TITAN SSD Performance Review

[Budwise]

The question for me is would it be worth it to swap a single Vraptor for a single Titan? Or for the same price get the 2 cheaper 64GB non Titan's and RAID0 them on ICH10?

[Brahmzy]

I wouls absolutely NOT get the 64GB non TITAN - those will have massive stuttering on write issues - even in RAID0.

About the only SSDs you can run without a RAID Ctlr card right now are the Intels, the TITANs, and the Vertex's (supposedly) which aren't out yet. I would'nt swap out a single VRaptor for a single Titan. Your write performance will really be struggling IMO.

[btdvox]

I wouls absolutely NOT get the 64GB non TITAN - those will have massive stuttering on write issues - even in RAID0.

About the only SSDs you can run without a RAID Ctlr card right now are the Intels, the TITANs, and the Vertex's (supposedly) which aren't out yet. I would'nt swap out a single VRaptor for a single Titan. Your write performance will really be struggling IMO.

Why is that, They dont have the dual jmicron solution?

Because none of the titans have cache.

[ewitte]

I wouls absolutely NOT get the 64GB non TITAN - those will have massive stuttering on write issues - even in RAID0.

About the only SSDs you can run without a RAID Ctlr card right now are the Intels, the TITANs, and the Vertex's (supposedly) which aren't out yet. I would'nt swap out a single VRaptor for a single Titan. Your write performance will really be struggling IMO.

Its hit and miss depending on your system. I haven't had any problems after tweaking the system properly on a non titan. Everything works pretty much instantly. The only lockups I had was IE8 (buggy) and MAGICISO which locked me up in Vista using a normal HDD as well (worked after I re-installed but doesn't help to do that in windows 7). You especially shouldn't have issues with a hardware RAID card WITH onboard cache. If you have one of those cards it doesn't matter which SSD drives you use

[Brahmzy]

Why is that, They dont have the dual jmicron solution?

Because none of the titans have cache.

Exactly. The dual JMicron controller's have done wonders in helping write-stuttering issues. I've witnessed it first hand as well as reviewers. Obviously, cache would be a great plus too.

We'll see how OCZ's non-JMicron, onboard cache solution does...

And as far as the RAID0 questions...I finally loaded up Crysis Warhead... HOLY COW. I have never seen the levels load this quick. I mean my 3 RAID0 VR's loaded 'em quick, but these 2 TITANs load them in about half the speed. Never seen the progress bar move that fast - it makes me tempted to buy a 3rd TITAN to throw in the mix. THAT is precisely what RAID0 can do (among many other things (boot times, file transfers).

[BrokeDown]

I've been looking at these on Newegg...and my mouse button is itching to be pushed on one. I have a 150gb Raptor that I haven't had much confidence in lately. Only question is 1, or 2?

Btw, what exactly does Diskeeper do on an SSD? I thought one of the benefits of SSD was they didn't need to be defraged, but obviously you mention some other feature.

[Lyshen]

Tough question to answer on whether to get 1 Titan or 2 non-Titans.

Currently I have the pre-Titan one, 128GB size. In a sense, kind of sucks cause Newegg listed the Titan about a week after I bought mine. Thankfully I'm using mine hooked up to my hardware RAID so I've only noticed stutter once when I had numerous things running and installing software. Since that time though I've yet to see it stutter again with all software installed.

Currently waiting for the Vertex to come out. I want to see how well they perform... was tempted to get the Titan series.

[MassiveOverkill]

I just got the order to upgrade 17 or more Sales laptops with these babies. I just imaged an older older 128 gig non-Titan drive and the 3 VMwares that previously took about 15 minutes to boot off an external eSATA Seagate 7200.11 640 gig drive now only takes about 6.5 minutes. This is nearly identical to the boot time the same 3 VMware images boot on my Desktop workstation running 640 gig 7200.11 Seagates in Matrix RAID (300 gig stripe). My Desktop rig is running a Q9550 at 3.4 Ghz vs the laptop running a Core2Duo at 2.4 Ghz.

[ewitte]

I will tell you after a week with the non Titan I ordered a 2nd one. And an adaptec 2405 I can just keep adding to the Raid0 array as I have money. I'm running windows 7 anyway don't mind formatting several times.

[flopper]

I will tell you after a week with the non Titan I ordered a 2nd one. And an adaptec 2405 I can just keep adding to the Raid0 array as I have money. I'm running windows 7 anyway don't mind formatting several times.

Interested with before and after as I am about to get a adaptec 2405 card soonish.
It just seemed a viable choice as the 1 gen ssd are so cheap.
80euro atm for 32gb.

[IcY18]

I didn't think this question was worthy of a new thread so i'll ask here.

How is everyone installing these 2.5" SSD's in 3.5" slots? Not screwing them in? Buying 2.5" to 3.5" converters?

I'm curious to find an easy solution to this seemingly simple problem?

[LuckyNV]

Probably using convertors

[Brahmzy]

I didn't think this question was worthy of a new thread so i'll ask here.

How is everyone installing these 2.5" SSD's in 3.5" slots? Not screwing them in? Buying 2.5" to 3.5" converters?

I'm curious to find an easy solution to this seemingly simple problem?

I've got an Antec 1200, which allowed me to use these felt rubber bands thnagars out of my other 3 Antec SOLO cases. I "suspended" the SSDs together inside two twisted, fabric, rubber band thingies. Works great.

Velcro would also work great, I just didn't want to risk ripping one of the stickers off or something as I sell my hardware every 3-6 months or so...

[khamsin]

Btw, what exactly does Diskeeper do on an SSD? I thought one of the benefits of SSD was they didn't need to be defraged, but obviously you mention some other feature.

Yeah, SSDs don't need to be defragged like vanilla HDDs, but free space consolidation is said to help improve random writes. More about Diskeeper's hyperfast SSD optimizer:

"The new Solid State Drives (SSDs) are based on NAND Flash technology and will degrade over time as free space gets chopped up across the device. You may have heard that you should not "defrag" Flash drives. This is largely true, given the traditional definition of defragmentation as "file defragmentation". That traditional approach would also create excess and unnecessary write activity on these devices (that does not return benefit as it would a HDD), potentially wearing them out faster.

The purpose of HyperFast is optimization of free space to keep file writes at peak "out of box" performance levels. Its design considers both performance and longevity, increasing both through intelligent organization of data on these drives. It addresses the needs of Flash drives without the negative aspects of traditional file defragmenters specifically designed to improve HDD performance. from
http://www.diskeeperblog.com/archive...ast_is_al.html
There is also a pdf describing the benchmarking on their site.

[ewitte]

If it takes time I don't see why you can't just do a normal defrag every 6 months or so to take care of the free space fragmentation. Doing a defrag once in 6 months is not going to be a big deal.

[m^2]

Because normal defragmenters do it wrong. They defragment files, which is pointless with SSDs. AFAIK some optionally defragment free space too, but I don't think they let you skip file defrag.

BTW performance numbers look suspicious. 6x faster reads, huh? I would be surprised seeing +10%.

[ewitte]

Well 6 months is quite some time I could just use my favorite defrag program. Format

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

Because normal defragmenters do it wrong. They defragment files, which is pointless with SSDs. AFAIK some optionally defragment free space too, but I don't think they let you skip file defrag.

BTW performance numbers look suspicious. 6x faster reads, huh? I would be surprised seeing +10%.

No kidding!

"therookie" over at ocz forums did some testing with results quite different than Diskeeper's claims

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...t=44422&page=2

[Spoiler]

If it takes time I don't see why you can't just do a normal defrag every 6 months or so to take care of the free space fragmentation. Doing a defrag once in 6 months is not going to be a big deal.

Taken from an interview with an Intel Engineer from hardocp......

Q. Do SSDs need to be defragmented?


A. Unfortunately this answer isn't exactly straightforward. Solid state drives generally do not organize data the way that HDDs do, or the way the operating system is expecting them to. This is done to overcome the limitations of flash memory (eg. wear leveling). For that reason, standard defrag tools will not make correct decisions about how to optimize the file system layout on an SSD. I would cautiously suggest that anyone using any SSD should disable automatic defrag on that drive and don't bother running it manually. SSDs are exceedingly fast at seeking, so fetching a seemingly scattered file is going to be nearly as fast as fetching a file that is written sequentially. A traditional HDD will fetch that same scattered file drastically slower, which was the original motivation for defragmentation.


That said, there certainly are best and worst case layouts for data organization on SSD media. Currently the firmware is responsible for keeping everything as organized as possible. There might be a new opportunity for tools to be developed that will "defragment" an SSD, but they may need inside knowledge of how each SSD works. The magnitude of the fragmentation problem is reduced though, because the performance difference between an optimal layout and worst case isn't nearly as crippling as with a HDD.

[IcY18]

Unfortunately newegg has raised the price from $279 to $329!

[Ender17]

looks like the Intel X25-M is still dominant at 4k writes
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3403&p=8

[Lyshen]

They've also raised the price on the 256GB Titan from what I remember was $499 to what is now $519.

[ewitte]

If you're not in a hurry, I'd wait on it. If it's a money issue though, the Vertex's are even more expensive $/GB than these... so you may be waiting 3 months to really see prices come down at this performance level. I couldn't wait any longer and just had a serious SSD itch. If I find out in 3 weeks that the Vertex's completely blow these out of the water, I'll sell these and get 3 64GB Vertex's in RAID0, or I'll put the TITANs in my other box... I'm REALLY liking these things. Got to mess a little more with 'em last night for a few minutes. Things really are snappy as hell.

The tech is moving crazy fast not just the speed but the price. There was a sharp jump from like $17/GB down to $2/GB just last year. Even with my RAID controller my cost was about $3/GB. IDK but 3 drives in RAID0 I'll probably hold off for 2 more years and get something MUCH better.

[flopper]

The tech is moving crazy fast not just the speed but the price. There was a sharp jump from like $17/GB down to $2/GB just last year. Even with my RAID controller my cost was about $3/GB. IDK but 3 drives in RAID0 I'll probably hold off for 2 more years and get something MUCH better.

Price here isnt up to that level.
However, the 1 generation ssd are plummenting down in price which still is a pretty neat deal for 3 or 4 in raid0.

[Brahmzy]

FWIW, I am not seeing any stuttering or slowdowns AT ALL with these 2 TITANs in RAID0 off my ICH10R. I am doing heavy multitasking and lots of simultaneuos reads and writes... I don't know how, but it seems like performance keeps getting better and better with these. Upon initial installation and use (after disabling all of Vx64's Indexing and prefetching crap), I did notice a slight stutter here and there. I have not noticed ANY now and I'm doing even way more than I was. It all seemed to get better after installing Diskeeper's Hyperfast stuff. That is the only thing I can think of that has changed. I guess I could uninstall it and see if any stuttering comes back... Regardless, I'm very happy with these things right now. So happy I threw my 3 VR's up on FeeBay. I thought for sure I'd move on to the Vertex drives when they come out, but I'm thinking of keeping these things.
Now if I could just get a BIOS update for my stupid motherboard to handle more than 3 cards at a time. I've got 2 brand new GTX285's and I can't even use 1 of them. I can only have 2 cards installed on my motherboard at a time (known issue), so do I use my X-Fi and give up SLi? Or do I use 1 285 and have good sound? Argh.