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

The Titan is just as fast as the Apex, I've been using the Titan for nearly a month now and I haven't had any problems with it.

 

The SSD market was founded mostly to sell high end units for servers (which frequently use 2.5" drives to save space) and for laptops which natively use 2.5" drives. That defacto standard has kind of carried on, you can always get an adapter to mount it into a 3.5" drive space.

 

Aside from my masterdrive that I got for just over a buck a gig (which is reasonable to me as many SCSI drives cost more than that) I've decided to let those with a bigger sense of adventure or wallet beta test these drives before i make a serious retail purchase.

 

Big Mike do you have your OS on that drive?

 

I have XP installed on it, I have Vista ultimate x64 on the factory drive in a dual boot.

 

how's the "stutter" is it tolerable? does it happen often?

 

I think Corsair S128 is a "kinda" like a Samsung drive in with Corsair badge on it.

Samsung chip + Samsung controller + Corsair case.

 

yeah that was tempting but the read/writes are just so slow compared to the other recent competition

 

Completely agree. Every time they release a new OCZ (and seriously, OCZ has had like five or six series released in the past half a year to a year) or whatever, it's kinda like, "great, I hope it drives down the price of the Intel(s)"...

The faster seeks of SLC drives are generally only apparent in random reads and writes, and even then it's a poor comparison depending on controllers, etc. The faster raw sequential reads of some of the new, cheap MLC drives will help lower load times to an extent, but I'm sure there will be a point where you get diminishing returns. Kinda building onto the comments above, I think it's really more important to have a balanced drive (in terms of sequential and random access) than something that has a huge sequential read and crap random writes.

I don't even think it's that. I think it's flat out a Samsung re-brand. Like the case even looks identical to that of my Samsung SLC.

EDIT:

BUT, the random writes are actually in line with those of the Samsung SLC drives (assuming this IS a Samsung rebrand) of the same generation. That's second only to the Intel drives with respect to MLC devices. That alone I think more than justifies the price. Plus, with regard to dollar per GB, the Corsair/Samsung is actually in line with the current OCZ/G Skill/JMicron drives.

 

Guilty .

 

I was referring to 1.8" actually. For SSD-only laptops. Aren't they usually 1.8"?

 

No. But unlike you, I have been following SSDs for a while and know about the issue people had with OCZ concerning the mail-in-rebate ... or mail-and-no-rebate.

And I would recommend reading the thread before posting questions that have been discussed hundreds of times before.

 

Most SSD-only laptops do only take 1.8" drives... however, these make up a relatively small fraction of the entire SSD market. But the big OEM (yes, singular, it's pretty much just Samsung...) providing the drives for the SSD-only laptops has indeed provided a 1.8" solution for each generation of it's drives. Mtron also has some of their drives in the 1.8" form factor, but you are correct in that 1.8" SSDs are relatively rare.

The glut of 2.5" drives being released right now (specifically the MLC JMicron crowd) is geared toward the mainstream enthusiast who most likely owns a laptop with a conventional drive in the 2.5" form factor or a desktop with a conventional drive in the 3.5" form factor. Hence the 2.5" form factor makes sense; it's conceivable that the current levels of performance (specifically the, in my opinion, over-hyped sequential reads) are also not attainable in the 1.8" form factor.

 

one can buy up to 64gb 1.8" microsata slc and 128gb 1.8" microsata mlc right now from samsung. for zif-ide one can have up to 32gb 1.8" slc from mtron.

i'd love to see more. i'd love to see 1.8" more and more standard in notebooks as it would free some room for other stuff (or allow more dual-disk systems, or even more than dual)..

well well, we'll see the future

 

I think we'll see a lot more of them in the future since cramming real performance into 1.8" for a hard disk is not a real doable scenario where as for SSDs space isn't that much of an issue, especially with the fabs getting shrunk, you just have to have enough room for pinouts. Very same reason a lot of the early OE ssds were 1.8" drives in thin and light units, they were a luxury/business high end level and they need performance and small size both so the SSD fit the bill even with its big price tag. With 1.8s you could pack a raid-5 4 disk array in your average "gaming" 17" notebook like my gateway... Or put in a pair and probably chop a quarter inch off the bottom of the thing, man that'd be nice...

 

Target acquired :3

 

I applied all the usual suspect tweaks, it's nothing I'd consider a deal breaker, especially for what I paid and how fast it is when it's not bogged down. There are occasional moments when it will just kinda stop, you can still move the mouse but you cant change menus or anything. In most occasions when it happens I wouldn't be able to do anything useful anyways (it usually happens when installing programs with lots of small files or other stuff that slams it with writes that even a so-so hard disk would have problems with). If you had never used the system with just the scorpio you might not even realize there was an issue, and I was aware of what I was getting myself into when I got it so I wasn't surprised, if anything it's better than I expected.

 

I really wish 25% cashback was still around :'(

 

Where can I buy this drive or the 128GB version? Is it available yet? Drooling for the 128GB version at a "good" price.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Samsung-256GB-SSD,6628.html

 

If you actually look at a few posts above you first before posting, you would have found your answer.

 

Buy a MacBook Pro? I just want the drive itself.

 

Unfortunately, you won't find the drive being sold independently for quite some time (as was the case with the Samsung SLC 64GB). However if you want one right now, you can configure a dell xps 1330 with this drive. Otherwise, you might have to wait a long time.

 

I am mighty interested in this drive also. Samsung had one of the best drives available for a LONG time. Their 64GB SATA 2 SLC will go down in history as an excellent drive.

 

I actually wish they made a 64GB version of that Corsair/Samsung MLC a couple of posts back with the same performance but half the price. I'd turn over my entire HDD "fleet" with a $175 64GB Samsung, Intel or MLC be ed.

 

I wonder why. The demand on such a drive would probably be pretty great. I'm hoping Corsair will be able to come out with such a drive since they already have one based on the older tech.

I don't need a new notebook so I'm not going to buy one just for the drive. I bought an XPS 1530 last year and it works great for my needs, though I wouldn't mind putting an SSD in there at some point... probably will do so before July.

 

I'm just the kind of person that would order a 1330 like that, then swap the drive out for something else, resell the book (full disclosure, of course) to keep the drive and use elsewhere. What concerns me is there isn't really a specific model indication when ordering. How do you know it's the latest model Samsung with the great specs.

And what possible reason would Samsung have for not also selling the drive mass market?

 

maybe dell has a contract with them. kind of like only AT&T sells iphones... i'm sure Dell buys TONS of them and might pay a little xtra to keep it exclusive so that anyone that wants the drive has to pay Dell for their computers as well.

just a guess... hopefully sitecharts or what ever his name is doesn't yell at me for this post

 

If you get a Dell, get the 256GB SSD. Samsung's MLC drive is rated at 220/200 MB/s R/W and has a superior controller. eBay has some for like $1000-$1200, but upgrade is like $400 from Dell.

 

Perhaps this explains the recent price cuts we've seen on Intel SSDs:

Intel slashes SSD prices.

Of course, the usual "The Inquirer" caveats apply.

And, unfortunately, the Inq article has no links or references to any original source docs.

 

Isn't it equally possible that Intel is about to release another generation of drives and that they're trying to clear existing inventories? Nah... that never happens

 

that would be awesome

 

I don't know it to be fact, I'm saying it has happened before.

 

^^

I might buy that.

/pun intended

If so, then I merely discovered the effect, while you may have found the cause.

 

Intel isn't supposed to release a new SSD generation until Q4 this year...



Though larger capacities of the current models should be available soon (if they aren't already).

 

Don’t confuse us with the facts!

 

Does anyone remember that video on youtube of someone playing Crysis: Warhead on RAID-0 SSD's and getting like 55-60 FPS? I can't find the video anymore...any idea what SSD he was using?

 

The G.skill Titan 256 GB is getting good reviews on Newegg.

 

The SSD shouldn't really help with FPS. Loading times, but not FPS.

 

CW:

I know another generation was coming - I didn't know the timeframe.

 

I'm debating whether to do that as well
It's very tempting, and the net price of the SSD after selling off the M1330 isn't that bad at all.

 

Actually, this is what I'm doing. I have an m1530 with the samsung. The SSD is a Samsung PM800 SSD. It's the 256GB version. I'm getting 200MB read, but only (relative to the 200 I was hoping for) 120MB write.

Apparently, this is the one shown at CES2009:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/news/events/News_Events_CES_2009_View.html

I'm going to pull the drive and try it in my m6400 and see if its any faster on a newer controller.

I'll try to get Atto benches up. At the low end of block sizes, the Intels are still faster (but don't have 256GB, to be fair) but at the top end, the write is much better on these.

N

 

Hello NBR SSD Readers

Just want to share with everyone. I got this today.

I will post some benchmark and how I feel about it later this week.



I was going it up and look at what type of ram / chipset it is using but it says removeal of cover will void warranty.

Ch28Kid

 

OK, I've never been so happy to be wrong. These ARE the real deal. On my m6400, this drive in an eSATA case (which ensures nothing else is hitting the drive during testing), I reached 225MB read and 188MB write!!!!

Atto below:

 

Wow... I just jizzed in my pants. ROFL.

 

IOMeter? CrystalDiskMark? Please? With a cherry on top?

 

Here's Crystal. I installed IOMeter, but I don't understand where to get the different access patterns you see referenced on others sites.

N

 

I wonder if the upcoming vertex and Supertalent Ultra ME drives will be that fast.

 

Wow! Now if only they could produce these things out the wazoo with a great price! I'll wait and hope Corsair comes out with a new 128GB/256GB drive with the new Samsung controller.

 

I have a Samung SATA I SSD SLC, OCz Sata II SSD SLC (Rebadged Samsung), and now Intel X25-E. I love the Intel the speeds are redicously fast compared to the others. Where do I download the HDD tester to find the exact speeds on my motherboard? Intel Claims 250Mbs Read 170Mbs write. We will see but overall even without the exact numbers from my board the intel performs better than the OCz one.

 

Yeah, I'm not totally sure how to configure it myself... but those some nice scores. Random 4KB writes beating all the other current MLC drives... except for Intel. Good job Corsair, Samsung.

You know for the capacity, it really is a good price. Most of the other current MLC drives are priced similarly at this capacity and they don't have Samsung(?) controllers. Just doesn't quite have the oomph that Intel has with regard to speed. So you pay more for speed with Intel and you pay more for capacity here; it's a balance - just what you value more.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html
http://iometer.org/
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1137/ATTO_Disk_Benchmark_v2.34.html