SSDs - State of the Product?

[e_dawg]

---Check out the terrible performance of other MLC drives with random writes. The Intel drive has 2700x shorter latency than the OCZ core drive. Jesus. Looks like controllers are very important for SSDs.

[...]

One thing is for sure though: there's no way]/i] I'm buying a non-Intel MLC drive until the other manufacturers sort out that random write performance --it's like going back a decade in terms of performance... And no-one noticed this before? Come on benchmarking (benchmarketing?) community.

This is why I decided not to RAID 0 a couple OCZ 64 MB SSD's as my OS/apps/temp/swap drive. I figured write-back caching would be the best solution to compensate for slow random writes, so i entertained the notion of getting a 3Ware RAID controller with 256 MB of battery-backed write-back cache. But I am not sure if this solution really works in the real world, and I've read enough reports of problems with SSD's that I don't want to be the one that sorts through all the early adoption issues.

Nevertheless, slow random write performance is not a big issue with the majority of computing usage, as random read performance is still critical. A lot of the random read performance issues with rotating magnetic disks have been addressed with intelligent caching and pre-fetching both on the drive and in the OS (Vista is actually pretty good at this if you have enough memory), but SSD's still shine in general usage despite the random write performance. There could still be a way to use the OS to mitigate random write performance issues that hasn't been explored yet. I'm not sure how or why, but I suspect that there is a potential solution in there.

 

[sechs]

What do we mean by "slow?" Aren't even the crappy SSDs performing as well as spinning disks?

 

[Stereodude]

What do we mean by "slow?" Aren't even the crappy SSDs performing as well as spinning disks?

That depends on what and how you're testing. Here a 7200 RPM laptop drive wipes the floor with some of the "slow" SSDs.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm currently imaging my "old" VelociRaptor 150GB to my new Intel X25 80GB SSD. They currently have identical builds of XP x64 on them. Are there any benchmarks anyone would like to see?

 

[timwhit]

That Intel drive is a bit too rich for my blood.

Does anyone know anything about the Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II?

 

[LunarMist]

Something that measures random writes. SSD read performance is usually not an issue.

 

[ddrueding]

SSD read performance is usually not an issue.

No kidding. I'm getting 225MB/s average, spiking to 265MB/s

 

[ddrueding]

The numbers above were from HDTach. The image below is from ATTO with stock settings. Needless to say I'm happy with my new toy.

 

[ddrueding]

Oh, system specs:

Intel Q9550 @ 3.6Ghz (Quad core, 12MB cache)
Gigabyte EP45C-DS3R (P45 chipset)
8GB RAM (4x 2GB Kingston DDR2-800)
nVidia 9800GT w/slight OC
Intel X25 80GB SSD
Seasonic 430W
Antec P180

 

[CougTek]

Shit, your computer is faster than mine once again. I'll have to modifiy my sig.

 

[sdbardwick]

That Intel drive is a bit too rich for my blood.

Does anyone know anything about the Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II?

Looks like Fry's B&M and .com have it on sale for 99.99 with a $10 MIR and free shipping. Note that the model number for the Fry's device ends in "F", probably to avoid price-matching policies.

Search for item # 5736702 at Frys.com

IIRC, it has the JMicron controller that was in the problematic drives at Anandtech.

 

[Mercutio]

Ew.
I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but I know that some motherboards these days use Jmicron controllers for their IDE ports, and that for some weird reason that whole setup routes through the motherboard USB controller.

Basically it sounds like Jmicron-anything is something to avoid. :\

 

[ddrueding]

Shit, your computer is faster than mine once again. I'll have to modifiy my sig.

Bring it. I have a steady job now

 

[Mercutio]

My gaming rig still has a CPU that's clocked faster and I just ordered a Radeon 4870.
And I'm sure I still have more disk space.

 

[ddrueding]

I could go faster on the CPU, but I can't find 4GB DIMMs rated higher than 800Mhz. The 16GB of RAM is already on the way, and should help CS4 chew on some of my larger images.

 

[sdbardwick]

That Intel drive is a bit too rich for my blood.

Does anyone know anything about the Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II?

Bought one from Fry's on a lark. No time to play with it tonight (election party), but here is a HD Tach graph:

 

[ddrueding]

Just for comparison...

 

[timwhit]

Bought one from Fry's on a lark. No time to play with it tonight (election party), but here is a HD Tach graph:

Not bad, any more tests you could run?

 

[timwhit]

Looks like Fry's B&M and .com have it on sale for 99.99 with a $10 MIR and free shipping. Note that the model number for the Fry's device ends in "F", probably to avoid price-matching policies.

Search for item # 5736702 at Frys.com

IIRC, it has the JMicron controller that was in the problematic drives at Anandtech.

I couldn't resist the price and ordered one from Fry's.

 

[sdbardwick]

Not bad, any more tests you could run?

I had a copy of ATTO, but it vanished and a quick Google didn't reveal a DL source (or I'm blind and didn't see one). If someone wants the results and posts/PMs a link, I'll gladly run a few iterations.

As I said, this was an impulse buy motivated by curiosity, thus I am not terribly interested about benchmark performance. I'm more interested about the subjective feel during light desktop use, so I'm going to perform seperate installs of Tiny XP, Vista Ultimate, and maybe Ubuntu 8.10 on the SSD, a Seagate 15K3 on a LSI U160, (and possibly a Seagate/Maxtor [cannot recall which of the top of my head] 500GB SATA if I am not too bored) and see which "feels" most responsive in my everyday use, as well as see if this drive suffers from the write problems explored in the Anandtech article linked above to any extent noticeable in casual use. I'll probably also note the boot time for the various OSes, but that is about it.

 

[LunarMist]

http://kb.ciprico.com/lore/article.php?id=268

 

[ddrueding]

Direct ATTO download link (where I got it from)

 

[ddrueding]

Ah, Lunar beat me, but mine is more direct

 

[timwhit]

I had a copy of ATTO, but it vanished and a quick Google didn't reveal a DL source (or I'm blind and didn't see one). If someone wants the results and posts/PMs a link, I'll gladly run a few iterations.

As I said, this was an impulse buy motivated by curiosity, thus I am not terribly interested about benchmark performance. I'm more interested about the subjective feel during light desktop use, so I'm going to perform seperate installs of Tiny XP, Vista Ultimate, and maybe Ubuntu 8.10 on the SSD, a Seagate 15K3 on a LSI U160, (and possibly a Seagate/Maxtor [cannot recall which of the top of my head] 500GB SATA if I am not too bored) and see which "feels" most responsive in my everyday use, as well as see if this drive suffers from the write problems explored in the Anandtech article linked above to any extent noticeable in casual use. I'll probably also note the boot time for the various OSes, but that is about it.

This is really what I'm looking for anyways. Want to install 2003 Server on it? Either way, I will have one in a few days to test for myself.

 

[LunarMist]

Ah, Lunar beat me, but mine is more direct

I had the direct link in there first, but reconsidered. Direct linking to an .exe is bad form on some forums.

 

[sdbardwick]

Ok, ATTO with default settings. Any other settings you (y'all) want me to try?
Looks like I am hitting the SATA 1 limit on reads (or it could be a coincidence).

I got slammed by a project at work, so probably won't be able to do any practical OS testing until the weekend.

 

[sdbardwick]

Not SATA limit, device limit; other options show max. transfer >160MB/sec.

Thanks for the links!

 

[timwhit]

I got the drive today and cloned my current drive onto it. It does seem to suffer from a stutter under high IO. Did you notice this, sdbardwick?

It does seemfaster than my old boot drive, but that shouldn't be hard to achieve since it's a Seagate Cheetah 36es that has to be 5 years old.

 

[ddrueding]

What I noticed with my cheaper (not less expensive, but less good) SSDs (all but the Intel, perhaps 3 makes) is that they were faster in everything until they weren't. And when that moment hit, you were painfully aware of it. Everything would be quick and happy and then...nothing...for a significant period of time...and then it would be off to the races again.

 

[sdbardwick]

My SSD is hanging in my Q6600 case, taunting me; work hasn't allowed me to play with it yet. Sorry I can't offer any further insights right now; I hope to get to it this weekend.

 

[timwhit]

What I noticed with my cheaper (not less expensive, but less good) SSDs (all but the Intel, perhaps 3 makes) is that they were faster in everything until they weren't. And when that moment hit, you were painfully aware of it. Everything would be quick and happy and then...nothing...for a significant period of time...and then it would be off to the races again.

Yep, same thing here. Too bad, but I guess for $80 I can't expect much more. Maybe in a couple years the SLC drives will come down in price enough that I will actually be able to afford one.

 

[ddrueding]

Yep, same thing here. Too bad, but I guess for $80 I can't expect much more. Maybe in a couple years the SLC drives will come down in price enough that I will actually be able to afford one.

I did notice that having several in a RAID off a hardware controller with some cache helped somewhat, but not all that much.

 

[mubs]

What I noticed with my cheaper (not less expensive, but less good) SSDs (all but the Intel, perhaps 3 makes) is that they were faster in everything until they weren't. And when that moment hit, you were painfully aware of it. Everything would be quick and happy and then...nothing...for a significant period of time...and then it would be off to the races again.

So it looks like their performance doesn't degrade gracefully but falls off a cliff. That might be acceptable if you know up front that you'll never or will seldom reach the cliff.

 

[ddrueding]

So it looks like their performance doesn't degrade gracefully but falls off a cliff. That might be acceptable if you know up front that you'll never or will seldom reach the cliff.

That sounds accurate. But one of the times I noticed was immediately after logging in, and another was when opening Firefox for the first time. Tough to avoid those. But once you know what is happening, it's almost worth it to get the snappy performance the rest of the time.

 

[timwhit]

I've decided this Patriot drive is unusable as a boot drive. The amount of "stuttering" is unacceptable.

I have yet to try all of these tweaks from OCZ. Does anyone know if any of this will actually help enough to make this drive usuable?

On another note, if I can't fix this thing soon I might spring for the SAMSUNG MCBQE32G5MPP-0VA00. Has anyone used this drive? Does it suffer from the same problems as the cheaper MLC drives?

 

[LunarMist]

What I noticed with my cheaper (not less expensive, but less good) SSDs (all but the Intel, perhaps 3 makes) is that they were faster in everything until they weren't. And when that moment hit, you were painfully aware of it. Everything would be quick and happy and then...nothing...for a significant period of time...and then it would be off to the races again.

So you ditched that expensive 3xRAID SSD setup already?

How does the Intel SSD compare with one Velocirapor for heavy write and read activities like stitching?

 

[ddrueding]

So you ditched that expensive 3xRAID SSD setup already?

How does the Intel SSD compare with one Velocirapor for heavy write and read activities like stitching?

Yup, the 3x SSD got broken down and put into a bunch of cheap workstations. Even with the lagging it's faster than a 5400RPM dog all the time and a 7200RPM dog some of the time.

The Intel is the only SSD that hasn't had lagging of some kind. I suspect that it will stitch much better, but I haven't tried yet. I'll be able to make some runs when I get into my office (locked out; packed my key here somewhere)

 

[timwhit]

Well, I started from scratch with the Patriot drive and installed Windows 2003 Server. I did most of the fixes from the OCZ forum thread I linked to above and the performance is much than before. There are occasional pauses, but overall I'm much happier. I still need to finish installing all the apps I use on a regular basis so see if it will continue to work well though.

I guess cloning the drive from my old installation wasn't a very good plan. I was trying to save some time, but it looks like it cost me a whole lot of extra time instead.

 

[ddrueding]

... tweaks from OCZ ...

It's great how candid they are about the performance limitations, and the workarounds. When I started reading, I expected them to blame XP; but they did a good job explaining stuff.

 

[LunarMist]

PS CS4 cannot be installed on flash-based drives. WTF?

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/systemreqs/