SSDs - State of the Product?

[Mercutio]

Hey, Buck is posting!?!

Welcome back Buck!

 

[ddrueding]

The Vertex is still my SSD of choice, I haven't gotten any Turbos yet...

 

[LunarMist]

I didn't see anything about the X25E. Will there be a faster one or just the same at a higer price?

 

[mubs]

Hi Buck, good to see you. How are you?

Are Merc and I the only ones to notice??!

 

[timwhit]

I noticed, but thought it might be a mirage.

 

[timwhit]

Oh yeah, welcome back Buck.

 

[Fushigi]

This article cites $440 for the 160GB Intel. I could probably do that.

And in other Intel news, quad core CPUs are getting a price reduction in advance of a new generation to debut this fall.

 

[timwhit]

I will probably get the 80GB drive when it's available. I don't know why I would need a 160GB boot drive.

 

[Fushigi]

For me it would probably be to replace my laptop's drive, currently a 120GB with <40GB free.

Also, from a wear leveling perspective, given x GB of data, the large the drive the longer it should last.

 

[timwhit]

I'd rather get the cheaper drive and then upgrade in 2 years when there are faster drives on the market.

 

[Fushigi]

That's in part why I've been holding off so far. For as long as they've been out, good quality SSDs are still in the early adopter phase when it comes to pricing. I'd rather wait until they get under about $2/GB, but I can only be patient for so long.

 

[Santilli]

Welcome back Buck!

How's life?

Greg

 

[Pradeep]

Buck! Long time no see!

 

[Howell]

Hey Buck!

 

[Buck]

Howdy all . . . things are going good. Bartender, drinks for the group on me!

 

[Handruin]

Hi Buck. Good to see you around even if just for a short bit. I'm happy to hear things are going good.

 

[Pradeep]

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3607

G2 drive brief review

 

[LunarMist]

No new X25-E. That seriously sucks.

 

[ddrueding]

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3607

G2 drive brief review

Page three has an interesting bit. It says that there are some clones to my favorite OCZ Vertex:

Patriot Torqx
Corsair Extreme Series X128
G.Skill Falcon
SuperTalent UltraDrive ME

 

[LunarMist]

You have two of these? That's too costly for the performance.

 

[ddrueding]

You have two of these? That's too costly for the performance.

No, I don't own any of those. The regular OCZ Vertex (not even the Turbo) is fine for typical desktop performance. I buy the 30GB version for $140. Now that I know that the other drives are basically the same thing, I'll be keeping an eye on their pricing as well...

Patriot Torqx 64GB - $223
G.SKILL FALCON 64GB - $180
OCZ Vertex 60GB - $229

 

[LunarMist]

It is very confusing. There are too many OCZ models. What kind of name is that, anyway?

It is difficult to decide which is the better compromise in the MLC type. The X25-M II has better random writes, but much slower sequential writes compared to the Vortex described in the article (whichever one that is at NewEgg:dunno. Both should be fast enough for most OS/apps usage, but what about the page file? How random vs. sequential are the writes?

 

[sechs]

Now that I know that the other drives are basically the same thing, I'll be keeping an eye on their pricing as well...

OCZ has been throwing out random rebates to keep ahead on price. If you're willing to follow that game, it seems like there will always be a cheaper Vertex out there.

 

[sechs]

Right, but this is a SATA drive, and SATA 3.0Gbps wasn't out when the current SAS standard (let alone the card that I have) was made.

I was finally able to find the answer to this one.

SATA 2 is supported in SAS 1.1. So my SAS 1.0 HBA only does SATA 1.0a, which isn't any better than my onboard controller.

 

[Pradeep]

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3608

"Intel Forces OCZ's Hand: Indilinx Drives To Drop in Price"

 

[ddrueding]

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3608

"Intel Forces OCZ's Hand: Indilinx Drives To Drop in Price"

What I found interesting there was the talk of OCZ's 3.5" Colossus SSD in capacities up to 1TB at prices of $2.15/GB ($2200). We are getting there.

 

[sechs]

"Intel Forces OCZ's Hand: Indilinx Drives To Drop in Price"

Seeing as nobody pays MSRP, Agility drives should start to get dirt cheap (in relative terms).

How slow can you go, and not have it perform any worse than 7200RPM laptop drive?

 

[Stereodude]

I'm not sure why you would buy the 60GB OCZ Vertex over a 80GB Intel though, even at the new pricing levels.

 

[ddrueding]

Seeing as nobody pays MSRP, Agility drives should start to get dirt cheap (in relative terms).

How slow can you go, and not have it perform any worse than 7200RPM laptop drive?

None of the drives mentioned are anywhere near risking this. They seem to have these issues resolved with the new controllers.

I'm not sure why you would buy the 60GB OCZ Vertex over a 80GB Intel though, even at the new pricing levels.

The Vertex actually outperforms the Intel under certain workloads, so it does depend.

 

[timwhit]

Are there any reviews out for the second gen Intel SSD?

 

[CougTek]

Are there any reviews out for the second gen Intel SSD?

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3607

 

[timwhit]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3607

Looks good. When can I buy one?

 

[Gilbo]

I like Techreport's review more. They have real-world STR-driven tests using large file copies.

It's interesting, for example, that despite having less STR in HD Tach then its competitors, the X25-M surpasses them in real-world benchmarks for which STR is the largest factor. Why? Who knows, but the Intel consistently dominates in all real world scenarios.

 

[udaman]

What I found interesting there was the talk of OCZ's 3.5" Colossus SSD in capacities up to 1TB at prices of $2.15/GB ($2200). We are getting there.

Need SATA 6GB/s like yesterday

OCZ Colossus early testing data, now with ETA and pricing

http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=7527

 

[udaman]

I like Techreport's review more. They have real-world STR-driven tests using large file copies.

It's interesting, for example, that despite having less STR in HD Tach then its competitors, the X25-M surpasses them in real-world benchmarks for which STR is the largest factor. Why? Who knows, but the Intel consistently dominates in all real world scenarios.

psuedo-RW benchmks.

File Copy Test is a pseudo-real-world benchmark that times how long it takes to create, read, and copy files in various test patterns. We've converted those completion times to MB/s to make the results easier to interpret....For our tests, we created custom MP3, video, and program files test patterns weighing in at roughly 10GB each. The MP3 test pattern was created from a chunk of my own archive of ultra-high-quality MP3s, while the video test pattern was built from a mix of video files ranging from 360MB to 1.4GB in size. The program files test pattern was derived from, you guessed it, the contents of our test system's Program Files directory.
Even with these changes, we noticed a little more variability in FC-Test performance than we'd like to see.



Normally, we run tests three times and average the results, but for FC-Test, we've run each test five times before averaging. We also had to perform some additional test runs to replace obviously erroneous results that cropped up occasionally with each of the drives, usually on the first one or two test runs. The X25-M G2 was a particularly egregious offender on this front, with its performance varying wildly through the first three to four test runs before settling down to consistent, repeatable levels. We've asked Intel why that is, but have yet to get a response.

ETA end of the month, zipzoomfly has them listed

http://search.zipzoomfly.com/?Key=intel+SSD&Category=00&x=0&y=0

 

[LunarMist]

I like Techreport's review more. They have real-world STR-driven tests using large file copies.

It's interesting, for example, that despite having less STR in HD Tach then its competitors, the X25-M surpasses them in real-world benchmarks for which STR is the largest factor. Why? Who knows, but the Intel consistently dominates in all real world scenarios.

Inexplicably, the X25-E was not tested.

 

[ddrueding]

Need SATA 6GB/s like yesterday

OCZ Colossus early testing data, now with ETA and pricing

http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=7527

Great info. RAIDing RAIDed drives sounds like so much fun...

 

[Santilli]

Anyone found a test that puts SCSI 15k'S, in raided configuration, against the SSD's?

 

[timwhit]

The new Intel SSD is now listed on Newegg. Not in stock though.

 

[P5-133XL]

The new Intel SSD is now listed on Newegg. Not in stock though.

and it won't be for a while: Intel pulled the product because of a bug in the firmware that potentially caused catastrophic data loss. Note under normal circumstances you would not have a problem. From my reading, to get the loss you had to password protect the drive and then change the password.