Intel X25-V in RAID-0: Faster than X25-M G2 for $250?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 29, 2010 8:59 PM ESTNot to sound like a broken record, but with the exception of OCZ's Vertex LE, not much has changed in the SSD market over the past couple of years. Intel still seems like the safest bet, and these days they're even offering a pretty compelling value.
The 80GB X25-M G2 is finally selling for reasonable prices and earlier this month Intel launched its first value SSD: the X25-V. Priced at $125, the X25-V gives you much of the performance of the X25-M but at a lower cost and capacity point. It's a great way to safely transition to an SSD.
Intel's X25-V uses the same controller as the X25-M G2, but with half the NAND and thus half the channels
For months now you all have been asking me to tackle the topic of RAIDing SSDs. I've been cautious about doing so for a number of reasons:
1) There is currently no way to pass the TRIM instruction to a drive that is a member of a RAID array. Intel's latest RAID drivers allow you to TRIM non-member RAID disks, but not an SSD in a RAID array.
2) Giving up TRIM support means that you need a fairly resilient SSD, one whose performance will not degrade tremendously over time. On the bright side, with the exception of the newer SandForce controllers, I'm not sure we've seen a controller as resilient as Intel's.
A couple of weeks ago I published some early results of Intel's X25-V SSD. But I was holding out on you, I actually had two:
Using the same Intel X58 testbed I've been using for all of my SSD tests, I created a 74.5GB RAID-0 array out of the two drives and quickly ran them through almost all of our benchmarks. At a total cost of $250, a pair of X25-Vs will set you back more than a single 80GB X25-M and you do give up TRIM, but is the performance worth it?
The Test
| AnandTech SSD Testbed | ||||
| Product | ||||
| CPU |
Intel Core i7 965 running at 3.2GHz (Turbo & EIST Disabled)
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| Motherboard |
Intel DX58SO
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| Chipset |
Intel X58 + Marvell SATA 6Gbps PCIe
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| Chipset Drivers |
Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel IMSM 8.9
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| Memory |
Qimonda DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20)
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| Video Card |
eVGA GeForce GTX 285
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| Video Drivers |
NVIDIA ForceWare 190.38 64-bit
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| Desktop Resolution |
1920 x 1200
|
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| OS |
Windows 7 x64
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GullLars - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
I think TRIM works i IDE mode also, i remember reading that both drivers PCIIDE and MSAHCI supports TRIM. However, this is not the big problem with using IDE mode, the problem is the loss of NCQ, so your performance don't scale with load. Your SSD will essentially only be able to do about 20MB/s at 4KB random read, while it can do 120MB/s random read with NCQ enabled (at fairly high load, like launching multiple apps simultaneously).buzznut - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
Thanks for the reply. I have been considering getting a new mobo anyway, I think I'd like to get a 890gx with the new interfaces.Only pb there is I have ddr2 ram and am2 cpus. doh
Guess I'll wait til some money comes in to do any upgrading...
Elganja - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
"Update (03/29/2010): Intel has recently released a new driver that allows Windows 7’s TRIM instructions to be passed through the Southbridge. The new driver is labeled "Rapid Storage Technology 9.6" and it can be found here. These drivers are also able to pass TRIM commands to RAID 0 and RAID 1 arrays. "jed22281 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
TT is mistaken, there is no 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."
Chloiber - Sunday, April 4, 2010 - link
A colleague from another HW site asked Intel directly. It's definitely NOT SUPPORTED (just to point that out again). It's clearly a mistake of intel, as they didn't make themselves clear in the change logs/readmes and even in the rapid storage manager itself it's not clear.Here is what they said btw:
"It will support TRIM with SSDs in an AHCI configuration, or with the RAID controller enabled and the SSD is used as a pass through device. An example of this use case is for users that want to use the SSD as a boot drive but still be able to RAID multiple HDDs together to allow for large protect data storage – a great use for the home theater PC."
No RAID0 or anything. "Just" simple TRIM as we're used to from the MSAHCI drivers.
Elganja - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
The quote was from this article: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3116/tweaktown_s...morphin1 - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
What do you mean by doing sequential write?How would you do that?
Also will this apply to the new Sony Vaio Z series laptops SSD's that come in Raid 0 config?
Is it recommended to buy a laptop in Raid 0 config with SSD's as over time they might become snails.
Do you see the chance of Trim being supported on current SSD's in the near future?
Thanks a lot in advance.
GullLars - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Sequential writes are the type of writes that typically occur when you save or copy large files (1MB or larger).As for RAID in sony Vaio. There is no way of telling if it will become snail-like whitout knowing wich SSD is in the laptop in question. If it's Intel, Sandforce, or C300, it sould be just fine, if it's some low-quality cheap SSD from last generation drives, or the crap they put in the netbooks last year, it will go really bad.
jed22281 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
You mean if it's:Postville (Intel), SF-1200/1500 (Sandforce), C300 (JMicron), or Barefoot (Indilinx)
GullLars - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
I forgot barefoot, my bad.