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

[Khoral]

Same here ^^ Couldn't find anything there.

Benchmarking SSD's is a nightmare.

That's so true. But it makes me ask "Is benchmarking SSDs useful ?" (not in a "who has the biggest e-penis size" use, but more in a 24/7 use)

[Ao1]

Same here ^^ Couldn't find anything there.

That's so true. But it makes me ask "Is benchmarking SSDs useful ?" (not in a "who has the biggest e-penis size" use, but more in a 24/7 use)

That is why it is good that Marc ran real life applications and timed them. He is waiting for a mod to activate his account and then he will hopefully join us.

[Marc HFR]

That is why it is good that Marc ran real life applications and timed them. He is waiting for a mod to activate his account and then he will hopefully join us.

For a lot of thing SSD are ... CPU limited

For example if i go from i7-2600K to i7-2600K @ 4.5 GHz on Crysis 2 level loading
WD 2 To Black : 21.5s => 19.2s (-2.3s)
X25-M 120 : 18.1s => 15.5s (-2.6s)
Vertex 3 240 : 17.1s => 14.4s (-2.7s)

In heavy multitasking perhaps we can have some (small) difference but it's hard to find a realistic case that i can use to benchmark.

For example during the bench i've tried to combine the launch of 3ds/photoshop/word/excel (wich in fact is already heavy) with a file copy (read+write) limited at 5 MB/s, i don't get any difference at all.

At the end, more than CPU limited, i think modern SSD are now "user" limited

[Ao1]

For a lot of thing SSD are ... CPU limited

For example if i go from i7-2600K to i7-2600K @ 4.5 GHz
WD 2 To Black : 21.5s => 19.2s (-2.3s)
X25-M 120 : 18.1s => 15.5s (-2.6s)
Vertex 3 240 : 17.1s => 14.4s (-2.7s)

In heavy multitasking perhaps we can have some (small) difference but it's hard to find a realistic case that i can use to benchmark.

For example during the bench i've tried to combine the launch of 3ds/photoshop/word/excel (wich in fact is already heavy) with a file copy (read+write) limited at 5 MB/s, i don't get any difference at all.

At the end, more than CPU limited, i think modern SSD are now "user" limited

Hi Marc, welcome to XS.

That does not surprise me. It's beyond my understanding to know how I/O processing works with either hardware of software; but both seem to like to wait for an I/O to finish before the next I/O is requested from the storage device. How quick that I/O is processed by the CPU/ RAM would therefore seem to have an impact.

Right now I'd say if you are using HDD an SSD would be the best upgrade, but if you already have an SSD a faster CPU would be the better upgrade choice. (Assuming you would have to choose one or the other )

Reliability is also a big issue for me and would be my number one choice, even over price.

[Marc HFR]

Reliability is also a big issue for me and would be my number one choice, even over price.

From the number i get from a big french etailer, for the reliability we got

Intel X25-M > Crucial C300 > OCZ Vertex 2

From 6 to 12 month of use, X25-M is at 0.3% return rate, vs 1% on C300 and 3.6% on Vertex 2.

Hope this help.