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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
22 Comments
View All Comments
Chriz - Thursday, May 22, 2008 - link
I really hope the intel SSD drives coming out next month beat the performance of these drives by a large margin with the price being lower. I doubt it, but one can hope.Visual - Thursday, May 22, 2008 - link
Still quite unimpressive in most real-world situations, but I guess that's because of me buying too much into the SSD hype and having too high expectations.Price is also gonna stay out of my reach for now.
However, I'm thankful for your reviews - at least now I know I'm not missing too much.
And I'm also looking forward to your RAID SSD tests - they could be a good indication of what manufacturers could accomplish if they made a single drive with internal RAID between its chips.
Perhaps you can also test out a RAID of some cheaper alternatives - namely flash cards + SATA adapters?
Huber - Thursday, May 22, 2008 - link
i saw your matron review back then and i saw there is a newer model - will you be reviewing it soon?Sharky974 - Thursday, May 22, 2008 - link
I'm assuming pretty soon a SSD might be priced well enough to be a viable OS drive to speed things up, kind of a cache drive, while you'll use a second much bigger traditional hard drive for more archival type storage?Cus that'll be pretty cool.
puffpio - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - link
Since that kind of test involves reading a bunch of small text files, writing bunch of small object files, and mashing them all togetherMaybe a test of compiling the anandtech website source? :D
or some very large project w/ thousands of files and pieces
as a software developer, the idea of a ssd hdd seems awesome especially in a laptop..but i wonder how it would handle project compiles
ravedave - Saturday, May 24, 2008 - link
Why not do a kernel compile? Or perhaps build a whole bunch of popular open source software? It would be great to see how this turns out. At work we build over 1000 individual C# projects a night, they are small so it only takes ~1hr, but it would be interesting to see what sort of improvement could be had. There could be a problem with the compiling being CPU limited, but I'm not sure.Pok3R - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - link
I wonder how a SSD will perform on FSX...that would be a great game test for a SSD; the drive has a non stop job of read/write the terrain data al around while you are flying and would be nice to know how faster than a normal HDD it performs!Great info congrats and thanks!
InternetGeek - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - link
One week ago I installed the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo in my "Poor Man's SSD", a 4gig OCZ 60X SD Card, just to see how much faster a solid state memory could help my system. The game installed in lest than 5minutes. It loads in less than 30seconds and most maps start in less than 20seconds. This all in a 2gig Core T2400 Laptop (Toshiba P105-S921). It's not the fastest of set ups but I did notice the difference. I can actually see that no more seeking is performed as the system prepares to run the game (CPU loaded but no seeking being carried out).It's sad though that most current SSD drives seem to suffer from not-so-good random seek times (you seek before reading or writing) performance. If they overcome this caveat I would get a SSD drive for my laptop the moment the storage/price ratio enters SATA territory.
InternetGeek - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - link
Sorry for the double post.InternetGeek - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - link
One week ago I installed the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo in my "Poor Man's SSD", a 4gig OCZ 60X SD Card, just to see how much faster a solid state memory could help my system. The game installed in lest than 5minutes. It loads in less than 30seconds and most maps start in less than 20seconds. This all in a 2gig Core T2400 Laptop (Toshiba P105-S921). It's not the fastest of set ups but I did notice the difference. I can actually see that no more seeking is performed as the system prepares to run the game (CPU loaded but no seeking being carried out).It's sad though that most current SSD drives seem to suffer from not-so-good random seek times (you seek before reading or writing) performance. If they overcome this caveat I would get a SSD drive for my laptop the moment the storage/price ratio enters SATA territory.