The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
PCMark Vantage: Used Drive Performance
Immediately after finishing my PCMark Vantage runs on the previous page, I wrote one large file sequentially to the rest of the drive. I then deleted the file, rebooted and re-ran PCMark Vantage. This gives us an idea of the worst case desktop performance of these drives as you create, delete and generally just use these drives.
The biggest difference here is that the Samsung based OCZ Summit drops from 5th to 9th place. All of the drives get slower but the Indilinx drives hardly show it. When it comes to dealing with write speed, SLC flash does have the advantage and we see the X25-E and Vertex EX rise to the top of the pack. The G2 is slightly faster than the G1 and the Indilinx drives follow in close pursuit.
The mechanical drives don't change in performance since they don't get slower with use, only as they get more full.
Again we see the two SLC drives at the top, this time followed by a mixture of Indilinx/Intel drives, and the Samsung based Summit is at the bottom of the pack before we get to the HDDs.
The spread in SSD performance here is only 10% between the slowest non-Samsung drive and the fastest. That tells me that we're mostly CPU bound, but the worst performers other than the Samsung drive are the two Intel X25-Ms. That part tells me that we're at least somewhat bound by sequential write speeds. Either way, the Indilinx drives have a good showing here.
Intel followed by Indilinx SLC with Samsung in league with the MLC Indilinx drives. This is an SSD's dream.
Despite the improvements, the G2 can't touch the much lower write latency of SLC flash here. The Indilinx and Intel G1 drives intermingle while the Samsung drive pulls up the rear. All are faster than a regular hard drive of course.
In the multitasking test we once again see Intel rise to the top. The Samsung drive does surprisingly well and the Indilinx drives continue to perform admirably.
The breakdown between SSDs here is almost linear. The X25-E leads the pack, followed by OCZ's SLC drive. The G2 and G1 are next, then a ton of Indilinx MLC drives. The slowest SSD? The Samsung based Summit of course.
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jengeek - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
As of 09-02-09 from Toshiba Direct:80GB = $243
160GB = $473
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=4...">http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=4...
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=4...">http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=4...
gfody - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
nice thank you, ordered mine from herescrew Newegg! :D
jengeek - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Both are G2, in stock and ship the next dayBoth are retail box including the installation kit
Best price I've found
ARoyalF - Sunday, September 13, 2009 - link
Thank you posting that!I was going to wait out that awful price hike over at the egg.
You rock
ElderTech - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
It's difficult to imagine the amount of time and effort that went into this article, Anand. Just the clean installs of Win7 took a fair amount of extra effort, let alone the other detailed diagrams and testing involved. From an old technology advocate over many years of working to keep pace with Moore's Law in a variety of research environments, your site provides the most satisfying learning experience of all. A sincere thank you!PS: As for the availability of the G2, it pops in and out of stock at a variety of online retailers, including Newegg, of course, as well as MWave. Both had it available for a short while at $249, Newegg on Friday and MWave today, Monday. However, it's out of stock presently as of midnight, EST 9-1-09 at both, with MWave still at $249 but Newegg going from there to $279 over the weekend and now at an amazing $499! OUCH. Sounds like supply and demand gouging if the price holds when they are next available! There is also some stock available in the distributor channel from small Intel Partners, as I confirmed by calling around the Chicago area. You might give this a try tomorrow. Good luck!
blyndy - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
You really got performance anxiety because some high-profile people/sites liked your article and linked to it? It's hardly like it got printed in some prestigious science journal and the publishers are waiting on a follow-up.It was just the first time that SDD operation had been detailed in plain english from a reputable website.
Enough of this 'anthology' nonsense, I don't care if it's 1 page or 20, just tell me how some of the new SSDs perform (eg OCZ, Western Digital). You've already detailed how they work so now I want to know which ones do/will support TRIM and some details on the controller. Nothing to get anxious about.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Indeed I did get performance anxiety after the last one, I even got it after the first X25-M. It's not so much the linkage, but the feedback from all of you guys. I received more positive feedback to the last SSD article than any one prior. More than anything I don't want to let you all down and I want to make sure I live up to everyone's expectations.As far as your interests go, all three manufacturers (Indilinx, Intel and Samsung) have confirmed support for TRIM. When? I'd say all three before December.
Take care,
Anand
cacca - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
Dear Anand i really thank you for your SSD articles, the improvements in this area seem tangible.Can I ask you to test Fusion-IO & ioXtreme, i am really curious to see how this other approach performs.
I know that isn't a perfect apple to apple comparison but at least we could compare the per $ performance.
Best regards
Ca
vol7ron - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Good article.I have a follow-up question regarding your size suggestion.
In more words you say, "get the size you need," but don't these drives perform that much better in a RAIDed system?
The cost per GB isn't that much more if you're looking at getting a 160GB Intel drive, to get the 2x 80GB instead.
SSDs are more reliable than HDs and you have the benefit of more RAM. 2x 32MB for an SSD in RAID0.
Curious to hear your thoughts,
vol7ron
StraightPipe - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Since RAID cards aren't going to support TRIM commands for a while, I'd stick with a large, single SSD.Anybody ahve any experience running these cards in RAID? I'd love to put some of these in my server, but i'm terrified of lossing data through the complexities of RAID combined with SSD.
I'd love to do a simple RAID1 setup, but it looks like i may be better of waiting too.
In the mean time, these look like a mean machine for an OS disk.