Intel X25-V in RAID-0: Faster than X25-M G2 for $250?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 29, 2010 8:59 PM ESTOverall System Performance using PCMark Vantage
Next up is PCMark Vantage, another system-wide performance suite. For those of you who aren’t familiar with PCMark Vantage, it ends up being the most real-world-like hard drive test I can come up with. It runs things like application launches, file searches, web browsing, contacts searching, video playback, photo editing and other completely mundane but real-world tasks. I’ve described the benchmark in great detail before but if you’d like to read up on what it does in particular, take a look at Futuremark’s whitepaper on the benchmark; it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be a member of a comprehensive storage benchmark suite. Any performance impacts here would most likely be reflected in the real world.
Intel had been falling behind in the PCMark Vantage charts thanks to the SandForce and Crucial drives, but RAIDing these two X25-Vs makes up for a lot of lost time. Overall performance is basically on par with the entry level SandForce drives, but behind the C300 on a 6Gbps controller. The rest of the tests have the X25-V landing either in the middle or near the top of the charts, not bad for $250.
The memories suite includes a test involving importing pictures into Windows Photo Gallery and editing them, a fairly benign task that easily falls into the category of being very influenced by disk performance.
The TV and Movies tests focus on on video transcoding which is mostly CPU bound, but one of the tests involves Windows Media Center which tends to be disk bound.
The gaming tests are very well suited to SSDs since they spend a good portion of their time focusing on reading textures and loading level data. All of the SSDs dominate here, but as you'll see later on in my gaming tests the benefits of an SSD really vary depending on the game. Take these results as a best case scenario of what can happen, not the norm.
In the Music suite the main test is a multitasking scenario: the test simulates surfing the web in IE7, transcoding an audio file and adding music to Windows Media Player (the most disk intensive portion of the test).
The Communications suite is made up of two tests, both involving light multitasking. The first test simulates data encryption/decryption while running message rules in Windows Mail. The second test simulates web surfing (including opening/closing tabs) in IE7, data decryption and running Windows Defender.
I love PCMark's Productivity test; in this test there are four tasks going on at once, searching through Windows contacts, searching through Windows Mail, browsing multiple webpages in IE7 and loading applications. This is as real world of a scenario as you get and it happens to be representative of one of the most frustrating HDD usage models - trying to do multiple things at once. There's nothing more annoying than trying to launch a simple application while you're doing other things in the background and have the load take forever.
The final PCMark Vantage suite is HDD specific and this is where you'll see the biggest differences between the drives:
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jed22281 - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
@GullLarsCould you please explain to RoomRaider (down the bottom of pg 6) that there is no
TRIM support for RAID-0?
He keeps insisting there is throughout these comments....
He needs someone to explain why what he's citing as proof, is wrong.
Thanks if you can!
jed22281 - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
Then again maybe he's right...http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3116/tweaktown_s...
But his cited no's for knowing this to be true haven't sounded right to me yet.
Boofster - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
It would be nice to see the X25-M G2 in RAID0 as well. Yes it is much more $ but still great value if you look at the performance. The 160gb will cost you ~$400 and possibly beat anything in this review. Of course you can say the same for the faster single drives in RAID0 as well but the value is lost.I can say for sure the Intel RAID tools do not let you TRIM the drive in RAID0 (X58 board). I am not sure if you temporarily drop the drive from the RAID, TRIM it, then put it back will work. Probably not because it will mess up the file system. I really hope Intel works this into their drivers as it is a very attractive option.
Can you also elaborate on the cleaning process? How do I accomplish this "secure data wipe"?
Hauraki - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
There was a review on X-bit labs praised the v+ 2nd gen for home usage, and I'd like a second opinion from AnandTech. Thanks.nobita1168 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Hai, i miss printed version , i like save to disk and read later, can anantech make a print version again? thanks
Ramon Zarat - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
I don't know if the question has been asked before, but I'm wondering if TRIM will eventually be implemented for RAID or if it's technically impossible. If it's possible, any clue as of when it will happen?jed22281 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
I would love to know this too! :(Roomraider - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
After reading this review, I had to post: I'm running 2xM 160 g2's in Raid-0 with full trim support from Intels latest chipset drivers designed just for trim to raid support.So what gives here? Did someone not get the news about the new chipset drivers?
jed22281 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
You are mistaken, there is not support for drives combined into RAID volumes.There is for individual drives connected to the controller while it's in RAID mode.
http://www.intel.com//support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-...
Also see
http://communities.intel.com/community/tech/solids...
Look for the gold star at the top of the page, select show details and then go to announcement 2.
"Intel® RST 9.6 supports TRIM in AHCI and pass through modes for RAID. A bug has been submitted to change the string that indicates TRIM is supported on RAID volumes (0, 1, 5, 10). Intel is continuing to investigate the ability of providing TRIM support for all RAID volumes in a future release."
buzznut - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
Thank you Anand!This is exactly what I've been looking for. I thought the performance would be better, but I had no idea it would be this good! I still see very little being written about these cost effective little drives. its good to know where to go for my SSD advice.
A quick question for anyone- My motherboard was running the drive (Intel x25-v) in ahci mode, but the mobo( Tforce ta790gx a2+) has never liked running in that mode and I started getting BSOD's after about two weeks. I had to switch back to ide mode, the board has always been quirky this way. Runs very smooth in IDE mode, no problems.
I had heard someone mention that trim doesn't work in ide mode, only while running the drive in ahci. If this is the case, then I will truly not miss trim when I get another drive and raid!
Can anyone confirm the loss of trim command in IDE mode? The intel toolbox seems to work just fine when I run the weekly optimizer.