We have been busily preparing a new storage test suite that features Vista Ultimate 64. Call us crazy for using Vista at this point, but in order to properly test new technologies like ReadyBoost, ReadyDrive, and Low-priority I/O, this meant a change to the latest (but not greatest) that Microsoft offers. This change, like most when moving to Vista, has not exactly been smooth. The loss of our Intel IPEAK test suite is one that stings, as it is not compatible with Vista, but we will still provide selected numbers when appropriate. However, we believe our final selection of benchmarks will be able to provide a well-rounded look at a storage device’s performance from an actual application viewpoint. We will still provide a select number of theoretical benchmarks but our emphasis will be on how the storage device performs in a variety of actual benchmarks ranging from gaming to database creation.
The drive manufacturers are currently busy offering second-generation hybrid and PMR based mechanical devices but the real news in storage technology continues to be the rapid developing SSD market. We provided an early first look at the latest generation SSD drive from MTRON and since then have been bombarded not only with requests for additional tests, but drives from a variety of manufacturers that feature Super Talent, Samsung, MTRON, and MEMORIGHT.
We were very excited when our friends at DV Nation contacted us about the recent arrival of the latest generation SSD products from MTRON and MEMORIGHT that feature sustained read rates starting at 80MB/sec and going up to 112MB/sec. While these read speeds are impressive, write speed is the one area that SSD drives have generally been weak. The latest controller technology is solving this weakness. As an example, sustained write speeds are up to 105MB/sec in our sample drive from MEMORIGHT . These specifications far exceed those of the latest SanDisk and Samsung consumer SSD products that average 67MB/sec read speeds and 45MB/sec write speeds.
Another area of interest is the capability of the PATA based SSD drives to compete with their SATA cousins. In fact, the overall application results of the PATA based drives are equal to and sometime exceed the SATA drives, although their theoretical results show significantly lower scores at times. We are still researching this phenomenon as it occurs on chipsets from Intel, JMicron, Marvell, AMD, and NVIDIA. We hope to have answers before we lose our hair or the roundup, whichever comes first. It appears at this time that both Dave and I will be bald first.
We received numerous requests for write results on the MTRON drives, so we are providing those results today along with initial results from the MEMORIGHT SATA and MTRON PATA drives. We will be back before CES coverage starts with our first SSD roundup that features six different drives along with some interesting RAID results from our 64GB SSD units. Our numbers today were generated with our new test bed that features an ASUS P5N-T Deluxe motherboard based on the NVIDIA 780i chipset, Intel Q6600 Quad Core processor, and 4GB of OCZ PC2-6400 Flex memory. Our change back to an NVIDIA platform is due to the Intel ICH8/ICH9 chipsets capping SSD performance to 80MB/sec rates, something our NVIDIA or AMD chipsets do not suffer from at this time.
HD Tach 3.01
MTRON 32GB MSP 7000
MTRON 32GB MSD PATA-3025
Memoright 32GB MR25.1-032S
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 0ADFD
Our HD Tach test results heavily favor the MTRON 32GB SATA unit in sustained read rates. The MTRON's average read rate of 112.3MB/sec is about 33% better than the WD Raptor drive at 75.5MB/sec. The biggest difference is the MTRON drive holds the 112MB/sec transfer rate across the entire drive while the Raptor progressively decreases to around 52MB/sec at the end of the drive. The previous MTRON STR results were 95.1MB/sec, which is about 17% slower than the new drive.
The most interesting aspect is the average 83.2MB/sec write speed of the MTRON 32GB SATA drive, just 7% slower overall than the Raptor. However, the minimum write speed of the MTRON SATA unit is around 68MB/sec compared to 20MB/sec on the Raptor. Both of these pale in comparison to the MEMORIGHT 32GB drive that features a sustained write speed of 104.9MB/sec, the fastest we have tested to date. The MTRON 32GB PATA drive features very competitive read rates at 103.4MB/sec but HD Tach reports average write speeds at 39.4MB/sec. However, write speed performance in application testing shows it to be extremely close to the MTRON SATA drives. We will have an update in our roundup, but for now, the PATA drive looks to be a winner for those needing to upgrade an older notebook or extreme benchmarkers needing the fastest IDE drive around.
The burst rates of the Raptor at 130.7MB/sec are slightly higher than the 96~118MB/sec rates on the SSD drives, but burst rates are not nearly as large of a factor as other indicators. Access times greatly favors the SSD drives at .1ms compared to 8.3ms on the Raptor drive. That about does it for today, we will be back shortly with a full performance review on these very fast, but also expensive drives.
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edmundo jr - Sunday, December 30, 2007 - link
why is everybody continuing to change thier benchmark testing and methodology when every vista user (other than plain emailars and web surfers know that vista is just a very nicely dressed turd? a turd is a turd. put a rose on top of it still smells like a turd. lol tried windows ultimate for a few weeks..sheesh..back to xp pro. was nice to see speed again. edPatapouf - Friday, December 28, 2007 - link
but for now, the PATA drive looks to be a winner for those needing to upgrade an older notebook************************
Exactly my case
I've a IBM T42p 15' IPS which has a wonderful screen, much better than the the new WUXGA.
I hope an improvement with those PATA SSDs so I can wait for LED screens !?
tpurves - Friday, December 28, 2007 - link
Thanks for your ongoing coverage of SSD drives.I only have one point/comment to make which is
LAPTOPS LAPTOPS LAPTOPS LAPTOPS OMGLAPTOPS
these drives are currently being used in laptops. especially ultraportables. *maybe* in Apple's rumored next 13/13" powerbook which could be announced this month.
WDRaptors are not used in laptops or ultraportables.
Is there any chance you could take a look at how these perform vs LAPTOP drives? how does performance and battery life compare? what will these drives mean for laptops?
will these things finally solve the achilles heel of laptops which is slow and fragile hard-disks?
thanks
mystikmedia - Friday, December 28, 2007 - link
I own 4 of these Mtron 7000 PRO drives, and I have them in a RAID0 configuration. I have to tell you, I am very pleased with the result and overall system performance. It by far outperforms my previous system which was equipped with 6 of the 10,000 RPM Raptor drives as far as real-world, "feels like" performance. I think that the access time is a big factor in that. Everything feels very responsive. This current system has been my best upgrade yet as far as the difference I can feel.Mattus27 - Thursday, December 27, 2007 - link
Nice results - but what's with the unsubstantiated Vista bashing? I'd expect better from AnandTech.puffpio - Thursday, December 27, 2007 - link
Will there be any power consumption tests in a mobile setup?most poeple are focused on performance..I am too..battery performance :)
Reflex - Thursday, December 27, 2007 - link
Until AT does some lifespan simulation testing these benchmarks do a disservice as they encourage end users to put their data in a format where it could be lost suddenly, without warning. I am aware of the estimated lifespans of these drives, but the environments they are actually being developed for typically do massively more reads than writes, which make their estimates realistic. In a end user environment I give these drives 1-2 years tops.I have been very dissapointed at the glossing over of this issue in AT's coverage of SSD's.
leexgx - Thursday, December 27, 2007 - link
most seem to say 7-8 years before thay start to get unwritable parts (some of them start to reduce the size of the ssd when thay incounter an Bad block)chizow - Thursday, December 27, 2007 - link
What exactly makes you think these SSD drives are less durable than HDDs with moving parts? Not saying you're wrong, just curious as to what your basing this opinion. It seems that as long as your system is consistently powered there's much less threat to losing data relative to a HDD.Anyways, awesome to see more entries and new products into this market as it should help drive prices down. Also really looking forward to the real-world performance numbers....would love to cut down on those pesky load and seek times in games! :)
xeoph106 - Friday, December 28, 2007 - link
Well from my understanding you could test running windows xp from your flash drive. After about 60 days a 2gb flash drive will go bad.Flash memory can only handle between one hundred thousand and one million writes on each block.
The larger the media the longer the drive should last however it really depends on activity. I don't know how much different these solid state drives are.
"They" use a process called wear leveling so that every write operation is written on a new block until all the blocks have been used once, then it starts over writing on all the blocks until a second time, and so on. What isn't clear from reading the documentation is if there is a higher lifespan on the flash media used in the drives. If there isn't, depending on your usage, it may not be the brightest purchase unless you have a lot of money to burn and just want the fastest thing.
Some good reading material on the subject:
Flash Memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory
Wear Leveling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_levelling">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_levelling
Solid State Disks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_disk">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_disk
I would love to see a review with a stripe or a raid 5 array with some of these drives.