Xbitlabs intel vs ocz ssd shootout

[saaya]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...p_5.html#sect0

nice and detailled test!
i cant help but wonder about the test platform though... 975x chipset with ich7 southbridge and an E2160? 0_o

and the ocz vertex mac edition constantly outperforms the vanilla vertex? didnt anand say they are the same and only differ in price?

and the conclusion doesnt really... conclude anything
its a bit vague... interesting review, but without comparing price/perf and having a propper conclusion this review i dont really know what to make out of those numbers...

[turtletrax]

Why do these websites keep using ancient hardware to test new tech with???

[randomizer]

and the ocz vertex mac edition constantly outperforms the vanilla vertex? didnt anand say they are the same and only differ in price?

They may be using different firmware. OCZ/Indillinx released new official firmware the other day but I doubt they updated to that before writing this article (as they probably started the article weeks ago).

EDIT: Actually, this article was published a day before the new firmware was released, so yes, they are not using the latest.

[MpG]

Geez. First it was TR that was using an ICH7 motherboard for their storage tests, and now Xbit is too? You can argue about how little of a difference it makes, but you can easily get an ICH9/10 board for friggin' beer money these days, and these sites should have something better available just from their own reviews. Intel's SB upgrades have been subtle, but they're more than just simple process shrinks, and I can't see many ICH7 owners springing for SSD's.

[WaterFlex]

Thanks for that, saaya

[zanzabar]

interesting the ocz is way closer to the intel, i think that im going to vary happy with the Indilinx drive that ocz should replace my extra degraded core v2 with.

and it looks like they were on different firmwares for the ocz drives or something shady is going on

[demonkevy666]

how about using an AMD board with SSD.

it's not a sin you know.

[zanzabar]

how about using an AMD board with SSD.

it's not a sin you know.

i do that, its not a good idea for a review though since most people are on intel, but using a 1.8ghz cpu on a 200mhz fsb may be limiting the SB i would have liked to see an 8400 but it may have been sponsored and one group might benefit from less IO bandwidth and a slower cpu (nothing against xbit but they do have intel ads

[saaya]

Why do these websites keep using ancient hardware to test new tech with???

yeah, its weird... does ich7 support ncq at all? i dont think so right? i emailed them, looking forward to a reply

They may be using different firmware. OCZ/Indillinx released new official firmware the other day but I doubt they updated to that before writing this article (as they probably started the article weeks ago).

EDIT: Actually, this article was published a day before the new firmware was released, so yes, they are not using the latest.

yeah i guess so... it seems they didnt really have any communication to ocz while doing the review, as im sure ocz would have given them a heads up that theres a new firmware and how to flash it...

i must say im surprised, anand actually went deeper into the tech with his article than xbitlabs... its usually the other way around...

and yes, id love to have seen some amd southbridge numbers as well...
at least 2 or 3 tests would have been nice... run on different ssds on diferent amd and intel sbs just to see if there is a difference at all and how big it is etc...

[punkrockpolak]

So the conclusion is that the X25M is the winner kind of, but not exactly lols. Very long article with a lot of data, though I just ended up skimming over the graphs and jumping to the conclusion.

[terente0081]

They really should have tested the OCZ Vertex drives with the new firmware. It comes in 2 flavours, one offers TRIM for single drive users in supported OS'es and the other offers GC (garbage collection) for RAID users or users that stay on a non TRIM friendly OS. Garbage collection is a form of TRIM, done internally, OS independent. You can play with the drive and when it idles for a couple of minutes, it will clean the cells by itself. Works great and it does a good job at keeping the performance up.

[zanzabar]

They really should have tested the OCZ Vertex drives with the new firmware. It comes in 2 flavours, one offers TRIM for single drive users in supported OS'es and the other offers GC (garbage collection) for RAID users or users that stay on a non TRIM friendly OS. Garbage collection is a form of TRIM, done internally, OS independent. You can play with the drive and when it idles for a couple of minutes, it will clean the cells by itself. Works great and it does a good job at keeping the performance up.

why would u need trim with garbage collection if they do the same and trim is os dependent

[SamHughe]

why would u need trim with garbage collection if they do the same and trim is os dependent

Good question. Also are you suggesting TRIM does not work on raid?

[Diverge]

Good question. Also are you suggesting TRIM does not work on raid?

Trim only works for raid if the drivers for said raid card (or onboard controller) support trim. As far as I've read, no raid manufactures have released raid drivers with support for trim.

[saaya]

areca said they are working on it, but... yeah so far nothing...

[JoeBar]

OMG they could have tested this on a i486...

[wickedld9]

Believe it or not there are people who are interested in this storage technology that don't plan to use it with an i7 or ES i9.
You don't need a bleeding edge CPU to get a massive speed up from SSD's. Personally, I like the fact that they didn't use the latest and greatest platforms as it gives perspective on what you could expect should you choose to upgrade a non-gaming, overclocked, benchmark whore machine. If they would have run it on an ICH9/10 system it would have been just another "me too" article.

Some of you need to remember that this is the biggest change to desktop system functionality in years. Even "old" machines will benefit from upgrading to an SSD.

[turtletrax]

Believe it or not there are people who are interested in this storage technology that don't plan to use it with an i7 or ES i9.
You don't need a bleeding edge CPU to get a massive speed up from SSD's. Personally, I like the fact that they didn't use the latest and greatest platforms as it gives perspective on what you could expect should you choose to upgrade a non-gaming, overclocked, benchmark whore machine. If they would have run it on an ICH9/10 system it would have been just another "me too" article.

Some of you need to remember that this is the biggest change to desktop system functionality in years. Even "old" machines will benefit from upgrading to an SSD.

Then that should have been stated in the prefice of the review if that was the goal of the comparison. Go to OCZs Gen 2 SSD forum and look at how many ICH7R users are there.

[JoeBar]

^^ Well said...

[Tech Dav]

Not interested until SSD cracks a Terabyte , 500MBps mark

[wickedld9]

Then that should have been stated in the prefice of the review if that was the goal of the comparison. Go to OCZs Gen 2 SSD forum and look at how many ICH7R users are there.

You mean the preface?
Why? I did not write it, I do not know the intent of the article except to show performance of the SSD's. The test results in this article are very similar to those of others. It is not necessary to test on the latest platform to get the expected results... Intel SSD's do not do as well in sequential transfers but excel in small I/O. Indilinx does well in sequential transfers but are slower on small I/O.

Not interested until SSD cracks a Terabyte , 500MBps mark

I know what you mean, my CAT7 10Gb-e network is......oh wait. I have some Fusion IO drives I will sell you depending on how interested you are.

[zanzabar]

Not interested until SSD cracks a Terabyte , 500MBps mark

ssds are well over 500mbs, as they do 100-120MB/s minimum that makes them well over 800mb/s. and there are 1TB ssd drives like the ocz Z drive

[randomizer]

They really should have tested the OCZ Vertex drives with the new firmware. It comes in 2 flavours, one offers TRIM for single drive users in supported OS'es and the other offers GC (garbage collection) for RAID users or users that stay on a non TRIM friendly OS. Garbage collection is a form of TRIM, done internally, OS independent. You can play with the drive and when it idles for a couple of minutes, it will clean the cells by itself. Works great and it does a good job at keeping the performance up.

GC and TRIM are not the same. GC works intermittently by consolidating free space and erasing blocks, while TRIM erases individual pages (I think it's only the page, not entirely sure) as soon as possible after the data in that page is marked as deleted. Thus GC only works when there's enough free space to run, and it is quite aggressive so it only runs when the drive is idle to prevent the user noticing the performance drop.

The "problem" with GC is it does not know what data is in a page, and without TRIM the controller is not notified when a page can be marked as invalid. Thus all non-empty pages are treated as valid (meaning don't erase them!) until GC decides to move the data around to free up space so that it can mark that block as invalid and erase it.

[terente0081]

GC and TRIM are not the same. GC works intermittently by consolidating free space and erasing blocks, while TRIM erases individual pages (I think it's only the page, not entirely sure) as soon as possible after the data in that page is marked as deleted. Thus GC only works when there's enough free space to run, and it is quite aggressive so it only runs when the drive is idle to prevent the user noticing the performance drop.

The "problem" with GC is it does not know what data is in a page, and without TRIM the controller is not notified when a page can be marked as invalid. Thus all non-empty pages are treated as valid (meaning don't erase them!) until GC decides to move the data around to free up space so that it can mark that block as invalid and erase it.

I know they are not the same, as I said GC is a form of TRIM, not the same. They both work in the same direction though, to keep the performance up. My tests have shown me that my 2 OCZ Vertex 120GB RAID0 on ICH10R, with GC firmware, go back to about 98% performance after a few hours of idle time.
TRIM should be the way to go, but until Intel releases drivers that will pass the TRIM instruction down the RAID array, GC will do just fine.
It shouldn't be long, Intel wants TRIM as well, so they will provide the drivers sooner rather than later.
Areca and some other RAID cards manufacturers also anounced that they are working on TRIM enabled drivers.

[saaya]

wickedld9, how likely is it that somebody will spend 300-500$ for an ssd but doesnt want to spend money on upgrading his ich7=3 year old system? :P

yes there are people like this, but not that many... and while its interesting to see ich7 results, having ONLY ich7 results is odd... its like benching the latest vga on a 2ghz single core cpu... yeah, there are people who will buy that vga and use it in such an old and slow system... but it would still be a really weird review...