OCZ Vertex 3 Pro Preview: The First SF-2500 SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 17, 2011 3:01 AM ESTSequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance I ran a 3 minute long 128KB sequential test over the entire span of the drive at a queue depth of 1. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length.
This is pretty impressive. The new SF-2500 can write incompressible data sequentially at around the speed the SF-1200 could write highly compressible data. In other words, the Vertex 3 Pro at its slowest is as fast as the Vertex 2 is at its fastest. And that's just at 3Gbps.
The Vertex 3 Pro really shines when paired with a 6Gbps controller. At low queue depths you're looking at 381MB/s writes, from a single drive, with highly compressible data. Write incompressible data and you've still got the fastest SSD on the planet.
Micron is aiming for 260MB/s writes for the C400, which is independent of data type. If Micron can manage 260MB/s in sequential writes that will only give it a minor advantage over the worst case performance of the Vertex 3 Pro, and put it at a significant disadvantage compared to OCZ's best case.
Initially, SandForce appears to have significantly improved performance handling in the worst case of incompressible writes. While the old SF-1200 could only deliver 63% of its maximum performance when dealing with incompressible data, the SF-2500 holds on to 92% of it over a 3Gbps SATA interface. Remove the SATA bottleneck however and the performance difference returns to what we're used to. Over 6Gbps SATA the SF-2500 manages 63% of maximum performance if it's writing incompressible data.
Note that the peak 6Gbps sequential write figures jump up to around 500MB/s if you hit the drive with a heavier workload, which we'll see a bit later.
Sequential read performance continues to be dominated by OCZ and SandForce. Over a 3Gbps interface SandForce improved performance by 20 - 40%, but over a 6Gbps interface the jump is just huge. For incompressible data we're talking about nearly 400MB/s from a single drive. I don't believe you'd even be able to generate the workloads necessary to saturate a RAID-0 of two of these drives on a desktop system.
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sheh - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Why's data retention down from 10 years to 1 year as the rewrite limit is approached?Does this mean after half the rewrites the retention is down to 5 years?
What happens after that year, random errors?
Is there drive logic (or standard software) to "refresh" a drive?
AnnihilatorX - Saturday, February 19, 2011 - link
Think about how Flash cell works. There is a thick Silicon Dixoide barrier separating the floating gate with the transistor. The reason they have a limited write cycle is because the Silion dioxide layer is eroded when high voltages are required to pump electrons to the floating gate.As the SO2 is damaged, it is easier for the electrons in the floating gate to leak, eventually when sufficient charge is leaked the data is loss (flipped from 1 to 0)
bam-bam - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Thanks for the great preview! Can’t wait to get a couple of these new SDD’s soon.I’ll add them to an even more anxiously-awaited high-end SATA-III RAID Controller (Adaptec 6805) which is due out in March 2011. I’ll run them in RAID-0 and then see how they compare to my current set up:
Two (2) Corsair P256 SSD's attached to an Adaptec 5805 controller in RAID-0 with the most current Windows 7 64-bit drivers. I’m still getting great numbers with these drives, almost a year into heavy, daily use. The proof is in pudding:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/6361/2172011atto....
(1500+ MB/s read speeds ain’t too bad for SATA-II based SSD’s, right?)
With my never-ending and completely insatiable need-for-speed, I can’t wait to see what these new SATA-III drives with the new Sand-Force controller and a (good-quality) RAID card will achieve!
Quindor - Friday, February 18, 2011 - link
Eeehrmm.....Please re-evaluatue what you have written above and how to preform benchmarks.
I too own a Adaptec 5805 and it has 512MB of cache memory. So, if you run atto with a size of 256MB, this fits inside the memory cache. You should see performance of around 1600MB/sec from the memory cache, this is in no way related to what your subsystem storage can or cannot do. A single disk connected to it but just using cache will give you exactly the same values.
Please rerun your tests set to 2GB and you will get real-world results of what the storage behind the card can do.
Actually, I'm a bit surprised that your writes don't get the same values? Maybe you don't have your write cache set to write back mode? This will improve performance even more, but consider using a UPS or a battery backup cache module before doing so. Same thing goes for allowing disk cache or not. Not sure if this settings will affect your SSD's though.
Please, analyze your results if they are even possible before believing them. Each port can do around 300MB/sec, so 2x300MB/sec =/= 1500MB/sec that should have been your first clue. ;)
mscommerce - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Super comprehensible and easy to digest. I think its one of your best, Anand. Well done!semo - Friday, February 18, 2011 - link
"if you don't have a good 6Gbps interface (think Intel 6-series or AMD 8-series) then you probably should wait and upgrade your motherboard first""Whenever you Sandy Bridge owners get replacement motherboards, this may be the SSD you'll want to pair with them"
So I gather AMD haven't been able to fix their SATA III performance issues. Was it ever discovered what the problem is?
HangFire - Friday, February 18, 2011 - link
The wording is confusing, but I took that to mean you're OK with Intel 6 or AMD 8.Unfortunately, we may never know, as Anand rarely reads past page 4 or 5 of the comments.
I am getting expected performance from my C300 + 890GX.
HangFire - Friday, February 18, 2011 - link
OK here's the conclusion from 3/25/2010 SSD/Sata III article:"We have to give AMD credit here. Its platform group has clearly done the right thing. By switching to PCIe 2.0 completely and enabling 6Gbps SATA today, its platforms won’t be a bottleneck for any early adopters of fast SSDs. For Intel these issues don't go away until 2011 with the 6-series chipsets (Cougar Point) which will at least enable 6Gbps SATA. "
So, I think he is associating "good 6Gbps interface) with 6&8 series, not "don't have" with 6&8.
semo - Friday, February 18, 2011 - link
Ok I think I get it thanks HangFire. I remember that there was an article on Anandtech that tested SSDs on AMD's chipsets and the results weren't as good as Intel's. I've been waiting ever since for a follow up article but AMD stuff doesn't get much attention these days.BanditWorks - Friday, February 18, 2011 - link
So if MLC NAND mortality rate ("endurance") dropped from 10,000 cycles down to 5,000 with the transition to 34nm manufacturing tech., does that mean that the SLC NAND mortality rate of 100,000 cycles went down to ~ 50,000?Sorry if this seems like a stupid question. *_*