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

look at those 4k random writes...

 

My sentiments exactly. The fact that they just keep on churning out new models doesn't really help their credibility either...

If you look at the PCB... it looks just the PCB in the Summit review I think it's very likely that the Summit is rebrand; meaning that the Samsung actually IS out in the retail channel, just in disguise...

I know! It's like the first thing in the double digit range after the Intels!

 

You are quite correct, the PCBs are identical, as far as I can see. But the Summit review mentions that it has 64MB, while the Samsung report mentions 128MB.

Why would Samsung not sell directly into the retail market? And I don't really understand a company making a product and then letting multiple companies rebrand the product, like the G.Skill Titan and the OCZ Apex, which are also the same as far as I can see. What's the logic in that?

 

just benchmarked the Corsair 128GB SSD in my macbook pro. See http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=652103 if you're interested!

 

Especially for 1st gen. items, rebranded items and their bad rep fall on the retailer. Heck, look at Dell and the last 7 series nVidia cards they released. Massive, massive problems [and a lack of recall] for the mobile cards' poor performance fell on Dell's shoulders, rather than nVidia. This gives nVidia a chance to fine-tune and create a better product without going under from failed first-time-attempts. Methinks this is why they aren't attacking the retail market directly - not to mention that if you sell to a different company in wholesale lots, that's a guaranteed profit. Retail markets are going to bite you in the butt if the product gets poor marketing, but another company that wants a 5,000 lot of drives is at least guaranteed money for 5,000 of those items.

 

I'm really starting to lean towards the corsair 128gb drive, especially since I haven't seen any reports of stuttering and its basically a samsung MLC.

Right now I'm torn between the
corsair 128gb and the
gskill titan 128gb

They're roughly the same price with the titan being a little bit cheaper. I have a lenovo t61p, and will be limited to sata I speeds unfortunately, so I think the corsair is probably the best choice. I know the titan shouldn't stutter but there are still some reports of it.

 

mullenbooger: You're also better off with the Corsair because of heat, the Titan with it's 2xJMicron controllers runs hotter and eats up more battery life.

 

Some very nice (no tweaks aside from partition alignment) benches from the 120gb Vertex. Looking forward to trying this drive out.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51200

 

The thing is, at the price point of the Corsair/Samsung, I'd rather shell out a little extra and just go for the gusto with the Intel. The Samsung has more space, but the Intel is just that much faster... I'd think it's totally worth the extra.

 

Even if I'm limited to sata I speeds (due to stupid lenovo crippling)?

 

But if you ever end up upgrading to a laptop/desktop with SATAII, you won't be bothered by the Intel's speeds as opposed to the Corsair's. It's sort of future proofing.

(might also want to think about waiting for the 64gb Vertex if that's enough space for you. It's supposed to have the speed to compete with the Intel at a $250 retail price point.)

 

To me, this makes sense. I was about to spring for the Intel, but saw that info about deterioration and a re-imaging requirement. The current plan for my new Toshiba R600 is to stick with the existing 5400RPM drive for a few weeks until the Vertex reviews are out. And of course it will be the Intel M and some SLCs with which it is compared.

This is like the early CDROM market - I paid $700 for a CD reader... SSD prices are shrinking even faster!

 

It's too bad the Corsair doesn't come in a 64GB drive for half the price.

 

You know, I've been thinking the EXACT same thing. I'd totally buy two if they did. Granted, of course, that they performed about the same as their 128GB counterpart.

 

Found some news about OCZ new SSD.

New 64 MB on-board cache is Samsung controller look promising.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/17/ocz-summit-series-ssds-get-boost-from-new-samsung-mlc/

 

I think the only real contenders in the SSD space are at the moment:

- SLC SSDs (the only reasonably priced ones seem to be on ebay)
- Intel x-25M (but has steadystate issues with performance deteriorating after time)
- current gen Samsung MLC / Corsair MLC (doesn't match other SSD's top speeds but should outperform them in all random read/write functions ... BUT do they also suffer from steadystate issues as the intels???)

Maybe contenders are:
- OCZ Vertex (IF they deliver what they promise/hype and IF they actually ever are released)
- OCZ Summit (IF they ever get released ... March 2009 ... if OCZ says that it probably means we will see them by June/July ... and IF they delivery what they promise/hype)


I will likely wait until at least the Vertex releases, since I am sure it will put downward pressure on the intel and Samsung/Corsair drives.

 

well, reasonable priced. if you look at the intel, the mtron 3500 is at a similar price range, and not only on ebay..

still waiting for the new drives to _actually arrive_. i mean, we're still at the intels, nothing new really yet since then..

 

Well folks, I just bought a 60GB OCZ Vomit (Solid, actually, but the o and i are the same?) for $31.99 (and a $100 Amazon gift card, really). There's a $20 rebate too; $111.99 ain't bad for some cheap thrills. Gonna replace the Samsung (sadly that's a Samsung HDD, not SSD) in my desktop this weekend and see how it goes.

 

well, for that price, it sure is nice. even if it'll end as a fancy usb-stick-like thing in the end.. you won't find a 60gb stick for that cheap

 

That's pretty much it; it's all part of the master plan. When my media server finally makes the jump to SSD, I'm planning to load the OS on a small SLC (probably a 16GB Mtron) and use these JMicron MLC drives (which will hopefully be REALLY cheap by then) as storage

 

sounds nice. too bad it's just so expensive to do so for the storage needs here..

winhomeserver os install requires 80gb for the main disk minimum (so it would have to be a 128gb ssd for the os). and my needs are at least 2 tb of storage configured on it.

i'm currently looking at the HFX Mini Server, it's a completely quiet solution that is less expensive than an ssd solution but i guess i won't get that one (still too expensive).

the nice thing about the home server is, you can put it somewhere where it doesn't matter to make a little noise from the hdd's..

i sure get a HFX media center, and there, an ssd will be way to go (an mtron 64gb i guess).

 

So my Dell Studio XPS 16 will get here tomorrow with a Samsung 256GB SSD. I want to bench it against my other one with a G.Skill Titan. What are the best FREE benching utilities? I know of ATTO. I want to compare battery life on each one as well as read, write, random writes and IOPS.

Thanks for your input.

 

Cool. I think you will find it well worth the money as long as you don't put too much stress on it and a lot of I/O. I'd do the tweaks too (at least some of them)... they're not hard.

I'm sending my rebate out today... just wish OCZ wouldn't do this rebate junk. Just lower the price!

 

I just saw that the OCZ Solid 60 GB is $116 with free shipping (with promo code EMCLNMV64) at Newegg and no rebate hassles! I am thinking of getting another for another notebook... it should "hold me off" until the better ones get cheaper and faster - even I even really need the improvement.

Ahh what the heck... in for another.

Link:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227373

 

they do the rebate thing since the vast majority of people will never take the time to fill out the paperwork...thus more money in the pockets of the company vice a direct price cut to lwer the price.

that said, i luv my SSD, have never had an issue, and would never go back to HDD for an interior drive.

peace.

 

For those of us willing to try something cheap while waiting for clarity in the marketplace, these might be good choices (both @ Newegg, both 155/90):

OCZ SOLID 60GB at $116 - no power spec
G.SKILL 64GB at $140 - 1.5W

Or are there others worth considering in that price range?

I was about to buy the Intel M until I heard that it must be re-imaged periodically.

 

Sorry for the wall of text but I've been thinking about this the last couple days and seems like a good open door to put this out there.
I'm mostly an old school HD guy(with raptoors and high areal density drives) and one thing that seems clear to me is current drive test suites don't clearly tell enough of the story with SSD's. Whether it's Addo, Hdtach, HDtune, Iometer it's hard to genuinely say how it will relate to real world performance under different applications and usages. When it comes to the unique nature of an SSD the tests just come up short. So I really don't like what is available today but I guess people have to have a point of reference, the problem is one test may favor one drive while the other test the other drive.

Furthermore, we may be at the stage MFR's are spec'g their hardware to look good on certain benchmark software (it's not beyond them). I guess that is why reviewers are starting to come up with new scripts and methodologies because canned tests don't tell the story and in certain cases may even tell the opposite of the real story.

Case in point comparing X-25M and OCZ summit (could be your drive rebranded, atleast the same controller), the recent OCZ 256GB Summit test at pc perspective with their custom script ( http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=666&type=expert&pid=3) shows large file creation was something the Summit did better, while Intel created smaller files faster. As to the actual copying of those files after they were created, the Summit beat the Intel almost hands down except by a tiny margin w/ 1MB files. So the OCZ Summit looks superior in comparison based on bar graphs. Except PC's generate small files much more often than large files. HDtach also makes the OCZ summit look superior due to it's doubling write speed over Intel. Although HDtune read transfer rates all look better on X-25M.

It's a mixed bag, but the latter tests are all just too synthetic. The PC Mark 05 OS tests make the X-25M look like a rocket ship compared to the Summit (with that test alone it would appear Summit can't even really compare well). So is the PCMark05 test the real story then? If so why then didn't you see an obvious clue of that in the previous tests?
Conversely, PC Mark 05 Application test shows the OCZ Summit as the strong leader, so maybe that is more important. Having an extra 160GB in the Summit is obviously a huge benefit to many.

It's hard to walk away from those scores alone and know what the best drive is, unless you are just willing to choose certain tests over others without knowing for sure. Taking PC Mark and PC Vantage alone would show the X-25M as mostly superior, and those results do "seem" like the most real world. The PCerspective script that seemed to favor the Summit told a different story but obviously small file creation is something that happens much more often than large file creation, so a program that generates and copies smaller files would be more beneficial as a test.

Also improved methodology for gauging the performance loss that happens over time with SSD needs to be improved. It was interesting to note that the full HDTACH test was able to stabilize performance of the drive pretty well.

In the end, I think you need the fullest suite of tests before judgment can be passed, it makes testing these things tough.

So in your case, to keep things fairly simple I would just post some images of the mainstream synthetic benches. While it would be wrong to ignore the read speed advantages of this drive, as it obviously has impact, we know many people will be interested in the small file write speed due to the nature of how flash works. Some of the small file write performance penalties can be mitigated with a ram drive holding temp files, scratch disks, caches, etc.

Personally, the single most important test image to me right now with this particular drive would be a picture of HDTune 3.5 "Random Access" tab "Read" and a "Write" test. Some anomalies appeared in this test on another Samsung 256 drive that may hamper performance quite a bit but may be able to be fixed with a firmware, or already is fixed with your drive. So I am quite curious on that one. Just remember each test may consecutively lower performance, especially an Iometer test.

 

I'm thinking price>performance>reliability is what your actually looking for... a complete 180 from ur first post

 

Did it just jump up in price again between the time you posted and I read your post? It says $136 again...

The whole re-imaging business with the X25-M should be really rare. I don't think it should be that big a deal myself, but you're in that it makes me have second thoughts about the Intel. I originally intended to replace my entire "fleet" with Intels when the price came down enough, but I'm thinking I'll stick with Samsung and Mtron SLC drives now.

 

Not quite.
I planned to buy the Intel M, but saw a report that it must be periodically re-imaged - which I don't understand but it is worrisome. If that's not an issue, I'll order the M today. But if it makes more sense to wait a while, I can enjoy SSD benefits with either of the two units mentioned.

 

You have to use the promo code (EMCLNMV64) to get $20 off, and you may have to subscribe to Newegg's mailings for the promo code to work.

 

Maybe people are becoming too infatuated with top performance. I know I like performance, but the time I've wasted researching SSDs and reading this thread and others is probably far more than any time I'll save by getting one SSD over another.

But it is enjoyable reading and researching.

I think I made the right decision to just go cheap for now - at least for my notebooks... and when things settle down decide on something for my main computer. In the mean time, my VelociRaptor seems to be doing well enough. I've also added a ramdisk to use with Firefox's cache, but I can't tell any obvious speed difference.

 

I've been infatuated with performance for years and I still consider SSD's slow as turtles, not like a true solid state disk with RAM which is what I look forward to becoming less expensive.
Yeah, any recent disks are decent enough while they all have faults even if it is Intel and price (they will be quite slow compared to next years disks). The OCZ 256 summit is looking to be at $850 range, so it's just to steep still. If it wasn't for a laptop there's no way I would be considering a SSD. I agree, my current performance on the desktop doesn't make an SSD worthwhile, especially when more RAM and bigger ramdrive is hugely better performance for small applications (sandboxie hooks all program file writes/reads and sends them to my ramdrive). OS startup time is far more crucial on a laptop, since my desktop is always on.

For my ramdrive, I have all of Firefox's writes going to ramdrive (actually I use sandboxie), it's a little more than just the profile . Then I tweaked Firefox as well for performance, the cache benefits are really just in re-opening cached sites (those sites are near instantenous though with lots of images). I also changed all my temp file environment variables, as well as a photoshop scratch disk and google earth disk cache, etc. But yeah I definitely notice benefits.

 

I setup RamDisk + 9.0 on my ex's laptop for her Firefox cache - this is a system with 512 MB of RAM - and sites load unreasonably fast for how crappy the rest of the system is. Don't disparage the RAMDisk, megn!!11

 

uhm, dudes, why? just disable disccaching in the settings (about:config) and only enable memorycaching.

 

yeah this whole thing is getting to be rediculous. I think i'm gonna do what i originally planned. get a cheap ssd. may not be perfect but very cost effective! and still reap many of the benefits of SSD over HDD. luckily my lappy has two hard drive bays so i can still rely on my faithfull hdd if i need to and at least i'll have lightning reads on an ssd. i was gonna hold out for the vertex but that may be obsolete with the summit release in march (if the vertex is even out by then). I think i'll give it to the end of the week to see if the vertex is released and see how it affects prices of other ssd's.

 

why not spend a bit more and get some "real" ssd. but else yes, if they release now prices will change so you can always wait if you think it's worth it

 

I guess that is why I haven't looked at SSD's as anything worthwhile, unless I wanted to just donate to the technology, until considering the Samsung 256GB because I am buying a laptop. Not only were benefits somewhat minimal, but infact their were some serious dismal penalties.

Recent generation drives are becoming a case of less penalties and more benefits. The technology is nowhere near what I would consider for my desktop in investing the cost.

If I wasn't getting ready to buy a laptop, I absolutely wouldn't consider SSD's at all, maybe in a year for my desktop in checking the landscape again, was my initial thinking.

 

Let's see... OCZ Solid 60GB is $116 shipped... so what "real" SSD is just "a bit more" for the same or similar amount of storage? I'm not aware of any.

 

Well, you know I actually bought my Samsung for $110... so maybe it's the effort of finding that really good deal on a "real" SSD from craigslist or ebay...

 

By default both are enabled.
Are you sure, that by disabling disk caching that firefox won't just stop caching that data, and instead will put it in memory?

 

that's what he's saying because writing it to a RAMdisk will be deleted anyway once the power is off so might as well just disable it and put it in the memory wich will also soon be gone. maybe save some time creating a RAMdisk. sounds like a plan to me. i might try it if i ever decide which ssd i should get for my purposes...

@CW
I've been hunting ebay for a while now trying to snag one cheap only one i found for a super deal and it ended 10:00pm super bowel sunday and i got too drunk and forgot to bid $52 for a OCZ SLC (samsung) 32gb. still kicking myself for that and havn't taken it off my watch list to keep encouragement up looking for deals. most 64gb samsung ssd's seem to be going around the $250 mark which is better than $600 but those speeds are begining to look slow compared to the new tech you can get for that price... i've never done craig's list before so i don't really know how that works...

 

First of all, I'm not convinced it cache's everything to memory once I turn off disk caching, that was the point of the question. I understand I can turn off the disk caching, the question is if Firefox still does full caching. Secondly, my ramdrive saves everything between reboots so I don't lose any info, cookies, programs installed, etc. I even back it up routinely and defrag it. Having persistence in my firefox settings is important, Besides I ramdrive most everything in firefox, not just cache.

 

i know 399$ for the mtron is quite a bit more, but it saves you much hassle. it would it be worth for me (283$ on not having to hassle around, yes, i do like to pay that much for it..).

at least afterwards you know to really invested money in highend. for the solid, you can simply buy a good harddrive for the same money, you have more from it.

 

are hard drives any less hassel then cheap ssd's? they got more storage but you still have to set up partitions for OS etc... and constantly defrag to get max performance from them.

I think you may use ur computer for more than some of us. It seems there are two sides people that use the PC's for business and important personal stuff, and those of us that just use it for fun (games/internet/word/email type) stuff

 

I'm sorry u must have a real ramdrive, i thought we were just talking about using a memory module for a ramdrive like the OCZ tweaks..

 

There are some of us that, SSD or not, we're going to be tweaking the OS anyways.

 

No doubt I use my ramdrive for firefox alot differently.

Any data firefox writes/reads is hooked and sent to my ramdrive.

 

Got it. Yeah, I think I will manufacture my own test consisting of HD video editing and conversion in addition to whatever free verions of those apps offer.

 

they may look slow, but they don't suffer from the slowness crap of most mlc drives. inteluser will disagree wholeheartedly