OCZ Vertex preview: Interesting results!

[Mad1723]

The new OCZ Vertex solid state drive is one of the most impressive SSDs we have tested to date. I know that there is much excitement in the hardware community about this drive and for good reason: it uses a brand new controller from a brand new company and as such performance was an unknown. Many in the community have been billing it as the first true competitor to Intel's X25-M line of mainstream MLC drives and it indeed lives up to that status.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=670

:up:

[Artmic]

I just wonder how much faster it would be in every day sort of usage than a Raptor 150GB drive. ( i just don't trust these benchmarks that much. ).

Would it be super noticeable? IF i booted windows with my 150Gig Raptor in 30 seconds would the OS load in 15 Seconds with a Vertex SSD?

[WhiteFireDragon]

finally, review out for the vertex. although they should also alsobench the 30gb vertex since it's a little slower than its 120gb big brother, and most people will get the 30gb or 60gb anyways.

[HiJon89]

Random writes drop the Vertex to 20MB/s, better than what we have but still not very good at all.
http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/670/yapt-randwrites.jpg

[STaRGaZeR]

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=670&type=expert&pid=13

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

Read both ;)

[F0rr3sTT]

disappointing. I almost jumped on the V2s and solid series, waited to see what vertex would do. glad I haven't bought any MLC yet.

the degradation is only associated with MLC, no? X25-E and other SLC immune to this problem?

[naokaji]

So it turns out adding cache and changing controller was not enough to fix the write speed problems:shakes:

*goes back to waiting for next gen of ssds*

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

the degradation is only associated with MLC, no? X25-E and other SLC immune to this problem?

No, X25-E also suffers from it

[fiveprime]

good god its every damn day with these drives.

[saint-francis]

good god its every damn day with these drives.

You live on the bleeding edge and sometimes you get cut.

I'm sure the Vertex is fine for a desktop or laptop. I'm on OCZ Cores here and they are fine (although I know there are some issues with them). It will take time though before SSD's are completely ripe.

[Chruschef]

good god its every damn day with these drives.

QFT.

it's seriously so annoying how often "new" drives come out, if they can come out with new technology this fast.. why don't they wait, and release a product that gives us what we actually want. that being good price:performance ratio.

[lowfat]

QFT.

it's seriously so annoying how often "new" drives come out, if they can come out with new technology this fast.. why don't they wait, and release a product that gives us what we actually want. that being good price:performance ratio.

Obviously because there are people willing to buy them now.

[Zorlac]

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=670&type=expert&pid=13

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

Read both ;)

I read that article a few days ago and it completely shattered my dreams of a new SSD (I was going to use a X-25E in my new PC, but now I am not sure what I am going to do).

I am shocked people are not talking about this even more so than the JMicron controller issue. =/

[m^2]

disappointing. I almost jumped on the V2s and solid series, waited to see what vertex would do. glad I haven't bought any MLC yet.

the degradation is only associated with MLC, no? X25-E and other SLC immune to this problem?
Even FusionIO has the problem.

[WRC]

All ssd's (whether slc or mlc) drop the write performance in half when the drive is full of data, because the controller has to erase some cells and then write to it again. But the read performance is not affected by this so they still leave the mechanical drives in the dust.

[WhiteFireDragon]

makes me glad i made the decision to not sell my last few VR's to fund for some SSD's :)

[zanzabar]

i went and purchased a core v2 and im happy with it, i use it in an ata 100 esata enclosure and it dosnt need external power just 1 usb and 1 esata (or just usb but thats slow) and im vary happy with it

[Shintai]

disappointing. I almost jumped on the V2s and solid series, waited to see what vertex would do. glad I haven't bought any MLC yet.

the degradation is only associated with MLC, no? X25-E and other SLC immune to this problem?

All SSDs suffer from it. However all SSDs would also outlive a mechnical HD by a very large margin.

[flopper]

The benefits with ssd are for a desktop user really good.
fast access, fast reads and for a bottleneck as the old drives has had, for an average user, ssd is really sweet.

[largon]

http://largon.wippiespace.com/smilies/sad2.gif
Vertex is not quite what I expected.

Oh well.
Time to start stalking Sandisk G3 series. Maybe, just maybe, Sandisk's in-house controller would deliver. At least G3s will deliver a far more sensible $/GB ratio.

[generics_user]

i'm so glad that i stopped waiting for new SSDs 3 months ago and went for 2 velociraptors in raid 1, great speed and incredibly reliable!

[FischOderAal]

i'm so glad that i stopped waiting for new SSDs 3 months ago and went for 2 velociraptors in raid 1, great speed and incredibly reliable!

I can't understand why everyone is so concerned about the lifespan of SSDs. Even if you're writing 100 GB a day it takes friggin' long before the drive dies. As Shintai pointed out SSDs should outlive HDDs. But that depends on the controller and how good the wear-leveling is.

But I'm glad I didn't wait either and bought a Mtron Mobi (SLC). That's a new definition of speed compared to the old 2,5 inch notebook-drive...

[xdrift0rx]

Does this mean that reformatting would take longer? Or faster? Would it be faster since the files are written "sequentially" one after another? I want to get a pair in raid 0, though they don't look like they really out perform my raid 0 VR's in much besides access time

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

There were a lot of good benchmarks, but I wanted to see some real home user environment tests in terms of loading programs, working with photoshop, etc.

When it comes down to it, does it even matter which current or nearly current drive you have as long as you have 2-4 in a raid 0 on a good card? Thats what I've begun to notice. Raid cards seem to be the answer along with a good hdd for pagefile, etc.

[Shintai]

Does this mean that reformatting would take longer? Or faster? Would it be faster since the files are written "sequentially" one after another? I want to get a pair in raid 0, though they don't look like they really out perform my raid 0 VR's in much besides access time

You quickformat :p:

But old format would still be fast. You dont see whats behind the controller.

[Gilhooley]

I am shocked people are not talking about this even more so than the JMicron controller issue. =/

+1 and its not a little worse performance but total turd performance :(

[v0dka]

I read that article a few days ago and it completely shattered my dreams of a new SSD (I was going to use a X-25E in my new PC, but now I am not sure what I am going to do).

I am shocked people are not talking about this even more so than the JMicron controller issue. =/

You are right, the failure of the hyped Intel SSD under conditions not uncommon is the real news here. SSD is just not ready yet.

[Shintai]

You are right, the failure of the hyped Intel SSD under conditions not uncommon is the real news here. SSD is just not ready yet.

Where exactly did it fail? (Also its the MLC and not SLC in ther review).

[STaRGaZeR]

Where exactly did it fail? (Also its the MLC and not SLC in ther review).

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

Having to "reset" the drive periodically to get the perfomance the drive is rated at is not what you'd call ideal ;)

[Chruschef]

Obviously because there are people willing to buy them now.

but that market is incomprehensibly small... a main stream solution with good price:performance, would sell much better. without turning this into an economic theory flame thread, i think we can agree supply and demand will always stay in effect. there are a lot of different SSD's coming out, and the market is very small. theres almost a new SSD every week, price drops need to speed up.

buying an SSD in general doesn't make sense at all, it'll be outdated slightly in a week or two. :rolleyes:

[Shintai]

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

Having to "reset" the drive periodically to get the perfomance the drive is rated at is not what you'd call ideal ;)

You mean like wiping and/or partition your mechnical HD so the inner circles on the plates aint accessed? Oh ye...

Plus their change in read speed is questionalbe to say it mildly.

[FischOderAal]

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

Having to "reset" the drive periodically to get the perfomance the drive is rated at is not what you'd call ideal ;)

So what? Other SSDs don't have such problems. Where's the deal?

SSDs are evolving fast and if you're willing to pay the price (-> no jMicron crap) you get good performance.


buying an SSD in general doesn't make sense at all, it'll be outdated slightly in a week or two. :rolleyes:

And? The technology is evolving. I don't care if there'll be a new SSD that has read/write-speeds of 200/200 and therefore is twice as fast as the Mtron I've got. When do you (when you're a "normal" user) need such raw power? What I find most import is the access time, not the MB/s...

I'd guess all those who say SSDs aren't worth it yet haven't used a good SSD yet. It's plain and simple astonishing, believe me ;)

[STaRGaZeR]

You mean like wiping and/or partition your mechnical HD so the inner circles on the plates aint accessed? Oh ye...

Plus their change in read speed is questionalbe to say it mildly.

Yeah, any information/benches going against your beloved Intel X25-M will be questionable...

It seems you have never experienced issues with SSDs, so go ahead and buy one to see it yourself ;)


So what? Other SSDs don't have such problems. Where's the deal?

SSDs are evolving fast and if you're willing to pay the price (-> no jMicron crap) you get good performance.

What are you talking about? This affects ALL SSDs, and Intel is the best among all of them. Re-read the article because your response makes no sense whatsoever.

[One_Hertz]

However all SSDs would also outlive a mechnical HD by a very large margin.

Not at all. All those rating are marketing garbage. Look at the warranty on SSDs vs HDDs for a much better picture. The controller fails WAY before the memory chips do, which is where they get the ratings from.

[FischOderAal]

What are you talking about? This affects ALL SSDs, and Intel is the best among all of them. Re-read the article because your response makes no sense whatsoever.

Actually I only read the conclusion:

It is likely that other manufacturers will employ similar write combining techniques in the future, and with those new devices may come similar real world slowdowns.

What did I miss? How does this affect ALL SSDs as you stated? Especially when you go for SLC where write combination is not as severely needed as with MLC.

[Particle]

Everything dies. If someone here is getting a kick out of MTBF ratings on SSDs, they are delusional. MTBF ratings on mechanical hard drives are equally nonsensical at > 1 million hours. I somehow doubt my hard drives, be they HDD or SSD, are going to last 114 years of being on and used.

All I know is that right now the price:perf/size ratio is firmly in the traditional hard drive's favor, and I am endlessly pleased with my 15K drives. SSDs will probably make my next round of boot drive upgrades, but this one went mechanical again.

[Shintai]

Not at all. All those rating are marketing garbage. Look at the warranty on SSDs vs HDDs for a much better picture. The controller fails WAY before the memory chips do, which is where they get the ratings from.

Just like Seagate wanted 1year warranty?

And aint the warranty on the X25-M like 3 years?

[One_Hertz]

Just like Seagate wanted 1year warranty?

And aint the warranty on the X25-M like 3 years?

The best SSDs have 3 years, normal SSDs have 2 years. Best HDDs are 5 years and normal are 3 years.

[Shintai]

The best SSDs have 3 years, normal SSDs have 2 years. Best HDDs are 5 years and normal are 3 years.

HDs got 3-5 years for enterprise class. 1-3 years for desktop class usually. Plus is depends if you buy OEM or retail drives. Seagate is one of those with 5 and 3 for most parts.

[FischOderAal]

The best SSDs have 3 years, normal SSDs have 2 years. Best HDDs are 5 years and normal are 3 years.

And how does warranty represent the typical lifetime of a product? I don't think it does at all. It depends on the company how long the warranty is.

Is there a company that sells both, SSD and HDD?

[Shintai]

And for the reliability part:


SSD lifespans are usually quantified in the number of erase/program cycles a block can go through before it is unusable, as I mentioned earlier it's generally 10,000 cycles for MLC flash and 100,000 cycles for SLC. Neither of these numbers are particularly user friendly since only the SSD itself is aware of how many blocks it has programmed. Intel wanted to represent its SSD lifespan as a function of the amount of data written per day, so Intel met with a number of OEMs and collectively they came up with a target figure: 20GB per day. OEMs wanted assurances that a user could write 20GB of data per day to these drives and still have them last, guaranteed, for five years. Intel had no problems with that.

Intel went one step further and delivered 5x what the OEMs requested. Thus Intel will guarantee that you can write 100GB of data to one of its MLC SSDs every day, for the next five years, and your data will remain intact. The drives only ship with a 3 year warranty but I suspect that there'd be some recourse if you could prove that Intel's 100GB/day promise was false.



http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=4

And alot writes alot less. Even when downloading quite abit I only write about 3-4GB a day in average on my drives.

It also scales with size. A 32Gb SLC is 7TB/day, a 64GB SLC is 14TB/day. A 160GB MLC is 200GB/day. All 5 years.

[SoulsCollective]

You mean like wiping and/or partition your mechnical HD so the inner circles on the plates aint accessed? Oh ye...
Dude come on. That comparison is laughable. There is a world of difference between zones of varying speed that remain static at that speed regardless of read/write action and passage of time, and a phenomenon that drastically reduces write speed over time and requires a complete write cycle of the drive area (precluding OS drive usage) to fix, and in some cases is irreversible.

I'll defend SSD life cycles and speed advantages to any who'll listen, but this is a huge issue and doesn't deserve to be cheapened by farcical comparisons.

[One_Hertz]

And how does warranty represent the typical lifetime of a product? I don't think it does at all. It depends on the company how long the warranty is.

Is there a company that sells both, SSD and HDD?

How in the world does it not? Who would put their warranty above the average lifetime of a product?

Shintai: all that 100GB/day writes for 5 years stuff is not relevant at all because that is measuring the lifespan of the NAND CHIPS. What fails are the CONTROLLERS.

[m^2]

Actually I only read the conclusion:


What did I miss? How does this affect ALL SSDs as you stated? Especially when you go for SLC where write combination is not as severely needed as with MLC.

It does affect all SSDs. The cause is fragmentation of free space and all have the issue. There have been reports about this since forever, but mostly just single statements. Before this article there wasn't much data on this. I've seen numbers only once (for FusionIO, IIRC running under MFT).

Unlike with JMicron, it doesn't make your computer stall, so it's much smaller issue. That's why it gets less attention.

[FischOderAal]

How in the world does it not? Who would put their warranty above the average lifetime of a product?

Common sense says you don't. Yet I don't see your point because in general products live several times longer than the warranty period. Heck, we still got a Sony HiFi in the house that is older than I am and a Thinkpad that was build in 1998 and still runs fine.

Warranty is nothing but a bonus that depends on the decision of the company and therefore a shorter warranty period proves nothing.

Has anyone here a USB-stick that failed? The german publisher Heise (c't and others) tested a 2GB USB-stick. They wrote it nearly full and compared the checksums after 50 writes.
http://www.heise.de/ct/08/21/122/
Up to that date each cell was written and deleted 12,240 times and 23,5 TB data was written and still the checksum was ok. Of course some cells might've died and the controller reallocated the data but still it shows that 10,000 times is not the end. Furthermore I'd guess that in USB-sticks you find cheap-ass chips...

Too bad I didn't find any more info how the test went on.


It does affect all SSDs. The cause is fragmentation of free space and all have the issue. There have been reports about this since forever, but mostly just single statements.

I only heard this issue together with Intels SSDs and the FusionIO, that's why I'm surprised it should affect each and every SSD.

[v0dka]

If you people wont take the time to read what you are commenting about, I kindly suggest you stop commenting here with non relevant stuff about reliability and MTBF.


You mean like wiping and/or partition your mechnical HD so the inner circles on the plates aint accessed? Oh ye...

Plus their change in read speed is questionalbe to say it mildly.

What are you talking about? Just READ the article Stargazer posted, and then comment. It's a good read as well. You can't deny the vast problem that is being uncovered here. And what is wrong with their testing?

I'm left with one question: what is the status of the Vertex under this fragmentation problem of the Indilix(?) controller?

[ewitte]

Yes I think things may take a dive if you fill them up but I have everything I need for now on the array with about 20% used (4x64GB drives).

[STaRGaZeR]

If you people wont take the time to read what you are commenting about, I kindly suggest you stop commenting here with non relevant stuff about reliability and MTBF.
I'm left with one question: what is the status of the Vertex under this fragmentation problem of the Indilix(?) controller?

People should read before posting indeed.

We still don't know about the new controller, they say that in the full review they'll include some data regarding this issue.


Actually I only read the conclusion:

Then read the whole article... why and I mean why in the world are you talking about something you don't understand first? In the first page there are two ATTO screenshots for lazy people, if you had seen it you'll have read the whole article :shakes:

[Shintai]

How in the world does it not? Who would put their warranty above the average lifetime of a product?

Shintai: all that 100GB/day writes for 5 years stuff is not relevant at all because that is measuring the lifespan of the NAND CHIPS. What fails are the CONTROLLERS.

Why would the controller fail? The controller is basicly a CPU(ASIC) and nothing else. Plus the amount of data goign through the controller doesnt matter.

Controller to die first..lol...

And people talking about defragmenting SSDs. Great. Better run your memory defragmenters too!

[Levish]

Random writes drop the Vertex to 20MB/s, better than what we have but still not very good at all.

4k random writes over 1MB/sec is extremely good as measured here:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=167857

You can see for yourself that 7200rpm SATA drives would struggle with that even on a Caching controller and 10,000rpm and 15,000rpm scsi/sas drives can manage 3MBps at those sizes.

If a Vertex can pull even 5MB/sec with those settings its nothing short of flat out amazing for that file size.

[geo]

4k random writes over 1MB/sec is extremely good as measured here:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=167857

You can see for yourself that 7200rpm SATA drives would struggle with that even on a Caching controller and 10,000rpm and 15,000rpm scsi/sas drives can manage 3MBps at those sizes.

If a Vertex can pull even 5MB/sec with those settings its nothing short of flat out amazing for that file size.
:up: nice info there...

[DoubleZero]

Random writes drop the Vertex to 20MB/s, better than what we have but still not very good at all.
http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/670/yapt-randwrites.jpg
And still better then a velociraptor in 64k random writes. And if you compared the sequential writes from yapt to atto theres a huge diference, in yapt they never go above 100mb\s in atto they never go bellow 220mb\s from 64kb to 2048kb. So one can assume that yapt random writes are wrong to. It's in the review yapt "hasn't been updated or used in quite some time".
And probably every firmware used in the review won't be the final one.

[One_Hertz]

Why would the controller fail? The controller is basicly a CPU(ASIC) and nothing else. Plus the amount of data goign through the controller doesnt matter.

Controller to die first..lol...

And people talking about defragmenting SSDs. Great. Better run your memory defragmenters too!

What are you basing your completely off the line statements on? Do you do data recovery for a living like me? I think not. Memory chips don't die; well, they do in about 3-5% of the times, but that is usually where the controller fails first and takes the chips with it. I am basing this on the tons of USB sticks that I see. I haven't seen too many SSDs quite yet, just some Samsung MLCs they use in Mac laptops. PCBs on hard drives die too and those are much more polished than what they currently use for flash storage.

The controller chip is much more than just a 'CPU'. It is that chip that determines where all the data fed through the bus goes (which chip and where on the chip). It is a MUCH more complicated device than a NAND chip.

Back on topic: they really should measure writes that are smaller than 64K. If you take a look and extrapolate you will see all OCZ SSDs taking HUGE dumps if smaller writes are benchmarked (majority of the OS operations are dealing with small reads/writes BTW). The Intel drive does not drop anywhere as much. I suppose that was hidden in order to hide the flaws of OCZ SSDs (as the owner of the site is friends with OCZ). IOMeter is also rigged with OCZ supplied settings; notice how they don't even post the settings anymore (they only use 2million sectors and don't run it for long), how unprofessional. Wait for proper reviews people.

[FischOderAal]

Then read the whole article... why and I mean why in the world are you talking about something you don't understand first? In the first page there are two ATTO screenshots for lazy people, if you had seen it you'll have read the whole article :shakes:

Allright. I read the article entirely and yes, I did understand the problem ;) I've read about this issue several times all over the web but only alongside with the X25-M. My error was not to take wear leveling into account, what fragments the drive as well.

Yes, I was wrong as I stated other SSDs don't have that problem, I should've written: "not that extreme and quickly".

You can read in that article a few times that "write combination" appears to be the primary reason for fragmented files.

All we did here was write the OS files (~20GB) back to the drive. This was not a full blown installation process or other activity that would normally cause excessive fragmentation. What you see is the result of internal fragmentation caused primarily by write combining.
and

It is likely that other manufacturers will employ similar write combining techniques in the future, and with those new devices may come similar real world slowdowns.

But not every SSD uses the technique of "write combining" and not every SSD uses MLC-cells and therefore the effect is not the same on every SSD. So cursing every SSD is wrong imho. Furthermore, as I already stated, SSDs are not only about MB/s ;)

[MF Traum]

This is a bit off topic question but is there any good tests to show differences with let's say four cheaper SSD's on a good RAID controller against a couple of more expensive ones on Intel's onboard controller. I admit that I haven't been following up pretty much any hardware development in four months now. :eh:

[kiikkuja]

Common sense says you don't. Yet I don't see your point because in general products live several times longer than the warranty period. Heck, we still got a Sony HiFi in the house that is older than I am and a Thinkpad that was build in 1998 and still runs fine.

Warranty is nothing but a bonus that depends on the decision of the company and therefore a shorter warranty period proves nothing.



I think in general products made nowadays tend to live a shorter life than products made in the past. My ex has a VCR ~20 years old functioning properly (maybe not as good as the day they were bought but still displaying picture properly and not eating tapes etc...). Todays consumer electronics are made one thing in mind and that's cheap price.

EDIT: I just read the Intel article and just have to say :banana::banana::banana::banana: this :banana::banana::banana::banana:! Intel SSD is not obviously not for me. I don't know about other products but the fastest SSD in the market falling to it's knees is kinda disappointing. Have to wait a couple of months or more before this tech is usable imo.

[Zorlac]

My understanding is that the problems will be fixed with a new file system optimized for SSD (no more NTFS) as well as a new defrag tool (Intel supposedly is working on one).

[kiikkuja]

My understanding is that the problems will be fixed with a new file system optimized for SSD (no more NTFS) as well as a new defrag tool (Intel supposedly is working on one).

I believe so too but there isn't a solution NOW so i'm going to wait for new generations of software and disks before I do anything.

[Helmore]

My understanding is that the problems will be fixed with a new file system optimized for SSD (no more NTFS) as well as a new defrag tool (Intel supposedly is working on one).

You mean like this:

All is not lost, however, as the ATA spec is being updated to include special commands such as “TRIM”, “DISCARD”, and “UNMAP” (a SCSI command). The new protocol lingo will let the Operating System tell the SSD when areas are no longer in use, such as when files are deleted. This will speed up the process of writing data to flash blocks no longer containing valid data, as the wear leveling routine doesn’t have to play musical chairs with data that is no longer relevant.

Windows 7 will support some variation of these commands, and firmware flashable drives like the X25-M should have the ability to be brought up to speed as well. This will not completely solve the problem – It falls short on some RAID configurations (i.e. RAID 5), since all data must remain ‘valid’ for parity calculations to work properly in the case of a drive failure. Data recovery also becomes more complicated, since deleted files could be overwritten by the wear leveling routine even if the OS did not specifically write over the addresses where those files were originally stored.

Microsoft has stated that there will be optimizations for SSDs in Windows 7 at PDC 2008 (last November), where they talked about such commands and how they will implement them.

[STaRGaZeR]

Yes, I was wrong as I stated other SSDs don't have that problem, I should've written: "not that extreme and quickly".

They do have, how much is something we don't know as nobody has tested them with this kind of metodology yet. Point is, all current SSDs are full of quirks that I'm sure will keep you away from them after being some time with them. And this article is just the best so far: in X time your drive will become virtually unusable, and the only fix is to "reset it to factory defaults" after having to backup all your data in another place. This is 100% unacceptable. It doesn't matter how good the write methods are if the drive craps out every 2 months.

Speed is nice, but I just can't sacrifice security for it.

[Boogerlad]

will those changes be implemented to sata3?

[shabby]

Looks like the ocz summit drive is the real winner here, slightly slower in peak speeds but much faster than the vertex in random writes and iops, and even besting the intel ssd in some of those tests too.

[EniGmA1987]

The writes are not much worse thn the Random Writes on a Velociraptor 300GB... so it isnt THAT bad. Plus everyone knows that MLC has bad random write speed, the issue is whether the stuttering is gone. So even if it drops to 20MB/s, if the stuttering is gone then it is a good SSD for the money.

[alfaunits]

Hold on... if you pay for a 120GB SSD double/triple that of a 300GB VR, you DON'T expect it to shine in just about every aspect vs. VR instead of just a tad of shine in some?
LOL. You're the customer most companies would kill for then - too bad that market is small.

[mibo]

Hold on... if you pay for a 120GB SSD double/triple that of a 300GB VR, you DON'T expect it to shine in just about every aspect vs. VR instead of just a tad of shine in some?
LOL. You're the customer most companies would kill for then - too bad that market is small.

On a common workstation reads dominate writes - so it doesn't matter if the raptor writes faster if the ssd is just good enougth.
Furthermore there are notebooks, power consumption and silence recommending the ssd ;-)

[LowRun]

On a common workstation reads dominate writes - so it doesn't matter if the raptor writes faster if the ssd is just good enougth.
Furthermore there are notebooks, power consumption and silence recommending the ssd ;-)

Been watching SSDs to use in my laptop but at the price they sell i want them to be flawless else they have to be cheaper than HDDs considering the capacities.

[FischOderAal]

[...]

Problem is, we don't have a comparison yet. I really miss a SLC drive (without write combining) for comparison in that test.

For instance if you have a light usage and it takes two years before it comes to that point your drive is "virtually unusable" I don't see a big problem at all. But it indeed sucks if it already appears when all you did was installing the OS...

It's not all black and white. Just because one drive fails miserably in that aspect, I still don't see any reason not to go for a SLC drive without write combining...

It happens I made benchmarks on the day I installed my SSD.
http://www.forumdeluxx.de/forum/showpost.php?p=11316653&postcount=67

I've used it 10 days now and I'd say I wrote and deleted 15-20 GB after I cloned the OS. (Editing videos for my parents...)

time dd if=/dev/zero of=/Volumes/Mobi/testfile bs=1024k count=4096
4096+0 records in
4096+0 records out
4294967296 bytes transferred in 65.769871 secs (65302961 bytes/sec)

real 1m5.805s
user 0m0.041s
sys 0m16.106s

So, no big difference there (yet?). The difference could be caused by inaccurate readings.

[STaRGaZeR]

Oh, you got a SLC based drive, that explains everything :P

Since you're an usual poster keep us updated about this issue if you can. Would be interesting to see how the Mtrons are doing here.

I tried an OCZ Core series, and you know what? Never, and I mean never ever again until these drives are: a) at a sane €/GB ratio, b) bigger, and c) reliable, with all those lame issues resolved. People that thinked the Intel drive was some kind of god between SSDs (me included) should revise their opinion about them now. Tony said in the OCZ Vertex or Apex thread that the Intel drive was slow like the others when the drive is almost filled, and while that's not exactly the reason as proved in the article it's in fact true that it's no better than any other MLC SSD in the end.

[rge]

I bought the intel X25m when it first came out and am very happy with it. Mine has 50Gb used on the 80gb drive, and write speeds including random are still the same as when I bought it ~80mb/s or same speed as my perpendicular drive, and read speed 250mb/s with .1 random access times which blows away my hard drive. Basically you would never convince me to go back to a hard drive with or without raid versus this SSD.

I have played around with my WD perpendicular hard drive versus intel SSD. Despite supposed write speeds being same, I can install windows as well as games roughly 20% faster, games have installed more than 2x on both drives testing. Games load 2x as fast on SSD. Photoimpact which takes 6 seconds to load from WD7500AAKS (perpend drive) is instantly loaded from SSD.

Regarding having to "reset" the drive. Whoever wrote the review article obviously does not have one or spent a few months using one. The controller simply adapts to what you are doing automatically. Once you learn how it adapts you can "play" with the benchmarks while the disk is loaded, and get it to do pretty much what you want.
read my post here
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3592647&postcount=35

No question I will be happier when write speeds get to 250mb/s like read. But I cant tolerate using my HDD for anything other than storage at this point. Regarding longetivity, I could care less, the technology in my X25m drive is going to be obsolete in a year, I would upgrade by then anyways to something likely larger, faster, and cheaper.

[FischOderAal]

Oh, you got a SLC based drive, that explains everything :P

I didn't want to live with stutter/lags and I wanted something I could use for a long time. That's why I payed the quite hefty price. The 2,5-inch HDD was effing slow :(


Since you're an usual poster keep us updated about this issue if you can. Would be interesting to see how the Mtrons are doing here.

Sure will do :yepp: (If I don't forget it :rofl: )


I tried an OCZ Core series, and you know what? Never, and I mean never ever again until these drives are: a) at a sane €/GB ratio, b) bigger, and c) reliable, with all those lame issues resolved.

Yeah :( SLC drives are very expensive (about 3 times worse €/GB-ratio than MLC) but at least you don't have to mess without lags/stutter and so on. Interesting thing is, the biggest development takes part with the MLC-drives, yet they have more disadvantages than SLC-drives imho.

Both SLC and MLC are not ready for the mass market, they are either too expensive or have too many issues. Normally I'm not an early adopter, I used to shake my head when some bought the newest (and most expensive) hardware. But I was willing to pay the price because the HDD really annoyed me that much and it solved my issues. But I'm using a laptop for my everyday work and not a PC with relatively fast 3,5-inch drives. Using my PC the 3,5-inch-HDDs were sometimes a noticeable bottleneck but nowhere as annoying. If I didn't use a laptop I'm not sure if I would've bought a SSD already, seeing the issues and the not yet ready OSs.

Now I can understand your position towards SSDs much better and I hope you understand my enthusiasm. I guess I would've been as disappointed as well if I had bought a "cheap" MLC with jMicron-controller. :)


People that thinked the Intel drive was some kind of god between SSDs (me included) should revise their opinion about them now. Tony said in the OCZ Vertex or Apex thread that the Intel drive was slow like the others when the drive is almost filled, and while that's not exactly the reason as proved in the article it's in fact true that it's no better than any other MLC SSD in the end.

Even Intel can't take away the physical disadvantages of MLC-cells. And yes, filling the drive to the last bit is a problem as well. That's why I went for a 64 GB drive, even though a 32 GB drive would've been just enough after deleting my music, pictures and other stuff. Now I paid more, but I can keep my music on my Notebook xD Sometimes it sucks to be a music addict :D

[Levish]

Hold on... if you pay for a 120GB SSD double/triple that of a 300GB VR, you DON'T expect it to shine in just about every aspect vs. VR instead of just a tad of shine in some?
LOL. You're the customer most companies would kill for then - too bad that market is small.

:shrug: some people just want something better even if its not 100-200% better in every respect, so long as it is orders of magnitude better in some key respects.

For example, I personally wouldn't hesitate to reccomend a RAID array made up of 4x X25-Es for enterprise use assuming I'm allowed to validate that they work as expected considering they would be 75-80% of the performance gain of some really exotic ramdisk setup, shifting the current IOPs limitations over to Processing / Coding limitations.

[STaRGaZeR]

Yeah :( SLC drives are very expensive (about 3 times worse €/GB-ratio than MLC) but at least you don't have to mess without lags/stutter and so on. Interesting thing is, the biggest development takes part with the MLC-drives, yet they have more disadvantages than SLC-drives imho.

Both SLC and MLC are not ready for the mass market, they are either too expensive or have too many issues. Normally I'm not an early adopter, I used to shake my head when some bought the newest (and most expensive) hardware. But I was willing to pay the price because the HDD really annoyed me that much and it solved my issues. But I'm using a laptop for my everyday work and not a PC with relatively fast 3,5-inch drives. Using my PC the 3,5-inch-HDDs were sometimes a noticeable bottleneck but nowhere as annoying. If I didn't use a laptop I'm not sure if I would've bought a SSD already, seeing the issues and the not yet ready OSs.

Now I can understand your position towards SSDs much better and I hope you understand my enthusiasm. I guess I would've been as disappointed as well if I had bought a "cheap" MLC with jMicron-controller. :)

Well I'm really excited like you about SSDs but all of them suck in something like you say, that something being basic. Ones because of perfomance and issues over time, others because of price. The technology is just too inmature right now. I could never justify the price of the Mobi, but if you want to pay the price and you're happy with it then :up:


Even Intel can't take away the physical disadvantages of MLC-cells. And yes, filling the drive to the last bit is a problem as well. That's why I went for a 64 GB drive, even though a 32 GB drive would've been just enough after deleting my music, pictures and other stuff. Now I paid more, but I can keep my music on my Notebook xD Sometimes it sucks to be a music addict :D

When he said "filled" I understood filled by the user with useful data, but maybe he meant that when the lookup table is so complicated after many cycles of writing and rewriting and the controller spreading them between all the NAND chips that fragmentation reach the level of no return the perfomance just falls to the ground.

[BGVirtual]

Here are some benches of the Mtron Mobi MSD 3500 32GB SLC, scroll down to the bottom for some IOMetter results. Though it doesnt show crearly how much % are random writes, how much % sequential writes and the number of IOs, maybe the default settings are used.

Translated:
http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://forum.coolaler.com/showthread.php%3Ft%3D185259

Original:
http://forum.coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=185259

[alfaunits]

:shrug: some people just want something better even if its not 100-200% better in every respect, so long as it is orders of magnitude better in some key respects.

Better in some respects is one thing - but better in some yet worse in others is another thing ;)

[3NZ0]

LOL, this thread has made me feel quite bad, I've lost my faith in ssd after reading it. I wasn't aware that ssd got slower the more you filled it up and the intel ones had a number of quite worrying problems.

Ah well, I have a pair of v raptors and a backup in case everything goes horribly wrong. :)

Was going to consider a pair of 250gb ssd's to replace the 320gb's in my xps and a single for my nc10 but I think I'll just stick with looking at the new seagate 500gb 7200rpm drives. :eek:

[FischOderAal]

I think we should change the title into "SSD: performance degration over time"...

Intel has an answer for the article on PC-Perspective:

In response, Intel made a statement on Thursday. "Our labs currently have not been able to duplicate these results," Intel said. "In our estimation, the synthetic workloads they use to stress the drive are not reflective of real world use. Similarly, the benchmarks they used to evaluate performance do not represent what a PC user experiences."

Intel continued. "In general, when a PC's drive (SSD or HDD) is full, there will be some reduction in system performance, however the performance reduction reported by PC Perspective is higher than we generally expect, which is why we are looking into the methodology."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10168084-64.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

[shabby]

Looks like ocz cant make up their mind, there might be another delay due to a new firmware which increases iops but slows down the write speeds.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51364

[Tony]

shabby

tell the real story man :) FW is decided, i did a POLL and listened to what end users wanted.

there is no delay as far as i am aware, drives are hitting production this weekend and all indications the last FW i tested is for the shipping drives.

[Zorlac]

I want to see some other sites like Anandtech test several top-of-the-line MLC and SLC drives using Windows 7 beta so we can get confirmation on the performance over time issues as well as confirming that the "JMicron Stutter Effect" is a thing of the past.

Obviously Intel is not going to admit their flagship enterprise level SSD is a dud. No company would do that.

I am also curious if these drives have firmware that can be flashed by the enduser?

[Revv23]

Crazy that SSD's even are where they are right now.

It just shows how much potential these things have. I mean combine the price with the storage capacity and it makes no sense but its a booming market.

All the while you can get a TB for $90 from the egg. I'm much closer to ordering a 4 tb raid setup then a few SSD's...

[MpG]

I'll say one thing, thanks to the emergence of SSD's and the ensuing discussion, I think I've learned more about storage in the last few months than I did in the last few years preceding. :p:

[FischOderAal]

Crazy that SSD's even are where they are right now.

It just shows how much potential these things have. I mean combine the price with the storage capacity and it makes no sense but its a booming market.

All the while you can get a TB for $90 from the egg. I'm much closer to ordering a 4 tb raid setup then a few SSD's...

The only reasonable thing to do is keeping HDD and SSD in your desktop-rig. HDD for mass storage and "uncritical" things like music, videos and stuff. SSDs are made for the OS and programs, not for mass storage.

Yes, the potential of SSDs isn't used yet, but that's a disadvantage every early adaptor has to live with. Early adaptors are needed otherwise there wouldn't be development.

But: four raid'ed HDDs still don't offer SSD-like experience. You get many MB/s but not the access time ;)

@Tony: Although I most certainly won't buy a Vertex in the near future (my PC is into peaces and a rebuild is due in a few months) I took part in the poll. :up: Maybe sometime MLC-drives will be where I want them to be and that is thanks to all those companies that are pushing them hard as you are. :clap:

[_Lone_Wolf_]

I want to see some other sites like Anandtech test several top-of-the-line MLC and SLC drives using Windows 7 beta so we can get confirmation on the performance over time issues as well as confirming that the "JMicron Stutter Effect" is a thing of the past.

This would be a welcome and long overdue seperating of the wheat from the chaff.


Obviously Intel is not going to admit their flagship enterprise level SSD is a dud. No company would do that.

Small point given the price but Intels flagship is the SLC based X25-E, not the MLC based -M.

[steve4king]

From what I understand, the "stutter effect" was caused by the buffer being filled faster than the drive could write. That was really the major point behind adding the 32-64mb Cache on the vertex. However, the newer Apex although slightly faster with its internal striped memory zones does not have this cache. I would be wary of purchasing any SSD without a decent amount of cache.

But volatile memory is so cheap, why not utilize the hybrid technology Samsung introduced to standard mechanical drives for these new SSDs. Pop 2gb cache on one of these drives, if the "hybrid" technology is working as intended, this should decrease the total number of reads/writes to the SSD. Consequently, data will be written in larger blocks, keeping data more sequential. Let alone that volatile memory is still so much faster than NAND, it should for the most part be limited just by the interface.

[m^2]

2steve4king:
Only 1 GB, but...
http://www.platinumhdd.com/