Intel Z68 Chipset & Smart Response Technology (SSD Caching) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 11, 2011 2:34 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2011—Light Workload
Our new light workload actually has more write operations than read operations. The split is as follows: 372,630 reads and 459,709 writes. The relatively close read/write ratio does better mimic a typical light workload (although even lighter workloads would be far more read centric).
The I/O breakdown is similar to the heavy workload at small IOs, however you'll notice that there are far fewer large IO transfers:
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2011—Light Workload IO Breakdown | ||||
| IO Size | % of Total | |||
| 4KB | 27% | |||
| 16KB | 8% | |||
| 32KB | 6% | |||
| 64KB | 5% | |||
Despite the reduction in large IOs, over 60% of all operations are perfectly sequential. Average queue depth is a lighter 2.2029 IOs.
While the heavy workload was long enough to not show any benefit in performance by running it multiple times, our light workload boasts serious gains if we run it a second time with the cache active. With a light enough workload the SSD 311 as a cache can actually bring hard drive performance up to the level of an Intel X25-M G2, which is exactly what Intel was targeting with Smart Response Technology to begin with. For light users you can get an SSD-like experience at a fraction of the cost and without having to manage data across two drives.
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dagamer34 - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
Like most technologies, stay away from first-gen implementations.iwod - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
I wonder if you could install 32GB DDR3 RAM, and just use 20GB of that as Intel SRT.It would be interesting to see how its performance went.
kmmatney - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
Wouldn't be persistent between restarts, so that's a problem right there. It would have to build up the cache every time you reboot, and you couldn't use "Max Cache" mode, so you'd have to wait for the HDD for all writes.liveonc - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
In this article, it was pointed out that using an SSD is still better for those who want speed. But is a SATA3 SSD & SATA2 Velociraptor combo possible? Or what about an SSD + SSD/HDD combo? Some sort of comprimise w/o the great penalties, or smaller penalties & greater value?dgingeri - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
I've seen similar numbers using a smaller SSD with Windows 7's ReadyBoost, and it kept the most used data in the cache better. I'd prefer just using that, as it seems more predictable.jordanclock - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
This IS a big deal. However, a comparison of performance between SRT and ReadyBoost would be handy. Especially ReadyBoost with USB3.dgingeri - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
you can (and I have) set up ReadyBoost to a SATA SSD. I had a 60GB OCZ Apex as my ReadyBoost drive for about 6 months, before I got my dual Vertex 2s as a new boot drive. Windows 7 has a limit of 32GB for Readyboost usage, though. It made a heck of a difference in boot time and some program load time, however, it took a little while to get the caching set up right to cache what I actually used on a regular basis. It started caching Firefox rather quickly, but took it a while to pick up on caching Diablo 2.randinspace - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
I still haven't been able to finish the multiplayer mode due to hardware issues stranding me on a glorified netbook.DesktopMan - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
Anand: http://soerennielsen.dk/mod/VGAdummy/index_en.phpShouldn't this work perfectly fine to enable the IGPU when connected to the DGPU without any of the driver nonsense?
Hrel - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
I'd REALLY like to see you guys compare this SRT caching to two of the fastest 7200rpm drives out there in RAID 0. Cause 1-4 seconds on launching applications on loading game levels isn't work 100 extra bucks.So compare configurations: 1 MD
1 MD with Cache
2MD in RAID 0 (MD = Mechanical Disk)
2 MD in RAID 0 with cache
Vertex 3 SSD by itself (and/or the really fast Corsair one)
You already have most of this testing done and in this article.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do this soon! Thanks guys!