SSDs - State of the Product?

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,257
OK:
Merc, DD, do you think the Intel 25-M is worth 350 bucks? Other ideas?

80 gigs is enough for my boot drive.

Thanks
gs
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,257
Forgot to mention that both computers are limited to 150 mb/sec, sata 1, or whatever...
 

Stereodude

Not really a
Joined
Jan 22, 2002
Messages
10,865
Location
Michigan
FWIW, those prices suck. The 30GB OCZ Vertex has dipped as low as $115 after rebate. Not sure why it's worth $149 now. And, the Intel 80GB has been as low as $295.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,257
David:
Why don't you give me a great price on those two OCZ 32 gigs, and, buy another Intel X-25E for your system?

Tax write off?

;-)

What's the advantages of the Auzentech X-Fi Forte over the Xplosion?
 

sechs

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
4,709
Location
Left Coast
Does anyone have experience with the OCZ Vertex series or Kingston SSDnow M series (of apparent Intel rebadges)?
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,719
Location
Horsens, Denmark

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,719
Location
Horsens, Denmark
The OCZ Vertex work great. There is no way I could tell the difference between them and an Intel "M" SSD without benchmarks. The larger capacity at each price point has caused me to switch to them over the Intel drives. The Kingston "M" series is exactly an Intel "M". The only thing different is the device ID and the sticker.
 

sechs

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
4,709
Location
Left Coast
Except for them announcing another new line, the Vertex sounds like a good choice. A few more questions:

Have you bothered futzing with all of that stuff they suggest in OCZ's fora?

What's your experience on firmware updates?
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,454
Location
USA
Where are we now with the state of the SSD? I'm suffering from lack of capacity in the 32GB X25-E. Are there any alternatives with good write performance like the X25-E? $750 seems excessive for the 64GB X25-E if there is something better or the same available now or very soon.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,719
Location
Horsens, Denmark
The X25-M and OCZ Vertex are the closest thing on this side of $750. A pair of X25-M in RAID0 made my i7 the bottleneck for most operations. What task are you trying to optimize for?
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,454
Location
USA
I forgot this thread. My limitations are mostly with PS and (infrequently) PTGUI. The problem is that I have only one SSD, so the system can bog down when it is in heavy use. I can't decide whether it would be worthwhile to add another SDD, so that the temp files could be on a separate drive from the OS and page files. I'm not sure if that would help enough.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,719
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Which SSDs are you putting in a MacBook Pro (and what apps are you running) that would cause real-world performance to be affected by a cap at 150Mb/s? Perhaps it was the lack of other features related to the spec?
 

MaxBurn

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Messages
3,245
Location
SC
Which SSDs are you putting in a MacBook Pro (and what apps are you running) that would cause real-world performance to be affected by a cap at 150Mb/s? Perhaps it was the lack of other features related to the spec?

Command queuing maybe??
 

udaman

Wannabe Storage Freak
Joined
Sep 20, 2006
Messages
1,209
rumor :)

"Chipzilla" (gotta lov them Brits sense of humour :p ) <140char = Twitterrific™

link
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,257
Found another link that mirrors your post, but, with a promise of lower prices...

Can't remember where, now...
 

sechs

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
4,709
Location
Left Coast
Summit uses a Samsung controller. Vertex uses an Indilinx controller.

From what I can tell, the difference in performance and price is not large.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,454
Location
USA
Other than the Intel and rebranded Kingston SSDs, do any of them use the Intel controller?
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,454
Location
USA
So why should one buy them, or are they faster than Intel in write IOs?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
22,232
Location
I am omnipresent
I got an OCZ Vertex 120GB drive yesterday. It's definitely faster for writes than my X25-Ms but read performance as measured by system startup seems to be about the same, with Server 2003 needing about 16 seconds on either drive.

I can't quite bring myself to cough up for an SLC drive though.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,257
That's absurd. Reminds me of paying 1264. for 32 mb of ram for a 540C Mac laptop.
Next year it was 150 dollars.
 

sechs

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
4,709
Location
Left Coast
So none of the other controller brands support SLC memory?
I think that Samsung has an SLC controller, but I don't think that it's better than Intel's.

I finally got the Vertex that I ordered and installed Windows on it. It's a lot less impressive than I'd been lead to believe.

It's definitely faster than the 10k SAS drive that it displaced. Windows gets to a useable state much faster, and Photoshop CS4 loads pretty quick. But it's not the whiz-bang wow speeds that a lot of people on the Internet have been reporting.

It is a lot cooler and seems to run on less power (which is not that hard to do). Definitely, at this performance level, it would be worth specifying SSDs as an upgrade for some laptop users.

What needs to happen is for prices to come down. I can't imagine putting anything less than a 60GB drive in a user's computer these days, but~$175 is a bit steep. And really, the folks who are willing to shell out, really want/need much larger drives, which may involve the trading of unborn children.

I see prices falling now. When should we expect the next generation of drives to be on the market?
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,257
Anyway you can quantify why you think it's not as fast as you were expecting?
Which SAS drive did it replace? Access, random, sequential read speed for the drive it was replacing?

Thanks
Sechs
 
Top