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

sorry this is appart from the depate currently raging on but, would buying a cheap 32gb MLC be alright if i were just to install a game or two on it. it seems the stuttering only takes place with multiple read and writes happening simultaneously. If I were just using it for a couple games that would only be accessed one at a time, could i still reap the benfits of blazing seek/read times and not suffer the stuttering in game?

edit: AKA i get sick of staring at the load screen in WAR and other games...

 

I can tell you that WoW load screens used to eat up at least 10 seconds often much more time when changing chars, entering instances, etc on my HDD. My SSD cut the longest load screen down to 5 seconds.

 

which SSD do you use? i'm just curious if i will experiance the stutter if i'm not using for the OS

edit: this empty hard drive bay ahs been haunting me for six months now and i'm not sure i have the money to buy an SSD i can fully rely on but i'm hoping i get get a little something to hold me over and at least enjoy for a few games b/c that's pretty much all my lappy is used for

 

AND... if my os is NOT on the drive and if it does stutter it wouldn't affect my system other than data on that drive, would it?

 

I suggest buying one that gets decent reviews from Amazon.com and return it if you don't like it. I think the newer ones all use a revised controller that is better than the first gen ones. You can get a Solid series OCZ for less than $100 shipped.

 

samsung 256gb mlc ssd with 220MB/s read, 200MB/s write is out on dvnation. 1175$.
and 128gb mlc 1.8" should be out there, soon.

hope it'll be soon below 1000$

 

Doesn't that same 256GB MLC cost like $400 in some Dell XPS? Or is that a different drive?

 

maybe. but never forget, you don't just pay for the ssd in the dell, but you don't pay for the other drive that would've been in. so it's more like 500-600. but yes. i guess it's the same.

 

Probably not. But to make the SSD a data drive is a total waste of money.

 

That's great! Now if they only had a 128GB version for, say, $300-400 then I might have to go ahead and get my first SSD. I could skip the RAID with a drive as fast as that.

 

i just realized that my next notebook won't have s-ata2. so i won't need that readwrite speed lets see how fast the 1.8" version'll be.

 

I know this is weird but my TZ Samsung SSD is from Japan but I don't know what controller its using. I try searching on Samsung SSD but nothing shows up.

Model Number: MCBQE48GKMPQ-M1A

I try doing google search and I can't find the technical specification.

I found a Japanese blog with some thing but its all in Japanese.

http://ascii.jp/elem/000/000/119/119419/

I know its 1.8" and its from Samsung.

Can anyone help me find the technical specification and what type of controller?

 

Heheh. Did you guys know that the GeoEy-1 satellite has a nice 1TB SSD?

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2008-03/how-it-works-best-view-space-yet

 

Yeah, well it's probably not a 2.5" notebook form factor.

(When you said satellite, i was thinking "oh, toshiba just made a 1TB SSD!")

 

The article doesn't mention the specs. It does say its pretty much the same as the 64GB version (and links to a page on the 64GB version). On the 64Gb version page it doesn't mentioned the controller. It just shows a zoom in of a Samsung chip. The 64GB version had a read speed of 57MB/s and write of 38MB/s.

 

I hadn't heard this before but most reviews I've read don't mention heat at all.

Does anyone have more info on this?

 

Just read this thread. Some do run hotter although it doesn't seem to be the norm.

 

ur wrong. using it for games should cut back on load times tramendously. and basicly that's all i do on my laptop and closest thing to turning it off i do is put it in sleep mode (unless i'm putting it in it's case) so basicly the only real benefit i will see from it either way is faster load times in games y waste >$300 when i can get something that will serve my purpose for <$100.

 

I think a small ssd for games is an excellent use of the technology.

I am using a ocz core for os and programs and a regular hard drive for data.

app and games load very quickly.


Mainly play cod4 and maps load probably five times as quickly. Blink and they are loaded already.

 

I've got the 256GB G.Skill Titan. I was skittish about getting an SSD due to the growing pains they seem to be going through, size limitations, and ultimately price. Having now experienced firsthand what they can do, I may never buy another internal HDD.

 

Some people take their gaming pretty seriously.

 

What is wrong with that? As long as the consumer marginal benefits exceed marginal cost, then its all good.

The same thing can be said for people investing in huge TV just for video game? Is that a poor use of money? IMO its not because as long as the person is making good use of it, nothing is really "wasted".

Just because some people don't do CAD / Video Editing / Photoshop doesn't mean they are not worthy of using good technology.

 

"everything is worth what the purchaser will pay for"

If that were true, then the charlatants selling placebo will be justified.

 

wow, such narrow minded people...

what exactly do you think people are paying all that money on graphics cards for?

You think people are typically buying the fastest equipment for something other than games?

One can easily spend $500 on a graphics card. What difference does the $70, that you could potentially get an SSD for, make?

I am personally of the opinion that a $100 investment into speeding up an application that you find important to speed up is well worth it.

 

That example implies deceiving people into believing that they are buying a legit cure/drug.

Someone buying a $100-200 SSD knowing that it will shave off a few seconds from their loading times, is getting something that will actually shave only a seconds off their loading times, and they deem this difference worth it. It may not be worth it to you, but it is to others.

The charlatan example actually applies more to junk OCZ drives, in that the company implies lightning fast speeds all the time, but the reality is a good amount of stuttering that slows your computer to a crawl. However, someone using these cheap drives purely for their read ability in games (which it excels at) is a pretty good idea.

 

the difference is, the gpu helps play games better. better framerate, higher res, more effects, what ever. (or let the game run at all ).

the ssd just helps a bit in load time, not in the actual gameplay. but if one wants to spend the money for it... depends a bit on the game, of course.

 

A quick followup - I can still bog down the Titan by doing a big system update on my Ubuntu system. (Lots of little package files being downloaded, extracted, installed, and configured.) That's kind of a worst-case because it's all lots of small random writes. But tweaking the filesystem cache to keep things cached longer instead of flushing right away generally keeps the system running smoothly. So, most of the time, it's working great. Read speeds are still great. When I'm compiling code (which is what most of my work involves) it pretty much flies. Both cores running at 100%, no perceptible I/O waits to read files, and output files are all cached so there's no write delays either...

 

The load times can make a difference in how the game plays as well. Think WOW, though I don't play that.

Also a difference of a few seconds getting into the game can make a difference as well. Setting up your position on a map for example.

 

This is another reason why I see SSDs not replacing HDDs soon. What happens in the future when the cheapest SSD drives don't "stutter" anymore?? Most people buy SSDs for load times anyway. The bottleneck for loading times is not transfer rate, but the latency.

Once cheap SSDs get rid of "stutter", sales of SSDs will drop dramatically. The X25-E, doesn't load faster than the much cheaper OCZ SSD that has 1/3 the transfer rate. No incentive getting a higher transfer rate one when it loads at similar speed.

 

How did you adjust the filesystem cache for Ubuntu? did you also disable atime?

 

Could be worse, idiots like me buy gobs of high end hardware, overclock it more, and then play 0 to 1 games on it (counterstrike source in my case). Ultimately though I just build PCs up because a. its a hobby and b. I hate waiting on a slow computer.

 

Anyone not using a computer in precisely the way that I use mine, ney, living their life precisely the way I live mine is wasting their time. It's a poor use of your life. (PM me for proper living instructions.)

 

ROFL

 

Look up laptop mode. Update the cache settings in /proc/sys/vm... Yes, also disable atime.

 

Ok, lets say you are playing WoW. You enter this big map, does your computer load the "ENTIRE" map the second you enter? NO.

Your hard drive is constantly running, fetching for more information. How can you assume the second your hard drive is finish loading, the benefits of the hard drive is gone?

What kinda games are you playing where the hard drive only LOAD once and dump everything in to physical memory. I guess in your games, they don't know how to allocate resources to page files.

The benefits diminish but not "gone".

 

halflife (portal, etc) would be one game i know where you benefit while switching a scene. but while it's fun (having portal on my mtron raid0 is fun, the load times are just sort of a flickering), it doesn't remove the load time even there.

most games because of that load in the background and should _never_ be affected while running at all.

 

I love the way some of you guys call OCZ drives junk when it is clear you don't follow what OCZ have done for SSD setup which shows even those $50 30GB drives can work just fine as long as you set up the OS to work correctly with SSD.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=186 is a great place to start reading, forget what you see else where and read what we have found and why every review published prior to us posting guides and findings is near on junk

I amazed many tier 1 reviewers with a 30GB core v2 equipped MSI Wind running in battery low clock mode XP32 at CES, one guy even swore to me the hardware on the motherboard had been changed as the machine was so snappy.

Not everyone can afford $500 drives, someone has to offer Joe Blow a drive he can afford, the only issue is we have to educate him at the same time.

 

Well said. I agree.

 

if they can't afford it, they can just buy a HARD DRIVE. they perform better, out of the box, no tweaking needed.

ocz case closed.

 

Well, imagine my surprise that even on your great OCZ forum there are LOTS OF USERS reporting problems with OCZ SSDs. And these users have done all the tweaks that "supposedly" fix all the issues. But of course every time someone like that posts the fault doesn't lie with OCZ but rather "the crappy motherboard manufacturer, the cables, the OS, ...." It is NEVER OCZ fault.
Surprise, surprise, these threads vanish quickly from the forum.

Stupid spammer.

If you are so sure that your drives are great, why is it impossible at places like Newegg to RMA them for a refund?

 

While I think OCZ got some bad rap for being one of the first out of the gate with an inexpensive MLC drive that everyone expected to revolutionize computing. Ultimately all MLC devices have problems, but the early OCZ ones seemed to have even more than most of the ones that came after, and due to their price point they sold a whole lot more units than most other companies probably did. That said, all the great info on OCZs forum is worthless if it can't be implemented easily by end users. Is it really that hard to export your registry edits to .reg files, or even get a custom registry edit installer that you can select the ones you want to apply with? Your selling drives into the market as if they're ready for prime time but frankly without an easy front end for making the necessary modifications most people are going to be let down if they aren't power users that can apply all the stuff your forum has gathered up on it.

Also you guys aren't making any friends or admirers every time you come through a thread about another manufacturers drive and say "oh nice to see your using our test method with another drive" or "your using the tweaks WE came up with on someone elses drive and they're getting free tech support". Most of the tweaks you guys have gathered up aren't state secrets invented by OCZ, live with the reality and act like a leader instead of being defensive about your ideas that aren't protected by a patent, copyright or whatever. Hell make the tweaking program check for a compatible drive if you want to protect your investment in it and sell it up against other SSDs that you actually have a tweaking program in place to make the things usable out of the box. This isn't the only forum I've seen OCZ have a representative hit and then say something defensive or about using your methods with other products either. Either come with a product that just works, or one that just works with the software tweaks INCLUDED with the drive.

Or just get the vertex drives released if they're as good as they're rumored to be, that'd shut a lot of people up.

 

^ agree.

also, the OCZ drives tend to be on the expensive side compared to similar drives from other manufacturors (size and speed wise)

 

The G.skill Titan drives have the same specs as the not yet released Apex drives but the Titan's are about 50 percent cheaper than the Apex.

Also the supertalent 256 GB drive that I have in the ultra bay in my T400 is just as fast as the Solid Series but it's nearly 200 dollars cheaper.

I'm thinking the new Supertalent drives that have the same specs as the Vertex will probably be cheaper.

 

I'm sure most of us are familiar with the old saying "penny wise pound foolish".

I think the meaning of this saying translates well to SSDs that don't "just work". In this context pennies and pounds are minutes and hours. To wit, it makes no sense to spend hours researching a disorganised web of user-posted experiences and resources to learn how to "set up the OS to work correctly with SSD" so that one can save minutes in accomplishing computer tasks. Many (most?) users don't posess the technical knowledge required to do this tweaking anyway.

Unless an SSD works out of the box, no muss no fuss, it doesn't accomplish it's purpose of saving time.

 

And how come intel and Samsung were able to make their SSDs work for the beginning. WITHOUT ANY TWEAKS????

Sounds like your drives are ty and you are simply looking for a scapegoat!!!

 

intel is going to rule the SSD marken, IMO.

 

^ I don't think so. At least not untill they sell their drives for arm and a leg.

and not that Intel drives are much better anyways

 

I've read of problems with all SSDs including the mega expensive Intels. You guys are being a bit too hard on OCZ, perhaps. The same thing could be said about any SSD out currently and most hardware and software out there, especially operating systems. Mac, Windows, Linux distros, all leave something to be desired without some researching and tweaking unless used in only the most remedial manner.

 

SSDs seem to have more than their fair share of tweaking compared to hard drives.

 

All good things in time...

I remember lots of things that didn't or would never work, or at least work well, that we take for granted today. Like burning your own CDs (dvds, blu rays, etc) at home on a drive that doesn't cost more than a new car... It's probably only a matter of time before rust on a platter gives way to silicon.