SSD roundup: Vertex 3 vs M4 vs C300 vs 510 vs 320 vs x25-M vs F120 vs Falcon II

[Khoral]

Can you translate/ explain a bit more by what Marc is talking about when he describes benchmark traces being content with indentifying the type of access without considering content. (Page 6)

Sure

Typiquement si nous avions enregistré les accès effectués par Photoshop dans le traitement par lot et utilisé un tel logiciel, nous aurions pu avoir des écarts allant du simple au double entre les SSD, alors qu’à l’usage il n y a pas de différence. Enfin, ces traces se contentent de répertorier le type d’accès sans prendre en compte leur contenu, ce qui peut avantager les contrôleurs SandForce qui sont alors mis dans un cas favorable si le logiciel génère des données compressibles alors que l’utilisation servant de trace se basait sur des données déjà compressées.

Note : When speaking about "traces", he means PC Mark Vantage traces.

Typically, had we record the access done by Photoshop in the batch processing and used such software (note by me : meaning PC Mark Vantage), we could have had huge gaps between SSDs, where it wouldn't be felt at use. Lastly, these traces just list the access type, without considering their content, which can favour SandForce controllers which are in a favourable case if the software generates compressible data whereas the tracing use based itself on already compressed data.


So, it's already complicated in french xD
I understand it like that : First, he says that with Photoshop, you can have performance gaps when benchmarking, where at use you would see no difference.
Then he says that PC Mark Vantage generates compressible or not data, randomly (not sure about that part, but that's how I understand it). So you can't know with certainty if a SandForce controller is good because it was fed with compressible data, or if it is really good all the time.

About the chips, what do you want me to ask exactly ?

[Ao1]

Hi Khoral, thanks for helping out. Marc seems to be very well informed. That review is one of the best I have read. The trace issue appears to be a subtlety that he has picked up on, but even when translated to English I'm struggling to understand it. It would be great if he could explain it in more detail.

With regards to the chips it's the issue of 25nm having 4kB page size in the Crucial M4. My understanding (or should I say assumption) was that all 25nm had 8kB page sizes.

[johnw]

About the chips, what do you want me to ask exactly ?

Maybe you could ask how they know the page size of the flash chips. Do they have a spec sheet from Micron that gives the page size for those flash chips? Is it possible they got the specs of the 32Gbit 34nm flash chips confused with the 32Gbit 25nm flash chips?

[Ao1]

Maybe you could ask how they know the page size of the flash chips. Do they have a spec sheet from Micron that gives the page size for those flash chips? Is it possible they got the specs of the 32Gbit 34nm flash chips confused with the 32Gbit 25nm flash chips?

Hi John,

It's intriguing the way performance is coming out at QD 1 with 4k random reads.
• C300 128 is 3% faster than the C300 256
• OCZ V3 120 is 5% faster than the V3 240
• M4 128 is 19.7% faster than the M4 256

At QD 2 and above the larger capacity models become faster. That makes me think it is not an anomaly in the testing, although maybe that could not be excluded when differences are less than 5%.

With the Intel 510 & 320 however there is no significant difference between the different capacity drives at QD1. Above QD 1 and the 120 version of the 510 is faster than the 250. With the 320 it is the other way around.....but here we are comparing different controllers

Ok, understood.

I mailed him, I'll keep you updated when I get some info

Cool thanks. Did you ask him about the trace issue as well?