32gb mtron ).


so, no, sir, it was not placebo. i had the stuff running side by side all the time.

intel > mtron >>> sammy.

benches said otherwise, even here..


one thing that's fun for example: hibernation is faster on the intel than the sammy. the sammy has 200MB/s write speed, the intel 70MB/s. and all it does, is dump a 2gb file onto the disk.

now isn't that fun?

 

The first gen sammy mlc's had only 90mb/s sequential reads and 70mb/s seq writes. It was the SLC sammys like the one in my sig that has the 100r/80wr

 

well, okay.. but it had higher numbers than the mtron.. it's some months back, and i just got up

 

The US price for the supertalen ultradrive shell shocker is only $139.99 shipped.
Does anyone know how well these drives handle degragation?
I'm thinking of either buying 2 of these for raid0 today or wait for the intel g2 in the next week or so...
If the ultradrive has future trim support and has a firmware that keeps degradation to a minimum i think i want them for raid0

 

Wow....sounds like
i grabbed this new laptop with the 256 Gb Sammy just in time...

 

So dave, hows the Intel drive with being a DJ? You said you were worried that the drive might not be up to the standards, as skipping would be catastrophic. Are all 3 of the drives fine to you?

 

so far, the sammies once gave me a shock, and with the intel, my system once hung (but i guess it was the soundcard, which is now sent in for repair ).

other than that, yes, delivers great. the system can be at 100% cpu usage, ram at max, paging around, and still all tracks and samples and clips play without a flaw. i have other hw components dying on me currently making it a bit of a hazzle, but the intel so far delivers great. and as you all know, i'm no "nice" user of ssds. i just plug them in, and use the os like i did before. i install, update, mess around, copy huge files on and off the disk, etc..

and the load times for tracks are very impressive. the only program that doesn't "deliver" performance is ableton live. it still has quite some startup time, and sometimes tracks / sets / configurations load quite slow. but i guess it's the program. and it's still much faster than on hdd

 

T400 due here tomorrow, and still no G2 on ebay...

Maybe someone from America can help me to get a G2, then send it to UK?

 

gotta wait on intel for that my friend...

 

Okay, my Crucial M225 arrived from Newegg yesterday, and was defective.

It showed errors when checking it with Acronis Disk Director, and completely died when I tried to format it. It's not even recognized by the BIOS at this point. I did find it odd that the drive appeared to have scratches on it, even though it was "new".

I say all of this to ask: Should I just get the Super Talent UltraDrive ME 64GB instead?

It seems as though it may be better than the M225, am I correct in thinking this?

 

first: get the other replaced, or get your money back.

second: what budget do you have for an ssd?

 

^^ hmm I think I need an intel now....

 

I've already started the RMA process with Newegg, but after seeing today's "Shell Shocker", I started to wonder rather I should get it replaced as planned, or if I should purchase the Super Talent UltraDrive ME instead.

My budget is $170 for a good 64GB SSD, and ~$280 for a good 120GB SSD.

By "good" I mean, read/write specs similar to the M225 or to the UltraDrive.

 

I have the Supertalent Ultra drive and i love it. Everything i've thrown at it its still pretty much instantly opens.

Though i did try to open all 944 PDF files i have and it took a little while to do that

 

anyone? any opinion on the agility?

 

Hmm...you seem to be throwing the Kitchen sink at it.

 

Today, only the Vertex supports the new beta firmware with native TRIM and advanced GC (installed it last night... loving it.) OCZ reps on their forums are saying Agility and Vertex Turbo should follow shortly. Take that to mean whatever you want.

I'd bet that after it's verified that no kinks are in this "beta" firmware, they'll make the Vertex one final and start geting versions for all of their Barefoot drives.

 

I'd like some advice.

I want to buy a new SDD for my notebook. I guess around 128gb will be enough.
What is the recomended manufacturer and model, at sub 300$ ?

If there are any good options that slightly deviate in either capacity or money, I can consider them as well.

BTW, I plan to buy in say a month or so.

 

Ask this question again in a month...
This is rapidly changing technology and within a month the intel g2 will have been out long enough for prices around the board to stabalize and to hear of any potential new drives to dethrone it.

 

So any votes?
two Supertalent Ultradrives 64gb in RAID0 VS Intel G2 single drive

Edit: Sold out anyway... But still, i would like to hear some opinions...

 

Just got my Samsung 128GB PB22-J for $230 after cashback from you-know-where
After installing Windows on it, the feel is nearly identical to my 1st gen Intel drive. And I'm talking about opening about 9 Explorer windows, while opening Thunderbird, and opening Firefox with about 3 to 4 tabs, opening Word, and doing file transfer from external HDD.
I will probably make this my main drive, especially with the extra ~40GB more storage.

 

Hmm. D@mn it! I don't know where... Where did u get that deal?

 

Not sure, for the most part a notebook isnt going to be able to benefit from RAIDing the indilinix or the Intel controllers much (ore really the samsung either)

I get this with a single drive after everything i use has been installed and i've used it a while. This is the Ultradrive (128GB)
Sequential Read : 238.972 MB/s
Sequential Write : 168.591 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 158.400 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 164.529 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 22.415 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 16.879 MB/s

So you would go to
476 S/r
336 S/w
316 R/r 512k
328 R/w 512k
44 R/r 4k
32R/w 4k
and about .15ms(ish) access time

The first 4 numbers will destroy SATA2 so you will never see anything near that on a notebook (i'm assuming you're only going to get about 240-260 max)

5500 to 11000 (read) and 4000 to 8000 (write) 4K IOPS is a big deal, but how many times will you ever preform over that in 4K reads or writes in a single second. Random access is VERY important, but once you cross a certain point i think its a nonissue unless you're running a server.

I'm not even sure if Vista/Win7 is even capable of requesting 16megs of 4K writes in a single second.
Or at least i wasnt able to find that limit when i tried to crash the drive with sheer random multitasking.

So how much will an RAID help you... honestly i dont think you will ever notice a difference. If you had a desktop RAID card that could withstand that throughput then yeah go for it. But with a laptop i would just get a decent sized Indilinix/Intel drive and call it a day

 

On ebay
It took me a while of looking out for deals to get this one. I'll probably post a ATTO disk benchmark between Samsung SLC, Samsung PB22-J, and Intel later, depending on whether I'm free or not.

 

OK
you are the man I've been waiting for

can you tell me please is there difference in work between those 3 ssd-s

also, what slc drive do you have ?
MCCOE64G5MPP-OVA ?

thanx a lot

 

RAID 0/Striping doesn't work as per your 2nd sentence. If each port can sustain x amount of bandwidth, two drives that are striped should be able to reach 2x. Each SATA port delivers 250MB/s bandwidth individually. The bigger limitation is your controller.

 

Yes my bandwidth will be limited to two sata 2 not one

 

Ah... then RAID away and rule all other hard drives

 

Yes, the SLC I have is MCCOE64G5MPP-OVA
Benches of Samsung SLC and Samsung PB22-J is up. I'll see if I can do the Intel drive later.
I also used a Samsung MLC first gen before, and it's even slower than my Samsung SLC in these benchmarking programs. I don't have a screenshot, unfortunately.

 

A video on why Intel likes ssd's:

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Also, eCost sucks. To order from them you have to call in to verify payments and my 80GB Intel has yet to ship because despite them saying it was in stock when I ordered it, it is now and has been for days "back ordered".

 

Can you run crystaldiskmark on the 128GB PB22-J? I've found the 64GB benchmarks for it, however I know the large drives tend to do internal raid-0 so get faster performance. Here's a collection of benchmarks.

As to folks wanting to run raid0. Yes, it will improve performance but we can see that 4kb random read speeds are nowhere near saturating the SATAII 3GBps bus speed. What is really needed is faster SSDs. It would appear the Mtron 3500 has the fastest random 4KB read speeds at > 34KB/s, beating Intel X25M G2, Indilinx Barefoot and Samsung PB22-J.

 

don't know if anyone posted this site yet but here it goes

http://www.pcper.com/ssd
it includes a list of ssd's, what controllers they have, seq read/write, and links to reviews.
should be helpful to people

 

Here it is.

 

Most larger drives don't internally RAID0 since that would require another controller and would most doubtedly be much faster than the incremental speed difference btw same line.

 

Here is the result of Sanforce controller SSD, it really amaze me .

 

What SSD model? How's the power consumption?

 

I'm looking to buy a Crucial M225 64GB on which come October I will install W7 on my M1330 (currently with Vista Home Premium). I'm slightly confused as to which AHCI driver I will want to install (of course I will make sure that I have AHCI enabled in the bios when I do come to install W7 - or at least I think that's what I should be doing?).

Do I want to use Dell's driver on the "drivers and utilities cd" that came with my M1330 originally, or do I want to download Intel's driver and put it on a usb stick, or will W7 detect that AHCI is enabled during in the install process and install the drivers itself?

 

Sandforce. Been watching these guys for a while. Wasn't sure if they really had a product or not...
http://www.storagesearch.com/sandforce.html
I think they still only have their "reference design" and no shipping consumer product yet.

 

Ok so we've all seen the benchmarks for every drive out there a thousand time. What would be nice is just a users opinion of all the drives. what i want to know is between all the drives out there (well really just samsung slc/mlc, indilinx, and intel) which one give the best user experience? I've seen the numbers hundreds of times. What would be nice is to know which one YOU prefer

 

yeah, as mormegil83 said, which of your ssd-s feel faster and where...
numbers are numbers, and they are ok, but I wanna to know how they feel
specially slc vs mlc, and then, winner of those 2 vs intel...

 

First, I'll try to list out my typical activity on a laptop. The standard affair is usually multiple explorer windows opened, coding in Matlab, document editing, spreadsheet editing, 4+ tabs in firefox, with a youtube video opened (listening to music on youtube), with an occasional large file transfering (4GB+) all at the same time.
Base on this kind of working environment, I notice that the Intel and the Samsung PB22-J is almost stutterfree (I'm saying almost because maximizing/minimizing windows stutters a little bit, but nothing to the point of halting the entire system), while the Samsung SLC stutters a little bit more than the above mentioned two drives. Again, nothing is halted completely, but in addition to a little stutter in maximizing/minimizing windows, typing up a web address and waiting for it to get there takes a while. I can guarantee that this is not a internet problem, because no such delay is observed when using either the Intel nor the Samsung PB22-J.
So there you have it, in my "responsiveness feel" test (which is completely biased ) I would rank the drives the following way:
Intel = Samsung PB22-J > Samsung SLC

And don't even mention Samsung MLC 1st gen, it stutters even more horribly than the Samsung SLC and holds the system up in more than one instance while I was working.

 

1st gen mlc-s had integrated pata to sata adapter if I recall correct, and that adapter was the bottleneck...

so, there are some differences, but, they are very small...
correct ?

 

Just bought two Super Talent UltraDrive ME 64gb drives, going to attempt to run them in raid 0. The SSD uses the indilinx controller, so it should work well i hope. some people have had problems with raid, but hopefully with the latest firmware, it should be fine!