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

I'm very curious to see what new firmware from Intel will bring, has there been in indications about when it might be coming?

 

Sorry, you lost me... how does that make Intel's reliability claims believable? And what do you mean by "reliability"?

 

one question nobody seems to be asking is how much power these SSDs consume. i'm currently using a corsair S128 (samsung mlc) in my laptop and the machine is absolutely silent (unless i'm using the CPU heavily). Below are the operational power reqs of current ssds. I would say only Intel and 4th gen samsung are good if you want silent computing.

Intel - 0.15W
Samsung 128GB - 0.4W
Samsung 256GB (5G) - 1.1W
OCZ Vertex - 2W
OCZ Apex/G Skill Titan - 1.6W

I've heard several reports of the Titan making peoples' laptop hot/constant fan noise. Are there any SSDs coming out in 2009 that use <1W?

 

Small writes do look impressive, and no doubt it was tested under the best aligned conditions and with no data on it. It beats Nycea's Atto scores with the Samsung 256. Although I have seen much better scores than Nycea's in Crystal, so his config is probably not optimal.
Tony also used a Queue size of 10 rather than default 4, which boosts scores considerably.

Even Tony said numbers will likely come down with future firmware, although reviewers are testing with this firmware, so it'll be interesting to see how it compares in the real world. But the hype machine is now in full motion.

 

You know what I'm talking about. MLC flash chips have 10K writes per cell before they expire. If your write leveling sucks, some cells will fail well before others.

There's Write Leveling, which is how evenly it is written to the whole drive and Write Amplification, which is the ratio of the actual writes done on the SSD and amount asked by the controller.

So how do they keep write amplification low?? Even if Write Levelling on the SSD is good, if the SSD uses entire blocks to write then the overall lifespan of the drive wouldn't be that high. By keeping Write Amplification low they ensure each page isn't wasted being written by "empty" data and increase lifespan even further than good Write Leveling algorithm.

And that algorithm to keep Write Amplification low is Write Combining.

The downside is of course as you see on the review.

 

Just bought Samsung MLC SSD 128GB off eBay for 285$. Even though it's not the fastest SSD nowadays, it should be Samsung quality and the price looks already reasonable for me. Didn't make sense for me to wait for 256GB Samsung, as the price will be surely $500+... I'm quite excited about it, as it's my first SSD, curious how much I'll appreciate speed and silence for the amount of GBs dropped from my current HDD...

 

This is an important observation. I'm not sure why there is such a big difference between various SSDs, but power dissipation is a serious consideration. Most of us want to minimize fan operation and maximize battery life.

G.Skill 64GB - 0.41W (Samsung)
A-Data 64GB - 3W
Patriot Warp 64GB - 1.5W

For reference:
Seagate Momentus 7200RPM - 1.5W (seek)

Perhaps someone can point to (or is willing to build) a grid comparing various parameters - including power dissipation - for the major SSDs. I'd like to see at least:
Read
Write
Power
USB?
Price
Warranty
Obviously, it would have to be a sticky file that changes as new information becomes available - this is an incredibly fast-moving new market.

 

I wouldn't know exactly but everything is a compromise. Power saving features do have to compromise performance in order to save power. The question is how much are the target market is willing to tolerate??

There probably will be faster SSD drives than Intel's and lower price but they will sacrifice some parameters to do this. Whether high power consumption or lower reliability.

 

oh yes i can't STAND THEM ANYMORE

 

Nope, mine runs cool and quiet. In fairness, I was running a 7200 RPM drive before. The results might be different for someone with a 5400 RPM drive.

 

John,
when you run HDtune what does the temp say on the Titan? When I run Hdtune it says 44C even when I bring my laptop out of standby it'll say 44C.

 

What's the best 64GB+ SSD available right now for <$200?

 

Gonna go out on a limb and say that there isn't a good 64GB SSD available right now for less than $200. The only thing you're going to find in that capacity-price range are the JMicron MLC drives. You can argue that they'll work fine with the proper tweaks and such, but if you ask me, that doesn't make them "good" by a long shot.

 

I just bought an OCZ Solid 60GB that I'm happy with. It's $112 after rebate on Amazon.com. I did some tweaks but did not spend time doing before and after tweak testing to see how much difference the tweaks made.

I'm also considering the G.SKILL 64GB on Newegg for my Vista x64 notebook. It was $120 as a Shell Shocker awhile ago. $140 now:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231220

Those get pretty good reviews.

 

No, I didn't know what you were talking about as to why the Intel would be more reliable because of the problems it has... but I think I understand now based on the info you posted. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

When I run HD Tune, there is no temp. It's the same on my TZ.

Thats normal for Samsung drive right?

 

I think it's normal for all SSD. I have yet to hear of an SSD with a temp sensor...

 

I'll get around to it. I want to run those right out of a fresh boot.

 

It's going to say 44C.

 

I don't doubt that, but the other numbers for performance will run cleanest right after a boot.

 

Just ordered myself a 64gig samsung SLC. Can't wait to get my hands on it!

 

have fun with it should be more or less like my mtrons. so: great

 

So, is the Intel M fast and reliable, or not? And I mean over a period of months - not just long enough for a review.

I put in a chit for the 80GB M, but if that very co$tly drive can be expected to get cranky in a month or two ("re-image"??) I will switch, though I don't know what would be second choice.

??

 

The fact is, MLC drives haven't been around long enough to demonstrate how effective its long term reliability is. If you can manage with 64GB (you should if you can do with 80GB), then look at the Mtron 3500 64GB SLC drive. It's been mentioned above and before, I believe it's *only* $400. Cheapest SLC drive you'll find.

On a bright note:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/15/inductive-coupling-slashes-ssd-power-consumption/

Yay to lower power SSDs!

 

I was reading an article today on the Intel X-25M and it didn't really do so well after a while of use. Interesting read for sure. From the article, it didn't sound like it was something that affected other SSD's unless they use the Intel controller (I only know of Kingston that is selling Intel rebadges).

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669

 

Should i run the samsung SLC in AHCI or IDE compatibility mode? With write caching turned off?

 

I would think AHCI. Depends which connection you have in the computer.

 

Yeah, I think this wireless electronics is going to usher in a new level of electronic longevity a lot faster than battery technology will. This is the second major article I've seen using wireless to drastically reduce power consumption. I believe this techology will work in pretty much every part in a notebook or mobile phone. I don't know about the processors. It will be cool to use my notebook for a week without plugging it in. Power supplies will be able to shrink, too.

 

Spare tire - take a look at this page of the above link: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669&type=expert&pid=3

 

Yeah but that's the intel x25-m, which takes advantage of native command queuing, i think it's the only one that does.

 

That was an extremely interesting article. I wonder if the X25-E suffers from the same problem and to the same extent. It would seem that Intel's desire to extend the effective drive life of the X25-M has introduced a significant trade off between drive longevity and long term steady state performance.

 

well, as the slc normally have quite steady performance over long time, the x25-e shouldn't suffer to a similar extend, if at all. it shouldn't have the same need for wear leveling like the mlc has anyways, which should help as well.

so i guess no, the E doesn't suffer.

 

No, you still don't get it. You get what you pay for. There's no miracles to SSD. Those of you who researched about SSDs know that SSDs erase in blocks while when reading they can handle reading in much smaller pages.

Have you wondered why they have to do it so "inefficiently" and erase in blocks not pages?? Why not read AND write in pages?? Write and read performance differences will be vastly minimized.

So I searched for flash technology and tried to find out why. See dozens of pages are connected together and you can basically think they all share the same ground and power line. You try to erase one page and everything else is affected because they are on the same "line". Read is different because you don't need to physically change the electrical state.

So why not reduce the ratio between number of pages/block?? SLCs have lower number of pages per block. But they cost more. The reason the flash memory technology reads in pages and erases in blocks has to do exactly with minimizing costs. This is the only way to possibly compete with platter-based storage in $/GB.

SLCs still suffer from lower write than read speeds. They still have multiple pages inside a single block. They just suffer less. Stress the X25-E far enough and it will behave just like the X25-M. They are both NAND-based flash memory technology using floating gate transistors and they use the exact same controller.

For most users though X25-E is a waste because they won't be able to stress enough to differentiate with the X25-M. Read speeds and latency is for some reason faster on the X25-M than the X25-E which makes it more suited to PC usage that cares mostly about response times and boot times.

(See a slow drive can lower the companies reputation. A failed drive can devastate it. The X25-M is neither slow nor unreliable)

 

bla..


really.. get an slc drive and notice finally that they DON'T HAVE THOSE PROBLEMS. they are much better in random writes. much better in wear leveling.

yes they are flash, too. yes they have the flash problems, too. but at a much different level than mlc, thus much less an issue.

wearlevel algorithms are much more easy on slc because they have less data per block, and less need for perfect wear leveling as they can be written too much more. this results directly in much less issues in writing.

they not "just suffer less". they suffer _MUCH_ less. they make the problem close to negitible.

but the E is a waste for endusers, yes. it's not ment for them eighter.

 

You want to know that the Samsung SLCs were the spotlight on the SSD recall rumors on the internet??

And look at this:
http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=82

The X25-E's 170MB write will plummet to 70MB sequential.

The thing is these review sites inflate the needless negativity on these products.

The much revered FusionIO drive with 700MB/s sequential read and 400MB/s sequential write that's also SLC: http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=59

...plummets to 51MB/s sequential with enough load.

Both the X25 and the FusionIO has a common target market, which is server and they require exceptional reliability.

The other SLC's don't drop because their reliability features tank compared to the new ones.

Future MLC implementations that attempt to close $/GB will have 3 bits and even 4 bits per cell which will possibly make these problems worse. But by then algorithms would be advanced enough to make worst case acceptable to end-users and SLCs would cost 4x+ the price.

See it doesn't help anyone "generalizing" every MLC and categorizing them as all crap as most people and review sites do.

You won't see these write "issues" on 99.9% of the X25-M. But any of these devices will choke when hard enough usage is handed to them. And writes don't determine program load times and application responsiveness. Read times and latency does. That's the beauty of the SSD.

 

Inteluser:

I agree with your previous post, and I would add that if we tested the same conditions for a mechanical spindle, it would reach its saturation point much quicker.

Cheers,

 

More info regarding the Vertex SSD's

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14274

 

You lot always teach me something new. I'm still waiting for the prices to go down. I want an SSD badly, but I'm not ready to pay for something that'll undoubtedly drop by a lot in price this time next year.

But I'm tempted everytime I visit this thread, which is like, every couple hours, lol.

 

Funny... I visit this thread too often too.

What I did was buy a "cheap" OCZ Solid. I may buy another cheap SSD too (for another notebook)... then I won't be so upset because the price is less likely to drop as much as if I had bought a more expensive SSD. And I'm happy with the OCZ.

 

For anyone interested in a quick viewable benchmark comparison of the...

SamSung 256GB
Intel X-25M 80GB
OCZ Apex (internal RAID0 120GB)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=352730#benchmarks

While it doesn't show the whole picture, the X-25M still looks better from these types of "benchmarks". Samsung comes close in perf with 3x the capacity.
More detailed review info can be found in the review links above.

Questions on how the Samsung responds to the performance drops that happen over time on the Intels will prove real important.

 

I've actually been thinking of buying a "cheap" JMicron MLC for my desktop as well. Just something to hold me until the good drives come down a bit more; I'm actually getting pretty sick of click-clack HDD noise as well. I've got an Amazon gift card that'll cover most of the price of a 60/64GB drive, so I mean you can't really go wrong there...

I haven't been keeping track, but is the Solid the best of the "simple" (like the Titan is not "simple" because it uses two JMicrons and a RAID chip) JMicron MLC drives?

EDIT: There is now an OCZ Summit series as well... this is the first I've heard of it: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=666&type=expert&pid=1

 

hello to all, been lurking around for a while, and, just like spare tire, decided to buy samsung 64 gb slc model MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA
hope it will run fine on my dell d620
bought it on ebay, it's a new ssd, and the price was 266.5 usd, shipping included...think it was a good deal...
all of you guys are saying that other MLC drives have some issues, but no one said anything about samsungs SLC-s, so, I think it will work just fine

 

That little tidbit almost slipped by.

The performance sounds similar to the Samsung 256GB.
I wonder if it's a rebranded disk, except I thought the Sammy had a 128MB cache (unconfirmed as of yet)?

The longevity and failing performance is not near as bad as other recent drives and was able to run iometer without cruising to a halt. This might also be a decent preview of the Sammy, as the controller is likely the one and same.

 

I think the Solid is good, and some G.SKILL's on NewEgg as well that have good reviews.

I'm leaning toward sticking with the "cheap" stuff because it seems to work well enough and I won't be throwing a bunch of money at it only to see my investment rapidly decline in value when even better and cheaper SSDs come out.

I am also interested in those RAID bays tailored for SSDs that should be out soon... one of those and a couple of cheap OCZ 60GB Solid SSDs might make for a pretty nice inexpensive setup for my desktop.

 

Haha. Confusion rains on the OCZ forum because their hype machine just broke.

 

Why doesn't Samsung sell their SSD's at etailers?
Or specifically, why isn't it sold at Newegg?

 

how about an OCZ Vomit? based on the original first generation jmicron..

 

That's funny, Diaperman, I approve.

 

Heyy!! but really. the summit may be one of the best ocz drives that'll come out this year. and still for me they read like vomit right out of the box. i actually read that every time i see the name, and have to reread to see aahh, summit, not vomit.

a really .. weird name choice..

i'd really hope samsung would just sell their drives directly. they sell so much stuff, it's not like they're not well known in this world..

 

The Samsung is ridiculously mysterious. I have these same questions, and the fact that it is only a $400 upgrade at Dell.

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

This translated article released Feb 12th
http://74.125.95.100/translate_c?hl...rev=_t&usg=ALkJrhjRVjzt8dmLmYKwoHVJKUEglR2VLg

I also see here they state a cost of $ 894.24 (US). I should have mine by the end of the week. I hope it's the same drive they speak of.

Even on Samsung's site there is no mention of this particular drive in terms of specs.