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

What is wrong with the current Corsair SSD? The current samsung controller have issue? Shuttering?

Not that I know of...

 

Speed. The newest Samsung controller has reads twice as fast.

 

I think this IS the new Samsung MLC controller. The old (an older) one did 90MB/s read and 70MB/s write sequentially. The old one did get higher random 4KB writes, though, which is a bit odd; maybe this actually isn't a Samsung controller?

The drive with the older controller in question is MMDOE28G5MPP.

 

The Corsair SSD is definitely the older one with 90/70. HDTune and HDTach scores maybe all over the place but ATTO consistently has it down at around 100 read.

 

Oh whoops, you're right; my bad. Somehow I was thinking that Nyceis' benches were for the Corsair. I should go to bed soon

 

We need to rename this thread " The SSD Thread " its not new anymore

 

Is BitTorrenting and heavy downloading a no-no with MLC SSDs, since service life should be reduced significantly?

 

No one has owned a MLC drive long enough to know for sure honestly.

They claim MLC drives will give you 10,000 write cycles (and near infinite reads) before the cells start dieing off on average. But honestly only time will tell. It shouldnt kill it any sooner than a mechanical drive though unless your completely filling the drive and emptying it more than once a day somehow.

 

I ran PCMark Vantage HDD Test on the Samsung 256GB SSD. I got 21,453. This compares to 22,256 the Intels got here:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/788/9/

I don't have the commercial version of PCMark Vantage, so I can't give you details of that score, though.

So it seems these really do compete with the Intels, and give you 256GB of space. Now if only you could order them outside of buying a Dell

N

 

Like someone else said... speed... the newer Samsung controller is much faster. I'll wait for that and may buy when it's updated.

 

Ah, but we only talk about new SSDs, so depending on your interpretation, the title may still be appropriate

... and I said that if you look at Nyceis' benchmarks (unless you consider something else the new controller), the random 4KB writes are slower than those of the old controller. Possibly an anomaly on this one test, but they definitely don't look like they're going to be that much faster there.

 

Thats what i've always wondered about SSD's Where are the ones that post "less than bleeding edge" speeds but increase the capacitys or the stability.

I would like a nice 150 read/100ish write but does really well at the small random writes and has a decent capacity (256gb+)

Though having a 1TB drive that maxes out the sata connection reads and writes is always a dream as well

 

Actually, some bittorrent clients have the option of cached, defered writes to avoid fragmentation of drives. In the case of an SSD, it'll avoid small writes wearing out your drive. You can specify it to say 2 megs and that should do the trick.

 

I got a question. Say for comparably the same price, we can get a corsair 128gig SSD or a 80gig intel x25-m and we have to fill up maybe 70gig of space, will the corsair start performing better than the intel as it has a lot more free space to move around?

 

Nope. I'm pretty sure I recall someone doing a test with the Intel nearly full and there was next to no performance loss (of course, someone correct me if I'm wrong here; my memory just isn't that good these days XD). So unless the Corsair improves its performance as it is filled up (lol), it is better to get the Intel.

 

If you assume the controller is "good enough", there is no real "free space" on an SSD drive. Because unlike an HDD technology, there's much less writes you can do on flash before the cells wear out and you can't write anymore so the controller attempts to write to every space on the drive evenly.

So once you do enough writes to be full capacity of the drive, in traditional terms, the drive is "full". That won't take long of course.

 

So the one's to watch are:

New Samsung 128/256 not out yet for sale.
OCZ Vertex 128/256 not out yet but almost. Mainly deserves watching to see if it is a re-branded TITAN or not.
Intel 80GB mainly to see if prices comes down ENOUGH.

Any others bear watching? Mtron? No names? Dave

 

The re-branded Titan's are OCZ Apex drives. I remember reading a review about having similar dual-controller tech.

On Canadian NCIX, the Intel drives are 30% more expensive per GB than the OCZ Vertex drive(you can only pre-order them currently). Which is really close in pricing compared to how it was when the Core series drives were around.

 

The new Supetalent Ultra ME drives and LE drives are ones to watch for too. The LE drives use SLC tech and they go up to 128 GB. I did email supertalent and they should be out on Newegg sometime next week and they said the ME drive has on board cache. They didn't say what controller they are using.

 

Samsung doesn't have any new 128GB SSD. They only have their PM800 2.5" 256GB (w/51nm) SSD w/ 220/200 MB/s R/W on MLC. On the high end, they have their SS805 2.5" 100GB SSD w/ 230/180MB/s R/W on SLC. Sequential speed isn't everything though (as I'm sure you know, Cape).

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/news/events/News_Events_CES_2009_View.html

Intel has cut the price to $390 USD but for only 80GB, personally I still feel it's too expensive compared with other brands.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/06/intel-80gb-ssd-price-cut-by-one-third-still-very-expensive/

What are you looking for in a SSD? If you are looking for price to performance ratio (as opposed to strictly performance), I'm looking forward to the Toshiba THNS256GG8BB 256GB drive supposedly coming in at $399 USD in Q2 09. The next cheapest drive of that size is the G.Skill Titan at $495. On the SLC front, there isn't much news for cheap drives, except the Mtron MOBI 3500 64GB. As per performance: Micron P200, Samsung SS805, Mtron XTM 7500... but I guarantee you, they'll be pricey.

I know a few people have Titans w/ positive reviews, anyone with negative ones? So far it seems these are the best not Samsung/Intel MLC drives so far? OCZ's MLC drives are pretty pricey.

 

Nope, price cuts were across the entire X25 line, from SLCs to MLCs and 32GB to 160GB.

 

Yes, but as the drive is filled with REAL data, you have less space to level the wear. I imagine that filling up to a certain point, it becomes more costly to do wear leveling and consolidation and the controler might just leave it the way it is.
Is there something i don't know here? That would make whatever data there, whether real or not, be completely arbitrary to the controler?

 

Thanks, this is just what I wanted. I was not aware of the SuperTalent or the Toshiba. Or if I was, I had forgotten. With so may companies ANNOUNCING vaporware, it gets pretty confusing

I do not care so much about RAW speed as about proper engineering to eliminate stuttering. Of course, a major speed boost from where I am at now is certainly a part of the picture, but I am aware that top speed SSD's cost still a big fortune.

 

Actually, street price is even lower. $369 shipped from newegg.com right now. It may be more expensive, but at the moment it's still the performance king of MLC drives.

Yes, there are new models and players in the SSD realm with each passing day, but right now the X25-M is still at the top of the performance chart.

It all depends on what you need. Capacity? Performance? Both? Many will eschew the X25-M based on capacity, opting for slightly slower performance of the Titan in order to get the higher capacity. For me personally, 80GB is more than enough space on a laptop, but then again I'm not a gamer or media file junkie, so I don't need gobs of space.

It all depends on what you need...

 

Is it the Disk Cache setting? I'm using BitComet..

 

I believe the Samsung 256GB has better performance than the Intel X25-M. It is rated at 220/200 as opposed to 250/70 of the Intel. I believe somebody posted benchmarks yesterday or the day before. I'll gladly give up 30MB read for 130MB write speed.

Unfortunately it is only available in 2 Dell notebooks and some Apple notebooks at the moment. It is available as a $400 upgrade from base configuration of the Dell XPS 1330 so you could get it and resell the notebook with a standard HDD. And if you're actually in the market for that specific notebook and an SSD then the stars have aligned for you my friend. The new Toshibas coming out this summer also look pretty sweet...

 

Random writes, random writes, random writes...

I can't emphasize it enough. It's the Achilles Heel of SSDs (in my opinion, of course). The Samsung might have a massive sequential read speed, but the 4KB random writes are still slower than those of the last generation Samsung SLCs (and maybe even those of the last generation Samsung MLCs, though there's a lot less data on those).

And that's not to mention the Intel's 4KB random writes...

I'd gladly take off 100MB/s of sequential speed for even 25MB/s small random writing speeds.

 

Commander:

How would a mechanical spindle react to the same? Poorly.

 

As an FYI addon to this thread. I have ordered a G.Skill Titan 128 GB to use on my "everyday" laptop. It should be here Wednesday and then I'll copy and swap out the drives on the weekend.

Best,

 

That would depend on the SSD. If its like the earlier SSDs that have exact same size for the advertised space and the actual space, the only space to do garbage collection is whatever is free space on the drive(and of course the controller would need use the "real" free space for GC purposes) In that case, the steady-state performance might get worse and worse as the drive gets full with real data.

If the drive has dedicated space for it(the drive reserved space), then "real" free space vs. SSD equivalent free space would not matter as much. Even the cheap drives have that space now soooo yeah.

The effect should be similar.

Special request to Nyceis: Can you please benchmark the Samsung SSD with CDM again?? But on the sequential write tell me all the 5 values. The problem with CrystalDiskMark is that the final value is the highest of the 5 so it skews the results.

Request to G.Skill Titan user: What's the advertised space on the drive and the actual space reported by My Computer??

 

IntelUser the advertised space for my Titan 256 GB is 256 GB but the actual space reported by Windows is: 233.9.

 

You are right and wrong actually. That 200MB sequential write will drop to lower speeds anyway.

However, for purposes of whether it will "stutter" or not, it only needs to have minimum random write speeds to make it not noticeable. That's probably satisfied at 50-100 IOPS range, which at 4KB sizes its 200KB-400KB/s. It does make the Intel drive overkill, but the reason its so high is probably because its aimed at keeping IOPS high, which would matter on servers. Remember, the X25-M and X25-E uses the same controller.

OCZ Core drives got 4 IOPS!! That's 16KB/s.... Is it using an internal 56Kbps modem?? LOL! The steady-state performance of the Intel drives are ~13MB/s for random write 4K.

Hard drives are different. Their random writes are low yes sure. But they tend to be consistent. With HDDs slow random writes would mean lower file transfer rate or whatever. With an SSD the relatively fast speed will come to a screeching halt. The very fast access times of an SSD might actually be too fast for its own good.

 

What about Sandisk's new G3 drives?

Sandisk has designed the controller and firmware in-house so it will be interesting to see if they have achieved performance comparable to the current top dogs. They claim that these new drives hugely improve random write performance compared to other offerings currently available.

Sequential read/write are rated at 200MB/s and 140MB/s.

If the performance on the G3 SSDs is as good as they say it is, the price is what will really seal the deal: $149/60GB, $249/120GB, $499/240GB. Supposed to be released sometime around mid-2009.

 

John Kotches, just curious if you are going to clone to the new drive when you get it? Dave

 

IntelUser: On the 128gb Titan, actual usable space is 117gb. The Corsair 128gb is 119gb.

 

So on average, how much does having a SSD affect battery life and laptop temperature. Is it anything significant, heat-wise?

 

Depends on the SSD. My Titan ran much hotter and ate up an extra hour of battery life compared to the Corsair and the OCZ Core. I would expect the Apex to be similar.

Compared to a mechanical, I think I got about an extra 30-60 min with the Corsair and Core.

 

Probably so. I don't have the time to reload everything so I'll defrag and use XXClone.

 

Thanks. I cloned my last experiment with a G.Skill 64GB and sent it back before I had a chance to do a fresh install. I figure if the clone works, why bother? But if it does not work for some obscure reason, then one always has the option to do a fresh install. I JUST reinstalled fresh on my new laptop and have a fairly complex setup, so another re-install is pretty much out of the question for me. Dave

 

I'm gotta thank ashura for recommending corsair over titan.

I replace my SZ360 Seagate 5400.2 120 GB Hard drive with Corsair S128 128GB SSD.

I got about 55 minutes more on my max battery life mode.

I ran some HD Tune along with read and write speed.





I did experience shuttering once while I was running Windows Update and installing million other application but that was about it.

The most amazing thing for me was the rendering speed in After Effects. Everything is so instant I'm so not use to it. I never actually got After Effects on my TZ to work because Intel Graphics is a bit on Open GL so I can't really compare the difference between two SSD.

I know the speed is not "epic" compare to the Samsung 256, G.SKill Titan or Intel but I don't once you hit around 100 MB read / write, its very hard to notice with your naked eye.

 

If you're using a Sony TZ, any slowdown you experienced was probably due to your CPU more than anything else.

 

I am thinking about buying my first SSD for an older notebook running Windows XP that is mainly used with Firefox and Outlook 2000. I'm looking at this from Amazon.com so I can return it if it functions poorly:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CHVT5A...IKX0DER&tag=shopzilla_rev_371-20&linkCode=asn

What do you think about the above for an older notebook running XP? Obviously it won't be as good as the Intel but I'm not concerned about top performance for this machine. If I get a performance improvement with no major stuttering issues then I'll probably be pretty happy with it considering it's less than $100.

 

Why doesn't ANYBODY read this thread?
MLC, Jmicron, ... just look at the price!

 

Well, the Titan had an opposite effect on my battery life. I went from 89 minutes to 132 on balanced power setting in Windows 7.

 

Let's make this the definition about "stuttering" clear. Its really only the SSDs fault if the freeze is significant and consistent. It could be software related problems that cause the lag. Hard drives also have slowdowns and freezes.

SSD users are extra paranoid about this "stutter" BS that users think even the freezes that might not be because of the SSD is blamed on the drive.

 

well i am glad someone posted this info. while i was not sure what you all refered to as "stutter", this helps.
honest though, i have not experienced stutter or anything in my unit with the SSD.
i have not run benches, but i know it operates at a much faster, quieter, and battery saving pace then an HDD.
i shall never go back to HDD from this point forward. (at least for internal drives at this point)

 

Well which drive do you have???

 

OCZ Apex review: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/02/09/ocz-apex-120gb-ssd-review/1... as expected, it looks to be a re-branded Titan (or maybe the Titan is a re-branded Apex?); performance is pretty similar in most cases.

 

Are they just similar use of tech or rebranded? because the newegg specs are different...

edit: reading article now... seems the difference is in the firmware. =)

 

So you are saying these drives are good for nothing, even though this one has an average 5 egg rating from 50 people?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231220

Sorry, doesn't make sense.

Or what are you saying?