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

So, do SLC SSD's stutter?
I know the MLC's are full of problems, but what about a OCZ SSD or whoever re-brands the Samguns SSDs?

 

anyone have any info on the new ocz 120 ssd?

 

All I know is this... if it ain't SLC, I do not want it. My experience as above cured me even from wanting the Intel MLC. I'll maybe try the Mtron 3500, or maybe wait till first quarter 2009 and see what happens.

 

I agree. Just got back from returning the @#$%@# Patriot SSD.
At least I had no issues at Frys and got my $205.66 back.

I was not even impressed with the read performance ... e.g. windows boot.
Was only marginally faster than my 7,200rpm.
Definitely NOT worth the current prices.
When 64GB or 128GB SLC SSDs can be had for around $200 or less, I will reconsider.
Before then ... NO LONGER INTERESTED.

 

Man, I would kill for a Fry's around here. I wonder if they have the return policy for online sales? Anyways, I too was bummed about these. I guess I was beginning to believe the HYPE. I always judge my products very subjectively by FEEL, and this SSD failed miserably. In fairness, If I had done a clean install and tweaked it for a half a day, MAYBE it would have worked better. Still, I am a clone and go type of guy. I have had my current install thru at least 2 maybe three computers, and lord knows how many hard drives, and (credit to MS here) it still works reallly well. I know I should reformat, but just cannot bring myself to make the move. Too many add ins and passwords and stuff I like and depend on that I would not want to have to re-create it all. Plus, I am lazy Dave

 

Also, I am really interested to hear how the Mtron 3500 at $389 compares to the Samsung SLC 64GB which now sells for $549 at the egg, and is generally agreed as a greta all around drive with NO STUTTERING.

 

I don't know of any actual SLC drives that stutter actually...

but yeah, I'd be interested. anyone wants to spend me a samsung slc?

it's 41% more expensive. does it deliver 41% more? well, not in every case for sure... what about worst case iops? (random 4k writes). anyone having those numbers? the mtron has about 50.

 

Does the mtron consume substantially more? From reviews a while back, i saw it consumed more than even an HDD. Samsung on the other hand is among the most energy efficient.

 

good question. no clue, i still need to get my battery-tray repaired..

 

The specs of the Mtron 3500 seem to beat out the Samsung (both SLC and 64GB)... I guess we'll have to see when it comes out. On a side note, Intel's 64GB SLC X25-E will debut at a whopping $990 USD!!!

 

Is that the laptop version or the fast version?

 

Intel 64gb slc? since when is this announced? the 32gb is announced, for about 990$ so far..

 

I'm comparing Mtron's 2.5" 3500 series with Samsungs SATA II 2.5" series. All of Intel's SSDs are targetting towards laptops.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=13449

Quote:

Intel also hasn't forgotten about its other businesses when it comes to price cuts. Intel's multi-level cell (MLC) X25-E solid state drives (SSDs) have been burning up the benchmark charts thanks to its highly optimized memory controller. The street price for the 2.5" 80GB X25-M -- and its 80GB 1.8" X18-M counterpart -- will drop from $600 to $525 on November 30. 160GB variants of the X25-M/X18-M will show up in the first half of 2009 and will initially be priced at $990.

Moving over to the single-level cell (SLC) parts, Intel will introduce its high performance 32GB X25-E for $700 on November 30. For those that are patient, the price will drop to $575 on December 28. A 64GB part will be introduced in the first half of 2009 for $990.

 

The E is for Enterprise and are SLC.

The "M" drives are Mainstream and MLC.

 

Man, I hope some companies come out with some good SLC that are comparable and better than the Samsung 64GB sata II. AndI do not mean Intel's overpriced crap. Come on Intel, you are setting the prices back almost a year.

The Mtron 3500 is a possibility, but still, all this action and only 2 (possibly) decent drives for anything near reasonable? I am what they call champing at the bit, but they got to meet me halfway.

 

I imagine the arrival of the 256GB Samsung MLC drive will push down prices of currently available MLC drives. Anybody know when this is going to hit the street? I'm hoping it will release at around the original price of the 128MB Samsung MLC or lower. It has the size and the performance but can it go for the trifecta with a reasonable price (given its size/speed)?

I'm waiting on ordering a dell E4200 or E4300 for this new drive to come out to see what the premium will be over the 128MB Samsung that Dell currently offers.

 

well.. ssd market last year was booyah that thing is fast (everything slc)..

this years ssd market is about selling as much mlc crap based on the last years booyah..

but yes, they should've pushed slc much more that year. s-ata II at maximum read/write would've been great.

then again, mtron delivers now about the same performance from last year for about half the price. if they do that yearly, i'm quite happy

 

Nicely said, Daveperman. I agree. They sleazed out and rode the SLC hype using MLC drives.

That Samsung or Mtron is looking good. At 25% off, I would probably go for it. I really need a 128GB, but would like to get a taste and could move this 64to my thinkpad.

 

what do you need 128gb for.. i live with 32 right now!!!

one thing i'm interested in, is, if i'm able to put one of those mini-pcie ssd's into my notebook to expand the storage (slow but available ).

so if you have a free mini-pcie slot in your notebook.. that's an option (but first steal one of those mini-pcie-ssd's from an asus eee to test )

 

Well

I happen to have a pricing quote from one of the SSD vendors for the Q1-2009 for all of their SLC and MLC offerings. Those are next-gen SSDs with >200 MB/s read performance.

All I can tell is that 128GB SLC will be doable in the victinity of $1000

 

hm.. as i payed 489$ for my 64gb slc mtron, <1000$ is doable for 1000$..

actually, i've done just that by buying two and raid0ing them..

i've got a next gen 2009 ssd!!!

 

64GB = $152 (G.SKILL FM-25S2S-64)
128GB = $278 (G.SKILL FM-25S2S-128)

Someone in this thread mentioned this new drive by G.Skill that is very reasonably priced but it was quickly dismissed due to being MLC. Well at least one review has pegged this MLC drive as having faster read rates than G.Skill's own SLC drives.

Anyway, user jonlumpkin wrote an informative post so I'll just link it. Read the linked review and see what you think:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4170467&postcount=18

 

Just because the read and write speeds are higher doesn't mean it is any good. It still uses the Jmicron controller which has a whole host of problems.

 

I could do with 32 for the laptop, but I would like 128 for desktop. I could do and am ready to do 64GB with a nice Seagate freeagent Go for storage.

Looks like the intelligent thing to do is wait till Q1 2009.

 

CES will be interesting this year with the storage and memory vendors

 

Would either of these work in a full size laptop:

http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/11/runcore-and-mydigitalssd-team-up-high.html

Pretty good performance and price.

 

Has anyone purchased the new Mtron 64GB that's $389 at RocketDisk? Any feedback?

 

Good question! That looks like the best/price value for a SLC drive, but it really needs to be compared to the Samsung in a subjective test, not a laboratory. I will be happy to clone my current install to each and give a detailed report if someone would send me one of each drive

 

I have the Mtron 64GB (but 3.5") and the Mtron 32GB but 1.8". they all perform similar (while raw read/write performance is slower on the 1.8" due to limits of my notebook, this difference is not really noticable.. )

i'd need a samsung to test

and, well, the 2.5" will perform equal to the 3.5" ones (as well as the 1.8" ones, which are identical in speed, too).

 

hm.. i guess i should try one of those on my hp 2710p.. happily, i have an asus eee 900, too (my gf has one.. ), so if it doesn't work, i can put it into her notebook

now the big question.. should i go straight to 128gb.. a bit much for her eee

...

if those **** ssd's wouldn't exist, i would not have spent nearly as much money for pc stuff the last months..


.. ordering ..

edit: ordered

 

How is it?
Can you do some real world benchmarks?

e.g. boot time, shutdown, starting photoshop, opening a very large file, starting outlook, ...

 

i stated them before. on the 2710p, the perf is limited due to the older umda modus.

vista boot: 40 sec. (from 5min)
firefox boot: 2 sec. (from 1min)

installing adobe reader: much faster than harddrive (thats the "lots of small writes in reallife test" ).

and this, as said, with capped read/write due to UMDA 5: http://davepermen.net/SSDs.aspx

 

2.5" will perform just as well as the 3.5"? This I need to see...

 

why? they all since the first one perform the same in the same category, no mather the size.

the 3.5" btw are half as thick as ordinary harddrives. so in fact, they're just a bit bigger 2.5" drives..

everything is the same from 2.5" to 3.5". they're both s-ata, they are identical internally. the only gain from 2.5" to 3.5" is the ability to just put more chips in to have more storage (that's why there isn't a 1.8" 64gb slc around yet from mtron, i'd guess).

 

what advanced information do you want? be specific. starting and timing apps i've done, running different hd benches, i've done. loving it because it's hell of a difference for me, i've done. what else do you want? (and yes, the worst case test iops 4k random write i've done, too.. as written on my page)

 

The waiting is over:

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/...d=news_view&newsId=20081119006508&newsLang=en

 

looks nice.. if it gets awailable in shops at a fair price, then that'll be excellent (mr. burns style )

 

It says it consumes 1.1W, i assume that's at writes. How about idle? That's more important to me since i don't write much to the disk. Just need it to boot up and start programs fast.

 

so there should be a 128GB SLC drive shortly, nice

 

How do you figure??

 

^ I devided by 2

MLC - 2 bits per cell, SLC - 1 bit per cell

in the 256GB SSD they have 128 bil. cells

 

They already exist, in fact this one has been around for a while. Don't expect them to become cheap for a while yet, though. Other companies have them in the works, they should be out next year.

http://rocketdisk.com/product_info.php?products_id=51

 

Actually...

"Single-level cell or SLC flash memory stores one bit of data in each cell and multi-level cell or MLC flash memory stores three or more bits in each cell."

From Samsung SSD FAQ.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/products/flash/ssd/2008/faq/faq.html

 

That price is patently absurd. It may as well not even exist. Sorry Memoright, you do not have my business.

 

memoright created those prices a bit more than a year ago. then, those prices where okay.

problem is, they haven't changed their prices. mtron halfed them right now, making them quite nice.

lets see what samsung delivers in price.

 

Yes, half the Memoright price would be a possible starting point. In theory, a good offering by Samsung has to help bring the prices down across the board. More SLC's please. Dave

 

I stand corrected I assumed that Samsung uses similar MLC technology as some of the other guys, such as those two:

RiData
http://www.ritekusa.com/family_main.asp?family_id=14

Intel
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2329593,00.asp

.. and then we always see on the market the MLC drives with twice the capacity of the SLC drives ..

 

Before I explode, will someone PLEASE buy the Mtron SLC 3500 and tell us how it is? I need to know!

 

this is a great thread.

The Mobi's look good. They seem very close to the new Samsungs so I wouldn't think there would be much of a noticeable difference.

But then again.

I'm using a Sammy 64GB SATA2 right now in my notebook...BTW

I think there's a sweat spot in pricing that's going to be reached very soon and it's gonna be a feeding frenzy.

People are already getting all bent over the Intel and that's not cheap.

Drop the price $200 and and stand clear.

 

There is a great article and thread about hard drives here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/476-16-seagate-hard-drive.html

And I, and at least one other person, are beginning to think that it cannot possibly be any more expensive to manufacture an SSD as compared to a high tech spinning drive. The amount of science that goes into making a spinning drive is truly unbelieveable. And to think, that ALMOST every computer out there has one, even all the computers in the so called CLOUD and they spin and help us so much in our daily lives. And this from a society that has people that eat so many McDonalds they cannot leave their house, sheesh, it boggles the mind Dave