Low capacity 2xR0: SF1222 vs C300, + firmware questions

[zalbard]

Excuse me if this's been reiterated one million times...
I am looking at possible SSD options atm. Good all around performance is what I am aiming at. I do not really need a huge Raid 0 (R0) array, so I am looking at 2xR0 60GB SF1222 vs 2xR0 64GB C300.
I have a few questions...

1. What would perform better?
I am aware of the fact that SF1222 drives use compression, so they are not as good as C300 in reality (while matching on paper... quite a few benchmarks show 'fake' numbers). Then again, 64GB C300 is quite gimped compared to 128GB model, so I am not sure whether it's worth it or not.

2. Performance degradation in Raid 0.
SF1222 has some interesting Garbage Collection (GC) method, which is supposedly even better than TRIM (according to OCZ). So looks good on paper. However, I read that they took ages (well, ok... days :p:) to recover.
Then again, I read (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries-crucials-realssd-c300/8) about C300 write performance degradation, and I am not sure that's been fixed.

3. SF1222 firmware (FW) mess.
So, there used to be this kind of ridiculous stuff present:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/images/reviews/storage/OWC-SSDMXRE100/Iometer_Random_4K-IOPS_30QD_Results.png

Do Vertex 2 Extended (V2Ext) drives perform as good as Corsair Force (CoF) ones now (after the FW updates)? If not, can one flash a V2Ext drive with this old CoF FW?
And can one actually upgrade CoF FW without ruining these nice performance numbers these days?
I also read some good things about C300 FWs. One of them (0006) was released recently. Does it improve the performance of the drives compared to 0002 (I assume 0002 was used for reviews) or enhance GC?

Your input is appreciated! :)

[zalbard]

Found some info myself.
Apparently both V2Ext and CoF have about the same performance with uncapped IOPS now.
Link (http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/989/pg10/hard-drive-roundup-june-2010-firmware-info-sandforce-iops-issue.html)

[zalbard]

Does anybody have any input?
Perhaps the owners of similar setups can chime in? :)

[Anvil]

You'll be fine whichever way you go.
Forget about the sequential write stuff, for an OS drive it's never or very seldom an issue at all and both drives perform very close "in real life" wrt sequential I/O.

I've been using both the C300 and the SF drives in raid and as single drives for quite some time.
The SF drives are the only ones I've felt I had to clean and that has happened only once. (on an old firmware)

I guess you'll want to clean the drives at some point in time anyways so just go for the best deal you can get.

note:
As for the drive that responds best to the most popular storage benchmarks, that would be the C300 for the most part.
(Meaning: if you are in to storage benchmarks you'll probably be more satisfied with the C300)

[zalbard]

Thanks for the reply! :up:
I am really mostly bothered about performance degradation in R0 since I've read some good and bad things about both. But I suppose people are overreacting for the most part, and I should be fine with either. :)
And yes, I do quite like nice benchmark numbers. Then again, C300 seems to be more expensive in here, and is behind on IOPS sometimes.
Just really had to make sure, because I am xtremely good at buying xtremely flawed products, for some reason. :p:

[SteveRo]

Mr Zalbard,
SF or C300 - both are good - you might want to wait to see how the new intel's pan out - should be soon I think.
I have C300/64s and intels (all varieties) - all are good – no problems with any of them.
2xR0 - even old intel G1's on ich10 are great - I run with wbc enabled.

edit - looking at the chart you posted - even the old mobi 3000s in ich10 raid R0 (with wbc enabled) are good performers.
mobi's as single drives - are very mediocre at small file random writes - but when raided and with wbc enabled - the wbc write combining makes 2x or more of these old SLC drives work great!

[zalbard]

I would love to get a drive with 25nm NAND, but I'd at least like to see some ETA figures... We only know about Intel (Q1, hopefully, and it is not very impressive so far); Sandforce 2 (consumer version) and Crucial seem to be lagging behind, and I am not sure I want to wait for 3-6 more months. :(