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

Gilmore - are you suggesting getting an engineer to come over and solder in a desktop RAID controller onto your laptop's mobo?? You know there are a couple laptops already with HW raid options. This doesn't seem plausible. I thought my idea of soldering a G15 LCD unto an M17X mobo was crazy...

 

What do you mean by "tasks that matter"

 

hankaaron57, I didn't think it would need to be soldered, that it would plug and play in an empty pci express slot. (Ihave an empty pci express slot)
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v...bly/?action=view&current=3alookattheboard.jpg

 

sorry this is direct link actual buying : it says model :MMCRE28G5MXP-0VB
http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_...olid+State+SSD+MLC+&_sacat=See-All-Categories

 

here are 3 reviews from buyers : below:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-078-SA&tool=3
website: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=14&subid=1427

 

LOL, maybe you can add me for doing that every few months but big paragraphs.

On an SSD, after prolonged usage most writes become random, which makes it critically important.

(On the contrary, random reads aren't as important. For reads, all 3 factors of performance, sequential/random/latency are important)

 

My reaction to those 'reviews' is that they are all before the Intel G2 was generally available, no?

Also, I too would be blown away with any SSD coming from a 5400 RPM notebook drive, but, I would be more curious to see what they have to say now that they've used them for a while, eh?

Used state 4K Random Write Speeds Rule! (repeat as needed)

 

Look @ the end where I installed MFT on a 300mb partition where it goes up to 2103.8mb/s. i wonder if you could format an entire drive with mft and install an os on it.

 

I formatted my little JMicron 2gb sd memory card with it.

 

heres a cdm bench of the partition with mft

 

Tried a search and didn't find info. Anyone know if there is a difference between these intel drives?

X18-M: SSDSA1MH160G2, and SSDSA1MH160G201

May be a vendor list thing, but would like to know more before buying!

 

The 01 denotes the revision within a generation. The first one isn't a full code and will be the same as the second one since there is only one revision out so far.

 

I still think you should look at something else. Something like the OCZ Vertex or Agility if you're concerned about drive space.

@Bruce Banner, here's a picture explaining what each of the digits mean:



Edit: Though it doesn't display the last two digits that sgogeta4 explained.

 

i thought the 01 and 05 at the back are the bundle-packages, as you can get them as singleboxed disks, or boxes with 5 disks in. as i always see 01 and 05 listed.

i haven't checked if this is actually true right now, just out of my ***, sorry head..

 

well, a program has a checkmark that it is upgradeable, i would trust that... lets see if you can do an update when there is one. then you know (i've seen much hd-tools reporting wrong values back for ssd information).

4k random writes are what happen for about any write. when ever you press save, or update some setting, browse to a new page, or simply, for the system, update/create a file, this results in SEVERAL random tiny writes that are spread over the disk.

same for reads.

 

sgilmore62
hi want ask where can I get that soft ? --> MFT - for win

 

while funny just because it's crazy, it would not be worth the effort with a big chance. espencially not in terms of power consumption.. and, for power, well, raid adds latency. insignificant for stuff like ordinary hdds, but with the intel g2 having 0.065ms read latency, suddenly adding some results in quite a drop in random reads and (depending on the exact config and all) writes.

so while in benches, it would excel, in real world usage, there might be a slight snappiness-drop.

and it would most likely drain your battery quite a bit.

 

well, you know google, don't you? .. (try it with "mft for windows easyco", as this is what's in the titlebar of the application??)

 

i tried and found nothing

 

It's right HERE but you better read the pdf thoroughly, trying to clone a drive from another drive they have to be the same for example, ide to ide or the os will not start.

 

I hear ya, I've read forums where alot of ssd's have been rma'd because of bricked firmware flashes. Can't really blame the manufacturers for not chompin at the bit to release firmware flashers. Seems like alot of folks don't read instructions very well. Samsung has said that one would be available by Win7 release.

 

just mark these exact words i posted, right-click and "search in google", and the first result is it?....

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, since not a lot of people pay attention. The Samsung SSDs are firmware upgradable. In fact, I have upgraded the firmware of the SLC Samsung SSDs two times already.

 

you have the SLC drives, they are different and fine.

but for the MLC, there are enough that are NOT upgradeable. at least, anandtech told so, and would have gotten corrected if it would have been a lie.

 

I think anand has some alternative motives when it comes to SSD if nothing else i think he just wants to prove he has power over consumers in the SSD market. samsung didn't endorse him or something so he is now saying their SSD are garbage to show that if he says they are garbage, it will hurt their sales. Even with their past stellar reputation in the SSD department. He either wants them to step up there game, as he did to Jmicron, or is getting some sort of kick-back.

Although i'll have to admit i didn't go with a samsung controller this time because i don't think it is the best bang for buck out there this time, but i do not think they are garbage! and i do think Samsung will release a user upgradable firmware for their drives if they say they will, but even if they don't it doesn't really matter. they don't really need trim support. they have GC. As long as you give it time to do it's thing, it won't stay in a degraded state. Anand is really blowing this whole thing out of proportion.

Sure at the same price point you can get a better drive, but i wouldn't exactly call a perfectly functional samsung drive garbage, just because there are other drives that handle random writes better..

 

they NEVER had stellar reputation in the SSD marked EXCEPT for their SLC drives.


even in the first tests from the macbook air with the samsung ssd, none said "wow that's amazing", all said, well, it's certainly better, even if we don't notice it.

samsung always targeted one thing mainly: make it a replacement for hdds (a.k.a. a bit faster, but all in all, the same) that is reliable, sturdy, silent. and they succeeded. but they failed to notice the huge performance gains that could be possible.

i don't say they made something bad, no, i even understand their decision, it's just that it's not worth the money. and that's what anandtech sais: it's not worth the money if you can get much better ssds for the same price.

and during his tests, it sometimes performed as bad as a hdd. which is quite bad, if you pay 100s of dollars extra for that device.

 

Maybe stellar was too much, but before intel, and indilinx, consumers only really had two manufacturers to buy from to really get a good overall SSD experience. Samsung or Mtron. Samsung has had the longest, most well known and stable (if you don't think stellar) consumer market SSDs.

Anand tests 'worst case scenario', and with samsung GCing, for most it won't get that bad and if it does, it will clean itself up.

I agree with most of what you say, and still stand by what i said.

 

samsung was low second compared to mtron everywhere, but was more affordable, that's why people liked it.

and you know that an intel ssd is 2.5x as fast as an mtron, which was better than the samsung back then when the samsung was considered "quite good".


if i want high end and pay money for it, i don't want "just a bit better". that's why he said, just don't get a samsung, it's not worth it. that is not to say the samsung is bad, definitely not. but it's not worth it's money, and that's an entirely different point. there are a lot of good things i still warn people of buying.

i like cola. but if one would produce a just-a-bit better coke, that costs 10x as much, i would tell everyone to not buy it. espencially if you can get for that 10x as much different, much better drinks.

jep, bad example, i know.

but still enough to warn people about samsung. if you invest some money, you want to have your money well spent.

 

we're saying the same thing, just you are much more passionate about getting people not to buy them than i am...

 

yep, because i don't want people to buy an ssd and put a lot of money for it together, sometimes with much work involved, to then not have a wow experience but just an "oh, okay, i think i saw some gain maybe" experience. that's not what people want, that's not what i want them to happen to get.

 

Maybe i'm not so anti samsung because my SLC worked pretty damn good, and to be honest i'm not 'feeling' the major increases with my Agilities that one would expect with benchmarks showing worst scenario gains being x4 my sammy and other gains benching many more times better...

I can tell a bit, but the sammy slc IS A GOOD DRIVE probably very similar to your mtrons... minus the heat

 

well, we're talking different levels. SLC always feel awesome, even if they aren't that good. but in mlc world, not everything is as happy. there, the best mlc feel as good as good slc.

and anandtech doesn't say anything bad about the slc samsung, he just doesn't mention them as option anymore (as you can't really get them anywhere anyways). he talks about the mlc samsungs, which are quite a bit less snappy than the other mlc options available.

 

Yeah i know. I'm just saying, i only have experience with SLC, and you only have experience with MLC.

I still have some faith in samsung, where yours is gone...

 

mine isn't gone AT ALL. i just say the current offering is not to buy.

 

HAHA ok sorry. point I'm trying to make is we're basicly argueing the same thing. so we don't really need to keep this up

'neither of us would buy a samsung MLC at current time and pricepoints'

 

yeah. problem is, marketing offerings let the samsung look mostly equal to the other ssds, so our job in here is to bash it down more than it deserves, just to equal out the marketing that you see in all shops where it gets so pretty numbers and all

 

what's the difference between the OEM and Retail X25-M on Amazon?

 

retail == it has a fancy box on it's own, i guess blue (as it's an intel box).

oem == it's in an ugly brown carton, in which it gets sent out in bulk pakages to the shops.

so, the packaging, mainly.

 

i´m thinking of buying an ssd for my laptop.. my plans:

80gb ssd = win7 + all programs
250gb sata = games + data (mp3,video,pictures,..)

well i think i could life with a 64gb ssd too (even with 64gb i should have no problem of putting pictures,music and videos on the ssd.. how ever i´m also thinking about installing games on the ssd which are 40gb´s or more).

i thought about the intel postville .. 80gb = 200€ = 290$

is it worh the money? or should i better get a smaller one (64gb..if yes which one is comperable with the speed of the intel postville?) and put the games on my 250gb sata (if its way cheaper i would agree with it).

Also: do i need to defrag a ssd? and the notebook hd size is 2,5" ?

thanks

 

he completly GOT me and I dont now what am gonna do now his passionate posts am gonna get heart attack !!! and you know why ???
i just bought that samsung 128 gb and now am reading these posts !! OMG

 

you dont need to defrag ssd in win 7 you should turn off auto defrag ..

 

It would be a shame not to put your games on your sdd. I mean a ssd incredibly boosts the gaming experience, games are loading so fast, it's crazy.

I have a 64GB ssd and put Win7x64+softwares+2*8GB games for the moment and i still have 25GB free. Most of the time i uninstall a game as soon as i finish it so it's enough space for me. My secondary 320 GB HDD is for all my datas and still run under Vistax32 just in case (we never know, could be useful ;-))

 

well i got 43gb of games + around 3gb´s of programs + win7 prof x64

dont think 64gb would be enough for this?

well okay i could propably uninstall 2 games which i dont rly play anmore.. which are both around 7gb.. so 14gb less.. hm maybe thats enough for the 64gb ssd ye.. but then still: which one is as fast as the intel postville?

and also.. it only increases loading times? the game itself wont run better?

thanks guys

 

@Kallogan and Mormegil83, can you run http://pcpitstop.com/ "full tests" and post results please, thank you.

 

Well in addition, the textures load faster so it results on a higher minimum fps and therefore a little higher average framerate. Results in less small lags caused by framerate drops to make it simple, a better fluidity.

Look at this if you want to know what i mean :
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=14

Also, if you're a crazy gamer, take at least 80GB then. The intel performs very well for a gamer as you can see on the link above. Indilinx based ssds perform as well for the most part, the average user won't see a difference...depends on your budget and if you're fussy/exigent ;-)

 

well ye i think 80gb would be better then.. think i will go the for the intel postville 80gb. there is no problem with installing/uninstalling games? ssd wont get killed after 10-20 new games?

anyone knows where to get the intel postville 80gb very cheap? i would get it for 200€ = 290$

thanks

 

With the Intel slc drive you get 100,000 write cycles--that means you could install and uninstall a couple games every day for the next 5 years. Think your computer will last that long?
MLC drives supposedly get 10,000 write cycles, not really far off in durability from a typical consumer usage context from slc drives.

 

Time for another episode of "SSD myths busted".

As Evoss-X said, defragmentation shouldn't be done on an SSD drive. It won't have any positive effect. It just adds wear and doesn't give you any benefit, as data will still be scattered all over the SSD (that's not a bad thing) even if you just ran a defragmentation software.

Windows 7 will automatically disable defragmentation along with some other things whenever it detects a good SSD.
So if you're running Vista, it's a good idea to try these changes if you know that your SSD is not a stuttering one.

No, there isn't. It will not get killed by that.
I don't know about other SSDs, but Intel even assures you that regarding flash wear their SSDs will last for at least 5 years even with massive amounts of data (servers) being written to it every day. EDIT: that is true for the Intel SLC as well as the Intel MLC drives.



Christoph

 

Could you be more specific ? Do i have to create a user account to run the tests on this website ?