Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 8, 2008 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Enter the Poorly Designed MLC
The great thing about everyone making MLC drives based on the same design is it helps drive cost down, which gives us a very affordable product. After rebate you can buy a 64GB OCZ Core SSD, an MLC drive, for $240 from Newegg. Compared to the $1000+ that 64GB SSDs were selling for a year ago, this is good cost savings. The bad thing about everyone using the same design however is if there's a problem that affects one of the drives, it affects all of them. And indeed, there is a problem.
The symptoms are pretty obvious: horrible stuttering/pausing/lagging during the use of the drive. The drive still works, it's just that certain accesses can take a long time to complete. It's a lot like using a slow laptop hard drive and trying to multitask, everything just comes to a halt.
I first discovered this problem a couple of months ago when I started work on an article looking at the performance of a SSD in a Mac Pro as a boot/application drive. Super Talent sent me one of its 3.5” drives, which I had assumed was a SLC drive. Application launches were ridiculously fast, but I noticed something very strange when I was using my machine. Starting to type in a document, or sending an IM, or even opening a new tab in Safari would sometimes be accompanied by a second-long pause. At first I assumed it was a problem with my drive or with the controller, or perhaps a combination of the drive, the SATA controller on the Mac Pro’s motherboard and OS X itself. I later found out it was an MLC drive and thus began my investigation.
SuperTalent had received a lot of attention for its SSDs, and rightfully so - they were starting to be affordable. OCZ however quickly took the spotlight with its Core SSD, finally bringing the price of a 64GB MLC SSD to below $300. Users flocked to the Core and other similarly priced drives, because if you looked at the marketed specs of the drive you were basically getting greater than SLC performance, at a fraction of the cost:
| Advertised Specs | OCZ Core (MLC) | OCZ (SLC) |
| Read | Up to 143MB/s | Up to 100MB/s |
| Write | Up to 93MB/s | Up to 80MB/s |
| Seek | < 0.35ms | unlisted |
| Price | < $300 | > $600 |
However the real world performance didn't match up.
Let's start with the types of benchmarks that we usually see run in SSD reviews, here's a quick run of PCMark Vantage's HDD. Vantage paints the Core as a screamer:
| PCMark Vantage HDD Test | |
| OCZ Core (JMicron JMF602, MLC) | 8117 |
| OCZ (Samsung, SLC) | 12143 |
| Western Digital VelociRaptor (10,000 RPM SATA) | 6325 |
Digging a bit deeper we only see one indication of a problem, performance in the Media Center test is significantly slower than the VelociRaptor - but overall it's much faster, what could one test actually mean?
| Windows Defender | Gaming | Picture Import | Vista Startup | Windows Movie Maker | Media Center | WMP | App Loading | |
| OCZ Core (JMicron JMF602, MLC) | 48.1MB/s | 72.5MB/s | 90.4MB/s | 47.9MB/s | 23.2MB/s | 33MB/s | 17.8MB/s | 20.3MB/s |
| OCZ (Samsung, SLC) | 69.3MB/s | 71.8MB/s | 86.9MB/s | 63MB/s | 43.7MB/s | 65.6MB/s | 33.8MB/s | 39.9MB/s |
| Western Digital VelociRaptor (10,000 RPM SATA) | 27.5MB/s | 20.1MB/s | 59.0MB/s | 22.9MB/s | 58.5MB/s | 113.3MB/s | 15.2MB/s | 7.6MB/s |
If we turn to SYSMark however, the picture quickly changes. The OCZ SLC drive is now 30% faster than the MLC drive, and performance in the Video Creation suite is literally half on the MLC drive. Something is amiss.
| SYSMark 2007 Overall | E-Learning | Video Creation | Productivity | 3D | |
| OCZ Core (JMicron JMF602, MLC) | 138 | 143 | 111 | 134 | 168 |
| OCZ (Samsung, SLC) | 177 | 161 | 200 | 178 | 172 |
| Western Digital VelociRaptor (10,000 RPM SATA) | 179 | 155 | 222 | 177 | 169 |
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Donkey2008 - Monday, September 8, 2008 - link
Starting sentences with a conjunction is acceptable, but it is considered bad prose. You are giving everyone a headache. Go take your ritalin.
ggordonliddy - Monday, September 8, 2008 - link
As you stated, my English usage was correct.And I'm not the one writing the article; the burden is much greater on the people who are being PAID to write, as it should be. They are setting the example for others.
mindless1 - Thursday, September 11, 2008 - link
As a paying customer I urge you to ask for a refund.Jingato - Monday, September 8, 2008 - link
What kind of loser gives a f*** about improper use of commas? This aint a novel, it's a friggin tech site.lol get a life.
ggordonliddy - Monday, September 8, 2008 - link
You are just making it clear that you do not have a firm grasp of English. You are afraid of those who criticize poor grammar, because you know that you yourself will be exposed for the fraudulent pustule that lies beneath your slimy veneer.I have a life. I'm just sick of illiterate authors. Just because it is a tech site is no excuse for extremely poor writing skills. I'm talking about skills that should be completely mastered before being allowed to graduate from elementary school.
Jingato - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - link
No, I just don't give a f***.....there's a difference.I think you're being way too over critical. Maybe it's you OCD kicking in. If those incorrect commas really bothered you THAT much, then you should seek professional help. Seriously, that's not normal.
aeternitas - Thursday, September 11, 2008 - link
If you dont give a ****, then shut the hell up.Gannon - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - link
Anand's editors should get this:http://www.whitesmoke.com/landing_flash/free_hotfo...">http://www.whitesmoke.com/landing_flash...otforwor...
I've used it, it is not currently on this machine but what you do is you press "F2" and it checks your grammar and makes suggestings and points out errors, etc.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - link
From your comment:"You are afraid of those who criticize poor grammar, because you know that you yourself will be exposed for the fraudulent pustule that lies beneath your slimy veneer."
"... that you yourself will be exposed ..." should, in fact, be properly punctuated with commas like so: "... that you, yourself, will be exposed ..."
I agree that grammar is important. But you have to admit that screwing up on comma usage while pointing out someone screwing up on comma usage is funny.
...
Also, while it isn't an excuse, the last two days of work on this article were sleepless ... Anand wanted to get it up much sooner, and sometimes we have to make the decision to get the article out quickly rather than to send it through our managing editor.
We do always appreciate people pointing out spelling and grammar errors in our articles. We never want to over shadow the content with other issues.
ggordonliddy - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - link
> "... that you yourself will be exposed ..." should,> in fact, be properly punctuated with commas like so:
> "... that you, yourself, will be exposed ..."
>
> I agree that grammar is important. But you have to admit
> that screwing up on comma usage while pointing out someone
> screwing up on comma usage is funny.
Wrong. A comma is not required between "you yourself." See http://www.selfknowledge.com/109331.htm">http://www.selfknowledge.com/109331.htm and other examples.
I am a bit sorry for being so abrasive in my original post though. Run-on sentences just drive me nuts.