SSD Update - Memoright 32GB on the Desktop
by Gary Key on May 21, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
We will update our recent Samsung/OCZ 64GB SSD article shortly with performance results from the latest Memoright MR25.2-032S GT drive provided by DVNation. In the meantime, we are providing a quick overview of results on the desktop today. This drive is designed for the enterprise or enthusiast user with deep pockets looking for top flight performance, reduced form factor and class leading thermals/acoustics. DVNation provided us with a total of eight drives for a special RAID performance article we are working on with the enterprise user in mind.
The Memoright GT series comes in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacity points with the 32/64GB drives featuring sustained 120/120 MB/s read/write specifications and the 128GB coming in at sustained 100/100 MB/s read/write rates. Although read/write rates of current high performance SSD drives match or better most desktop SATA drives, the Achilles heel tends to be their random read/write rates. We have not completed testing yet, but random reads are around 70MB/s and writes coming in around 40MB/s in our benchmarks.
The major differences between this drive and the Samsung/OCZ offerings is reduced seek times, improved sustained transfer rates, longer warranty period, and increased power dissipation numbers along with an MSRP that matches the Samsung based 64GB drive. Our test bed setup and explanation of the benchmarks can be located in our last article.
The Memoright drive posted impressive PCVantage scores until we reach the Windows Media Player and Application loading test suites. The Windows Media Player test consists of adding songs to the playlist while playing back music. This test highly favors drives with fast read rates but the synthetic advantage that Memoright enjoys does not translate to this particular test. We tried recreating the test and ended up with the Samsung drive barely edging out the Memoright drive by 3%.
In the application loading test, we are baffled (yes, that does happen at times) with the results. This test utilizes Word 2007, Adobe Photoshop CS2, IE 7, and Outlook 2007. Our actual application results show the Memoright drive loading Word, and Adobe Photoshop quicker than the Samsung drive while IE7 and Outlook did favor Samsung/OCZ. We have contacted Futuremark to understand the exact load sequence and procedure as the Memoright drive loaded Photoshop quicker than any drive we have tested to date. Overall, we must remember that while PCVantage is based on actual application testing, it reflects the pure performance of the drive or controller utilized and not the platform.
In our actual application results, the Memoright drive offers the fastest Game level load and copy speeds. The Nero Recode test was disappointing, but to date, none of the SSD drives have fared well in this test that features sustained write operations of large data blocks in sequential order. The cache available on the mechanical drives offer buffering which greatly improve their performance. The Memoright drive did improve upon the Samsung unit by seven seconds in the WinRAR test and almost matched the VelociRaptor results.
Overall, this drive is very fast in these particular benchmarks and others not yet reported. From a purely subjective viewpoint, the entire platform seems more responsive with a fast SSD drive. This holds especially true in repeat operations with the same application, as the drive response is nearly instantaneous in most cases. However, storage capacity and price will continue to be the limiting factors in general acceptance of SSD technology. Nevertheless, it is nice to know that performance is no longer a question mark and with each successive generation, performance will continue to surpass that of a mechanical drive.
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tremelai1 - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - link
The largest issue with any SSD is the fact that most desktop class OS's are not tuned for them.XP in particular is hard coded to expect a ~10-12ms access time.
I don't claim to be a guru on the IO habits of MS OS's but most modern OS's have implemented many kernel code level 'gymnastics' to avoid hard disk latency that is simply not an issue with SSD.
When these algorithms are presented with low latency drives, such as a SSD, they don't compensate for the added performance.
Example:
The Linux elevator CFQ IO algorithm will sweep the disk, perform all requests when the head passes the required location. IO's are investigated and re-ordered based upon several factors, the largest being the head location. With SSD, the head is simulated and instantaneous.
Switching the IO algorithm under Linux to No-op (first-come first-serve with no re-ordering) should allow the SSD to shine.
I found that with large SAN arrays and RAID array's with battery backed-up write cache, disableing IO scheduling optimizers increased performance significantly on database TPC tests and conversely killed performance on JBOD arrays with no cache. It stands to reason that the same effect would hold true on SSD.
I can't find any way to disable these types of IO optimization in Windows like in the example above.
LTG - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - link
Great info.It would be helpful for the full article if we could get RAID0 results with the Intel ICHR on board controller.
The reason is very practical - A lot of people doing video use a RAID0 volume for editing and it would be great to know that there were no throughput issues if you save money and use the free Intel controller.
(Obviously in this scenario data is moved off the volume after editing)
Compositing multiple uncompressed HD streams really benefits from this.