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    X-25 SSD vs. 7200.3 Seagate

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Prince_Phoenix, Oct 23, 2008.

  1. Prince_Phoenix

    Prince_Phoenix Notebook Consultant NBR Reviewer

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    Will the performance gain I see be noticeable in day to day operations for a X61 Tablet?

    There has been talk of the SATA configuration limiting the speed gains on some Thinkpad notebooks to 100 MB/S in which case it makes no sense to pay $600 to get from 90 to 100.
     
    Prince_Phoenix, Oct 23, 2008
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  2. TehSuigi

    TehSuigi Notebook Virtuoso

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    You also need to keep in mind seek times. On the Seagate, it'll be ~14 ms (if I remember correctly). On the SSD, it'll be 0.1 ms. That means your OS and programs will load faster, especially if they involve reading many different areas of the drive. Your whole system should feel a lot more responsive as well. Oh, and there may even be a battery life boost due to a lower power draw - handy in a tablet PC.
     
    TehSuigi, Oct 24, 2008
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  3. adyingwren

    adyingwren Notebook Evangelist

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    They're a whole different league. The X-25M is comparabe to the fastest desktop hdds which in turn are faster than what u get in laptop HDDs
     
    adyingwren, Oct 24, 2008
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  4. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    I think he knows that, but his laptop has certain limitations. So it's debatable how large the differences will be in his situation.

    By the way, I agree with TehSuigi's point about seek times.
     
    Phil, Oct 24, 2008
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  5. mullenbooger

    mullenbooger Former New York Giant

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    I dont believe the seagate gets 90, check the hdtune results around these forums.
     
    mullenbooger, Oct 24, 2008
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  6. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    The Seagate doesn't get 90. It usually tops out at 80, but declines after that...
     
    sgogeta4, Oct 24, 2008
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  7. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    Phil, Oct 24, 2008
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  8. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    I stand corrected. The only one I've seen in person hit 80MB/s. Still Phil's avg is 70MB/s as opposed to 100MB/s, that's over 40% faster.
     
    sgogeta4, Oct 24, 2008
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  9. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    It wasn't mine by the way.

    But yeah the Intel SSD will feel a lot faster and more responsive, even when it's limited to 100MB/sec.
     
    Phil, Oct 24, 2008
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  10. temagic

    temagic Notebook Consultant

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    it will be faster... but it is hardly worth the cost, if you ask me. Lower capacity, and a much higher price. Plus, if you use Vista as the OS, ad have a decent amount of RAM (3GB+), the most used programs gets prefetched to RAM anyway, negating most of the benefits of a high-speed SSD.
     
    temagic, Oct 24, 2008
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  11. Cape Consultant

    Cape Consultant SSD User

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    The test I like to use is opening a LARGE file in Corel Draw or Photoshop. Amazing on an SSD. Dave
     
    Cape Consultant, Oct 24, 2008
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  12. miro_gt

    miro_gt Notebook Deity

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    access time ownzzzzz ....

    or in other words, SSD FTW
     
    miro_gt, Oct 24, 2008
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  13. FrankTabletuser

    FrankTabletuser Notebook Evangelist

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    The thing SSDs are so fast is not because they have fast transfer speeds. It's because they have almost no access times.

    So even with only 100MB/sec. or even less the SSD will still be the faster drive, because when do you need high transfer speeds?
    Yes, only when you transfer large files, and when do you need low access times? Yes, all the time.
    So the SSD will be faster, will be noticeable faster.

    A 50MB/s SSD with <0.1ms access times will still be better than a 100MB/s HDD with >12ms access times.

    Don't look at the transfer speeds, look at the access times.
    And if you compare SSD with SSD then don't only look at the transfer speeds but also at the multitasking scores. Because there you see that SLC SSDs are the best, the Intel MLC SSD is almost as good and the worst are the cheap MLC SSDs
     
    FrankTabletuser, Oct 25, 2008
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  14. danwat1234

    danwat1234 Notebook Guru

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    Another way to put it is that the seagate 7200.3 doing a lot of random read operations won't be doing anything near the Sustained transfer rate, more like 25MB/s or less. It also depends where it is fetching most of the data from; The inner part middle or outer part of the two platters?

    Whereas the X-25 will be pegged at 100mb/s during purely random reads all the time, it would hardly drop below that ever (since it has shown to do way more than 100MB/s random reads when the interface is not the bottleneck).
     
    danwat1234, Oct 25, 2008
    #14