Thanks for another great article. I'm patiently waiting for a (decent) 512 GB SSD in my budget so I can just throw everything besides media files on it; 256 GB might work, if I wasn't so damn lazy. Plus, I'd rather have a half full 512 GB drive than a 90+% full 256 GB drive.
90%+ full 256gb, I hear ya. I've been digging over as many SSD reviews as I can in the last couple days. I WANT to replace my 256gb 5400rpm in my notebook, but just can't quite squeeze everything into 200gb.
my problem is the ~120gb of development VMs, I can't get rid of them, but since I'm in vmware all day a SSD would be heaven sent for general performance. I'm keeping things pretty slim at ~190gb out of 256gb, but that 200gb mark is just too tight. I'd buy a 300gb agility 2 today if it existed.
Those numbers are from the older OWC Mercury which used a limited run of SF-1500. The newer drives going forward are SF-1200 based. I'll be phasing them out of our graphs as a result.
When are we going to see benchmarks on the new intel driver that's faster than microsoft's driver and it supports trim with raid and we shouldn't go off of just prices MSRP but actual newegg prices and maybe even have a low to high # for example Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH160G2R5 ($400 - $489). Also include the 80gb version specially since its around $215 - $225
I agree on the prices... Street prices of OCZ's Indillix drives are much lower than that Corsair Nova for instance, since OCZ ALWAYS has $20-30 rebates going on their drives (and they're just cheaper to begin with)... OCZ's Nova equivalent, the Solid 2, is like $300 flat after MIR.
Intel's newer SATA drivers don't enable TRIM in RAID, just w/RAID... You can have a SSD w/TRIM support and two HDD in RAID on the same controller with said drivers (something you couldn't do before), but you still can't RAID two SSD and retain TRIM support. AFAIK they didn't dramatically alter performance either but if you've got a link to tests that say otherwise I'd love to see it... I haven't bothered to install them yet.
but you do have to admit it is strange that imsm 8.9 was used for the testbed instead of irst 9.6. 8.9 doesn't support trim at all! one has to wonder how this might affect (or not) the benchmark scores.
"The SandForce SF-1200 controller used in the A-DATA S599 with Intel’s latest RST 9.6 drivers is the fastest 2.5 inch solid state drive for Windows users at this time. This combination is able to outperform every other drive we have tested to date in all around performance." Source tweaktown but they compared it to another 1200 drive instead of using the same ssd with both drivers. This is what intel says "Is there TRIM support for RAID configurations?
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 9.6 supports TRIM in AHCI mode and in RAID mode for drives that are not part of a RAID volume.
A defect was filed to correct the information in the Help file that states that TRIM is supported on RAID volumes."
I still don't understand if the SandForce compression increases the available storage space. Is that discussed in the article somewhere? Is the user storage capacity 93.1 GB if you write uncompressable data, but much larger if you are writing normal data? If so that would effectively lower the cost per gigabyte quite a bit.
It does not increase the storage capacity of the drive. The OS still sees xxGB worth of data as being on the drive even if it's been compressed by the controller, which means something takes up the same amount of reported space regardless of compressibility.
The intention of SandForce's compression abilities was not to get more data on to the drive, it was to improve performance by reading/writing less data, and to reduce wear & tear on the NAND as a result of the former.
If you want to squeeze more storage space out of your SSD, you would need to use transparent file system compression. This means the OS compresses things ahead of time and does smaller writes, but the cost is that the SF controller won't be able to compress much if anything, negating the benefits of having the controller do compression if this results in you putting more data on the drive.
The Sandforce drives report the same space available to the user, even if there is less data written to the drive. Does it mean that Sandforce drives should last longer because there are fewer actual writes to the NAND? One would reach the 10 million (or whatever) writes with Sandforce later than with other drives.
On a note somewhat related to another post here, I have a request. Could you guys please post final 'available to OS' capacity in *gibibytes*? (or if you must post gigabytes to go along with the marketers at the drive companies make it clear you are using GIGA and not GIBI) After I realized how much 'real available to OS' capacity can vary among drives which supposedly have the same capacity this would be very useful information...people need to know how much actual data they can fit on the drives and 'gibibytes available to the OS' is the best standard way to do that.
I agree Just as an idea you could have the option to click the graph and get a bigger version, I guess it would be something like 600x3000 in size but would give another angle at the data Because for 90% of your users I think a logramithic scale is very hard to comprehend :)
Not sure if this is the best place to post this but as I just remembered to do so, here goes... I have no issues whatsoever with your site re-design on my desktop, it's clean, it's pretty, looks fine to me.
HOWEVER, it's pretty irritating on my netbook and on my phone... On the netbook the top edge of the page simply takes up too much space and leads to more scrolling than necessary on every single page. I'm talking about the banner ad, followed by the HUGE Anandtech logo (it's bigger than before isn't it), flanked by site navigation links, and followed by several more large bars for all the product categories. Even the font's big on those things... I don't get it, seems to take more space than necessary.
Those tabs or w/e on the previous design weren't as clean looking, but they were certainly more compact. At 1024x600 I can barely see the title of the article I'm on when I'm scrolled all the way up (or not at all if I've enlarged text size a notch or two). It's not really that big a deal, but it just seems like there's a ton of wasted space around the site navigation links and the logo. /shrug
Now on to the second issue, on my phone while using Opera Mini I'm experiencing some EXTREME slowdowns when navigating your page... This is a much bigger deal, it's basically useless... Can't even scroll properly. I've no idea what's wrong, since Opera Mini doesn't even load ads or anything like that, but it wasn't happening a week or two ago either so it's not because of the site re-design itself...
It's something that has NEVER happened to me on any other site tho, they may load slow initially, but after it's open I've never had a site scrolls slowly or behave sluggishly within Opera Mini like Anandtech is doing right now... Could it be a rogue ad or something?
I load the full-version of all pages on Opera Mini all the time w/o issue, but is there a mobile version of Anandtech that might be better suited for my phone/browser combination in the meantime?
That file 512mb in size which compresses 1000x seems to simply full of zeros, so it represents best case performance for sandforce. On the other hand pure random writes are not expected in typical computer usage so they also are not very meaningful. Any chance to feed iometer with data from your storage bench for example?
I actually think random writes with compressed files are meaningful. JPEG files are highly compressed - you can gain only 1-3% by zipping them. Those who work with such files a lot - write to the disk or move around jpegs or similar compressed graphic and video files - should be paying most attention to these new tests for Sandforce. It may be a good idea to add the results for all (most) drives to the page with random writes chart as another chart "Random Writes - Compressed files".
Thanks to the new tests, it appears the charts of rnd or seq writes are currently misleading with respect to Sandforce, if most of your important files (e.g., for a graphic designer) are compressed. The charts are easier to read than text. Currently, one has to flip pages to and from the "Random Data performance page" in order to get the true picture. Maybe Anand can add a bar with "Corsair with compressed data" to the read/write charts? Thanks.
I guess that drive is not that well suited for video editing, where you have mostly random data (compressed and uncompressed, both look rather random to the drive). it wouldn't be bad in any way, just lose it's peak performance.
Up until about a week or two ago I was set on an Intel X25-M G2 80GB, but now I'm not so sure anymore. If I got a Vertex 2/Agility 2, it would be a 50GB version... decisions decisions.
After my problems last week, I ended up going back to the Crucial M225 series with the Indilinx controller. It is not quite as fast, but it does have a 5 year warranty. I paid $325 for the 128GB drives and a very low $579 for a 256GB drive from Newegg.
I have been using these drives in several machines since the beginning of the year. They all support TRIM and I have had no problems. They are very fast in daily use. I had hoped the Sandforce drives would be faster, but I guess I will have to wait for a later date to find out (I will be purchasing another pair of computers in July after the new fiscal year begins...perhaps I will purchase the Sandforce SSDs at that time).
What happens when you use TrueCrypt to encrypt your OS.? Does it then random-write everything and indilinx is better? Does it make the Vertex 2 much better? Or no difference?
Encrypted data should look like random noise, and as a result should have very little compressibility. I haven't used TrueCrypt, but it's my understanding that it writes garbage data to whatever part of the hidden partition isn't in use, so the whole thing should largely be uncompressible and match our random data performance.
I'm interested in encrypted testing also. These controllers are beginning to look like very fast consumer drives rather than enterprise (if the SATA interface wasn't a big enough hint already).
I'm also wondering why are they getting a more substantial performance hit when writing compressed random 4k writes compared to 2MB sequential writes (74.4% vs 57.4%).
Just to re instate, why are all these SSD makers coming out with SATA drives and calling them enterprise? AFAIK, Intel and Hitachi are working on an SAS SSD but I'm not aware of any other reasonable company doing the same (i'm totally ignoring what the military might have because costs there are nuts).
... Too bad that the price is still high so I'm very interested for the low-end 40 GB ones, but with good random 4k writes. I have 5 machines at home waiting for this upgrade as the boot drive. :-)
Allow me to thank you, Anand, for your dedication and work.
New Egg's description says "For enthusiasts w/ up to 15,000 4KB random write IOPS" which would suggest the controller is the SF 1200 where as the Vertex LE SSD drives are suppose to have the SF 1500 controller which will do ~ 30,000 4kb so the inconsistency brings up curiosity. To make matters worse, The OCZ website says they use the SF 1500 controller. Which I vaguely recall someone saying they asked OWC which controller they were using for their OWC Mercury Extreme SSD drives and OWC's response was that they didn't know....
Originally, I was told by Customer Service that he "did not know", but after pressing for an answer and a breif period on hold, he returned and told me that all current and future Mercury Extreme SSDs would utilize the Sandforce 1200 controller.
I was very angry at this "bait and switch" and returned my SSDs. Actually, they were in transit and I had OWC recall them. I have not yet received credit for them although they returned to OWC early Tuesday morning.
I will also say that OWC did send confirmation of the returns and said that the credit would be processed by the end of the week, so all is not bad.
I was asked "what the big deal was" on another thread. The way I see it, it would be like ordering an expensive sports car with a V6 and having it arrive with a turbocharged 4 cylinder. The performance may be the same, but there would then be the possibility of added maintenance costs, lesser reliability and a shorter lifespan. Add to that that the dealer would tell me that even though the smaller turbo option was $1,000 less than the V6, I should pay the same because performance really would be nearly identical.
15k IOPs is higher than the SF1200 supports with a normal firmware. More likely I think would be something similar to intels 40GB drive where only half the controllers flash chip ports are filled and a full speed SF controller.
That was a really helpful and thorough article. Thank you for all this info. a few things that i wanted to ask.
-On the random read/write speed page and specifically on the 4k aligned random write, we don't see anywhere the intel x25-E performance. Obviously that is because the testing of the x25-E was performed in the past, when this kind of test wasn't performed. Is it safe to assume that the performance of the x25-E would be quite close to that of the 4k random write test (around 48MB/s)?? Since we see that mostly the new controllers are mostly affected.
-Furthermore, at least from what i've seen on eshops around in my country, the price of the z-drive m84 250GB and 500Gb has come closer to that of sata ssds. Still they are more expensive of course, but wouldn't it be a good idea to start seeing some z-drive performance on those tables for a direct comparison with the ssds and see whether the difference in their performance is bigger than the difference in their price? Just a thought.
Making an extra remark on the performance of SF controller during already compressed data plus the the random data perormance table was a pretty important addition and something we should pay attention to.
correct, the x25-e, like -m, isn't affected drastically by alignment. you can expect slightly higher numbers with alignment, but nothing jaw-dropping. on the other hand, the x25-e positively rips at random writes at high queue depths, but that's not something you're likely to see often in desktop usage.
When does this ever happen? isn't that sentence an oxymorron, the only thing i can think of it if you were installing several applications at the same time? and it would depend on the applications being installed too, since i think i remember hearing that games are very sequential now
I DO see the importance when dealing with pre-compressed files like pictures and videos, i agree it would be nice to see a 0% 50% and 100% compressed figures to give people a good overview of things, but still, when would you see highly random sequential data?
Sequentially speaks about data access pattern, highly random is about data itself. It is perfect description of writing movie to a disk - you are storing byte-by-byte and each byte is probably different that preceeding ones.
I'm pretty sure we're still 18-24 months away from having SSDs priced at a level that the average SSD-seeker is willing to spend.
There will probably be an attractive price differential between what is available now and what price level the same will be available for in 12 months, but I really think it'll take a bit over a year to start seeing "attractive" pricing.
None of this stuff matters to me until Apple supports TRIM or garbage collection (I believe this is "OS-agnostic" TRIM, right?) comes to the drives with the best firmware and price/usable GB.
I just want a 256-300 GB SSD that I can leave 15% unpartitioned and throw into a MBP. I want it to scream.
Anand, you mention Intel/indilinx but not the realssd in your final review? It has the lowest cost per gb AND is one of the best performers. It scored very high on your real world benches.
No, not at all. I'm saying if SandForce had made the controller with a SATA 6Gbps interface instead of 3Gbps, it would have maxed the interface anyway for highly compressible data, both reading and writing. With RAW speeds of about 200-220MB/s read and 120-130MB/s write, data compressible to 1:2 could be read at 400-440MB/s and written at 240-260MB/s, and data compressible to 1:3 could be read at 600MB/s and written at 360-390MB/s... Anand says in his Agility 2 review that sandforce found installing windows 7 and MS office 2007 physically took up less than half of the original size, meaning those kinds of files would be written above 250MB/s and read above 450MB/s... The sandforce drives get PCmark scores around 38-40K, with a SATA 6Gbps interface i think they would get over 50K, maybe even over 60K. The limiting factor would be the read IOPS, wich tops out around 30-35K IOPS, and wouldn't get a boost by a faster interface since it seems to be controller computing power bound. Since it seems the 50GB versions are capable of the same both RAW and compressed speeds as 100GB and 200GB versions, a ROC + 2x SF-1200 in a 2,5" enclosure with SATA/SAS 6Gbps interface could be nice. Sort of like OCZ Apex, G.skill Titan, and OCZ Colossus, only made decently with full NCQ support and not tonnes of accesstime overhead. SF-1200 due to price, and (2x10K=) 20K IOPS sustained random write being "enough". Such a drive would give the same numbers as anvil has posted above, at possibly 1,3-1,5x the price, but on a single port, making it easy to scale to insane bandwidth on LSI 92xx for compressible data (over 4GB/s both read and write).
Like the subject says, that was meant as a reply on XS forum...
Here is the post i meant to post:
Anand As always, a great review, but i still miss 4KB random tests at higher queue depths to test out more than just 3 of the flash channels. A graph of 4KB random read with Queue Depth (2^n steps) on the x axis and IOPS/bandwidth on the y axis would also be nice, as it would show scaling by load. If you were to do this test, you would see that your statement that SandForce's 4KB random read performance on compressed data being worse than Indilinx is false for queue depths over 4, where indilinx tops out at ca 60MB/s = 15K IOPS, while sandforce reaches about 120MB/s. Seing as in that case SandForce has double the 4KB random read performance of Barefoot on uncompressible data, i suggest the statement should be retracted, or at least a note added to state it's not true for higher queue depths.
To back my statement with benchmark data: xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4352703&postcount=56 AS SSD benchmark and CrystalDiskMark 3.0 use hardly compressible data, as shown by the sequential write speeds meassured.
And for those interrested, the benchmark numbers i was reffering to that anvil posted "above" are these: xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4352876&postcount=57 It's 2 Vertex LE 100GB in RAID-0 off ICH10R, IRST 9.6, WBC off.
"SandForce also claims that its reduced write amplification could enable the use of cheaper NAND on these drives. It’s an option that some manufacturers may take however OCZ has committed to using the same quality of NAND as it has in the past. The Agility 2 uses 34nm IMFT NAND, presumably similar to what’s used in Intel’s X25-M G2."
Sounds good. Hopefully other OEMs follow OCZs example.
Why are you using the street of the Corsair Nova on the Pricing Comparison chart at the end? Isn't that drive essentially the same thing as the OCZ Solid 2? You can get said drive for $70 less after MIR! (and the MIR always seems to be running) That dramatically impacts the cost per GB and it's value when compared to the other drives imo... Even the Agility is still $50 cheaper. The price of the 160GB X25-M seems to be off too, it might've spiked up during the days that the review was posted but it's been pretty easy to find at $450... ($40 less)
Realistically the X25-M G2 drives and older Indillix drives end up being much cheaper per GB than the chart would seem to indicate, $2.50-2.75... So you pay quite a substantial premium for a C300 or a SF drive, 'specially if you opt for the 128GB C300 (which costs more per GB than the 256GB version, should include both on the chart for reference imo).
I realize prices are always in shift, but these have actually been pretty stable over the past couple of months and I don't think they're likely to change (outside of specials and/or the occasional rebate) 'till end of year when they all start shifting to 20nm NAND flash... It's kind of amusing that the larger C300 breaks the mold and ends up being one of the better values (if you actually do need that much capacity and have the controller to take advantage of it's full performance); the X25-M and the older Indillix drives are probably still the best option for most people tho.
Wouldn't it be possible just tp use the vertex 2 "special" firmware for tis drive? I mean as far as i understood the controllers are 100% identical it is the firmware that makes the difference. Same should be true for any SF-1200 drive. But i'm not gonna try it out myself. ;)
Exactly what I was thinking. Take a look at the photos in the gallery and you'll see that the board revisions and controller are identical. Only the branding of the ram looks different.
Does anyone use these SSDs in a server? Image a 7 drive raid-5 array ?!?!? it would be great. (I'm talking about for a Terminal Server 2008 64bit. all new hardware)
I'd like to buy either an HP or IBM blade setup and use 2 of these drives in raid-1 in each blade.
Does anyone know if this is possible? I know it wouldn't be as reliable as regular hard drive, but I'd keep a few on hand as backup.
I'm using a 128gb NOVA in a Dell D820 with WinXP. I'd like to keep its great performance up to snuff without doing a full wipe. I was wondering, would it be possible to plug it in as an extra drive on my Win7 desktop and run some utility to force TRIM commands for any/all unused blocks on the drive? Does it have to be the boot drive for TRIM to be enabled by Win7?
it would be awesome if a SAS 15k drive could be thrown into these SSD benchmarks going forward for those of us interested in doing enterprise comparisons!
The SSDnow V+ second generation doesn't perform all that well in the individual tests, but scores remarkably well in the overall performance graphs. Considering price per GB, this might be a great alternative.
Can anyone explain the difference in the low scores on individual tasks and high scores in the overal benchmarks for this drive?
Anand, excellent review as always, thanks very much.
Any updates on your Crucial drive? Are you now confident recommending the drive? Has the new one they sent you been reliable and has the performance degradation now been fixed? Sorry for the million questions.
I notice that the latest drives have much higher random write performance than the random read performance, even though the typical scenario has more reads than writes. Could this be a symptom that the SSD industry is becoming so focused on random write, that the random read performance is forgotten? When all the reviewers focus solely on the random write performance, you can't really blame the industry for sacrificing performance in other areas.
remmelt, that is my question exactly. Why is the PC Mark score of the Intel G2 controller, so close to Sandforce, while the individual read and write scores of the Intel controller are so far behind? Per GB price of Intel is about $3.50, while Sandforce is about 4 bucks.
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60 Comments
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johnlewis - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - link
Thanks for another great article. I'm patiently waiting for a (decent) 512 GB SSD in my budget so I can just throw everything besides media files on it; 256 GB might work, if I wasn't so damn lazy. Plus, I'd rather have a half full 512 GB drive than a 90+% full 256 GB drive.retnuh - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - link
90%+ full 256gb, I hear ya. I've been digging over as many SSD reviews as I can in the last couple days. I WANT to replace my 256gb 5400rpm in my notebook, but just can't quite squeeze everything into 200gb.gadgetguy10 - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - link
I am waiting until the price is at least down to $1 per gigabyte for a decent ssd. I figure I can get by with about 128gb of space.retnuh - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
my problem is the ~120gb of development VMs, I can't get rid of them, but since I'm in vmware all day a SSD would be heaven sent for general performance. I'm keeping things pretty slim at ~190gb out of 256gb, but that 200gb mark is just too tight. I'd buy a 300gb agility 2 today if it existed.529th - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - link
I thought the OWC controllers were discovered to have the SF 1200 controllers?Also, can we get a review on the 50g Vertex LE that are selling at New Egg, Thanks
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - link
Those numbers are from the older OWC Mercury which used a limited run of SF-1500. The newer drives going forward are SF-1200 based. I'll be phasing them out of our graphs as a result.Take care,
Anand
dmayes - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
When are we going to see benchmarks on the new intel driver that's faster than microsoft's driver and it supports trim with raid and we shouldn't go off of just prices MSRP but actual newegg prices and maybe even have a low to high # for example Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH160G2R5 ($400 - $489). Also include the 80gb version specially since its around $215 - $225Impulses - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I agree on the prices... Street prices of OCZ's Indillix drives are much lower than that Corsair Nova for instance, since OCZ ALWAYS has $20-30 rebates going on their drives (and they're just cheaper to begin with)... OCZ's Nova equivalent, the Solid 2, is like $300 flat after MIR.Intel's newer SATA drivers don't enable TRIM in RAID, just w/RAID... You can have a SSD w/TRIM support and two HDD in RAID on the same controller with said drivers (something you couldn't do before), but you still can't RAID two SSD and retain TRIM support. AFAIK they didn't dramatically alter performance either but if you've got a link to tests that say otherwise I'd love to see it... I haven't bothered to install them yet.
eaw999 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
but you do have to admit it is strange that imsm 8.9 was used for the testbed instead of irst 9.6. 8.9 doesn't support trim at all! one has to wonder how this might affect (or not) the benchmark scores.dmayes - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
"The SandForce SF-1200 controller used in the A-DATA S599 with Intel’s latest RST 9.6 drivers is the fastest 2.5 inch solid state drive for Windows users at this time. This combination is able to outperform every other drive we have tested to date in all around performance." Source tweaktown but they compared it to another 1200 drive instead of using the same ssd with both drivers. This is what intel says "Is there TRIM support for RAID configurations?Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 9.6 supports TRIM in AHCI mode and in RAID mode for drives that are not part of a RAID volume.
A defect was filed to correct the information in the Help file that states that TRIM is supported on RAID volumes."
speden - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - link
I still don't understand if the SandForce compression increases the available storage space. Is that discussed in the article somewhere? Is the user storage capacity 93.1 GB if you write uncompressable data, but much larger if you are writing normal data? If so that would effectively lower the cost per gigabyte quite a bit.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - link
It does not increase the storage capacity of the drive. The OS still sees xxGB worth of data as being on the drive even if it's been compressed by the controller, which means something takes up the same amount of reported space regardless of compressibility.The intention of SandForce's compression abilities was not to get more data on to the drive, it was to improve performance by reading/writing less data, and to reduce wear & tear on the NAND as a result of the former.
If you want to squeeze more storage space out of your SSD, you would need to use transparent file system compression. This means the OS compresses things ahead of time and does smaller writes, but the cost is that the SF controller won't be able to compress much if anything, negating the benefits of having the controller do compression if this results in you putting more data on the drive.
arehaas - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
The Sandforce drives report the same space available to the user, even if there is less data written to the drive. Does it mean that Sandforce drives should last longer because there are fewer actual writes to the NAND? One would reach the 10 million (or whatever) writes with Sandforce later than with other drives.Ryan Smith - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Exactly.MadMan007 - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - link
On a note somewhat related to another post here, I have a request. Could you guys please post final 'available to OS' capacity in *gibibytes*? (or if you must post gigabytes to go along with the marketers at the drive companies make it clear you are using GIGA and not GIBI) After I realized how much 'real available to OS' capacity can vary among drives which supposedly have the same capacity this would be very useful information...people need to know how much actual data they can fit on the drives and 'gibibytes available to the OS' is the best standard way to do that.vol7ron - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - link
Attach all corrections to this post.1st Paragraph: incredible -> incredibly
pattycake0147 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
On the second page, there is no link where the difference between the 1500 and the 1200 are referenced.Roland00 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
The problem with logarithmic scales is your brain interprets the data linerally instead of exponentially unless you force yourself not too.Per Hansson - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I agreeJust as an idea you could have the option to click the graph and get a bigger version, I guess it would be something like 600x3000 in size but would give another angle at the data
Because for 90% of your users I think a logramithic scale is very hard to comprehend :)
Impulses - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Not sure if this is the best place to post this but as I just remembered to do so, here goes... I have no issues whatsoever with your site re-design on my desktop, it's clean, it's pretty, looks fine to me.HOWEVER, it's pretty irritating on my netbook and on my phone... On the netbook the top edge of the page simply takes up too much space and leads to more scrolling than necessary on every single page. I'm talking about the banner ad, followed by the HUGE Anandtech logo (it's bigger than before isn't it), flanked by site navigation links, and followed by several more large bars for all the product categories. Even the font's big on those things... I don't get it, seems to take more space than necessary.
Those tabs or w/e on the previous design weren't as clean looking, but they were certainly more compact. At 1024x600 I can barely see the title of the article I'm on when I'm scrolled all the way up (or not at all if I've enlarged text size a notch or two). It's not really that big a deal, but it just seems like there's a ton of wasted space around the site navigation links and the logo. /shrug
Now on to the second issue, on my phone while using Opera Mini I'm experiencing some EXTREME slowdowns when navigating your page... This is a much bigger deal, it's basically useless... Can't even scroll properly. I've no idea what's wrong, since Opera Mini doesn't even load ads or anything like that, but it wasn't happening a week or two ago either so it's not because of the site re-design itself...
It's something that has NEVER happened to me on any other site tho, they may load slow initially, but after it's open I've never had a site scrolls slowly or behave sluggishly within Opera Mini like Anandtech is doing right now... Could it be a rogue ad or something?
I load the full-version of all pages on Opera Mini all the time w/o issue, but is there a mobile version of Anandtech that might be better suited for my phone/browser combination in the meantime?
ogc - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
That file 512mb in size which compresses 1000x seems to simply full of zeros, so it represents best case performance for sandforce. On the other hand pure random writes are not expected in typical computer usage so they also are not very meaningful. Any chance to feed iometer with data from your storage bench for example?arehaas - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I actually think random writes with compressed files are meaningful.JPEG files are highly compressed - you can gain only 1-3% by zipping them. Those who work with such files a lot - write to the disk or move around jpegs or similar compressed graphic and video files - should be paying most attention to these new tests for Sandforce. It may be a good idea to add the results for all (most) drives to the page with random writes chart as another chart "Random Writes - Compressed files".
arehaas - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Thanks to the new tests, it appears the charts of rnd or seq writes are currently misleading with respect to Sandforce, if most of your important files (e.g., for a graphic designer) are compressed. The charts are easier to read than text. Currently, one has to flip pages to and from the "Random Data performance page" in order to get the true picture. Maybe Anand can add a bar with "Corsair with compressed data" to the read/write charts? Thanks.davepermen - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I guess that drive is not that well suited for video editing, where you have mostly random data (compressed and uncompressed, both look rather random to the drive). it wouldn't be bad in any way, just lose it's peak performance.FragKrag - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Up until about a week or two ago I was set on an Intel X25-M G2 80GB, but now I'm not so sure anymore. If I got a Vertex 2/Agility 2, it would be a 50GB version... decisions decisions.Oh, and prompted by this article, I looked for the pricing of the Vertex Indilinx on Newegg, and I found this 50GB Vertex LE at $200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
never knew they had a 50GB run of Vertex LEs...
willscary - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
After my problems last week, I ended up going back to the Crucial M225 series with the Indilinx controller. It is not quite as fast, but it does have a 5 year warranty. I paid $325 for the 128GB drives and a very low $579 for a 256GB drive from Newegg.I have been using these drives in several machines since the beginning of the year. They all support TRIM and I have had no problems. They are very fast in daily use. I had hoped the Sandforce drives would be faster, but I guess I will have to wait for a later date to find out (I will be purchasing another pair of computers in July after the new fiscal year begins...perhaps I will purchase the Sandforce SSDs at that time).
Look09 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
What happens when you use TrueCrypt to encrypt your OS.? Does it then random-write everything and indilinx is better? Does it make the Vertex 2 much better? Or no difference?Ryan Smith - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Encrypted data should look like random noise, and as a result should have very little compressibility. I haven't used TrueCrypt, but it's my understanding that it writes garbage data to whatever part of the hidden partition isn't in use, so the whole thing should largely be uncompressible and match our random data performance.semo - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I'm interested in encrypted testing also. These controllers are beginning to look like very fast consumer drives rather than enterprise (if the SATA interface wasn't a big enough hint already).I'm also wondering why are they getting a more substantial performance hit when writing compressed random 4k writes compared to 2MB sequential writes (74.4% vs 57.4%).
Just to re instate, why are all these SSD makers coming out with SATA drives and calling them enterprise? AFAIK, Intel and Hitachi are working on an SAS SSD but I'm not aware of any other reasonable company doing the same (i'm totally ignoring what the military might have because costs there are nuts).
Mugur - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
... Too bad that the price is still high so I'm very interested for the low-end 40 GB ones, but with good random 4k writes. I have 5 machines at home waiting for this upgrade as the boot drive. :-)Allow me to thank you, Anand, for your dedication and work.
529th - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Some people are curious about the Vertex LE 50g version. Yes, I've read the Vertex LE 100g review :)50g Vertex LE: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
New Egg's description says "For enthusiasts w/ up to 15,000 4KB random write IOPS" which would suggest the controller is the SF 1200 where as the Vertex LE SSD drives are suppose to have the SF 1500 controller which will do ~ 30,000 4kb so the inconsistency brings up curiosity. To make matters worse, The OCZ website says they use the SF 1500 controller. Which I vaguely recall someone saying they asked OWC which controller they were using for their OWC Mercury Extreme SSD drives and OWC's response was that they didn't know....
willscary - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Originally, I was told by Customer Service that he "did not know", but after pressing for an answer and a breif period on hold, he returned and told me that all current and future Mercury Extreme SSDs would utilize the Sandforce 1200 controller.I was very angry at this "bait and switch" and returned my SSDs. Actually, they were in transit and I had OWC recall them. I have not yet received credit for them although they returned to OWC early Tuesday morning.
I will also say that OWC did send confirmation of the returns and said that the credit would be processed by the end of the week, so all is not bad.
I was asked "what the big deal was" on another thread. The way I see it, it would be like ordering an expensive sports car with a V6 and having it arrive with a turbocharged 4 cylinder. The performance may be the same, but there would then be the possibility of added maintenance costs, lesser reliability and a shorter lifespan. Add to that that the dealer would tell me that even though the smaller turbo option was $1,000 less than the V6, I should pay the same because performance really would be nearly identical.
Just my thoughts.
DanNeely - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
15k IOPs is higher than the SF1200 supports with a normal firmware. More likely I think would be something similar to intels 40GB drive where only half the controllers flash chip ports are filled and a full speed SF controller.poeticjustic - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
That was a really helpful and thorough article. Thank you for all this info.a few things that i wanted to ask.
-On the random read/write speed page and specifically on the 4k aligned random write, we don't see anywhere the intel x25-E performance. Obviously that is because the testing of the x25-E was performed in the past, when this kind of test wasn't performed. Is it safe to assume that the performance of the x25-E would be quite close to that of the 4k random write test (around 48MB/s)?? Since we see that mostly the new controllers are mostly affected.
-Furthermore, at least from what i've seen on eshops around in my country, the price of the z-drive m84 250GB and 500Gb has come closer to that of sata ssds. Still they are more expensive of course, but wouldn't it be a good idea to start seeing some z-drive performance on those tables for a direct comparison with the ssds and see whether the difference in their performance is bigger than the difference in their price? Just a thought.
Making an extra remark on the performance of SF controller during already compressed data plus the the random data perormance table was a pretty important addition and something we should pay attention to.
Thank you once again for a well built article.
eaw999 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
correct, the x25-e, like -m, isn't affected drastically by alignment. you can expect slightly higher numbers with alignment, but nothing jaw-dropping. on the other hand, the x25-e positively rips at random writes at high queue depths, but that's not something you're likely to see often in desktop usage.krazyderek - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
When does this ever happen? isn't that sentence an oxymorron, the only thing i can think of it if you were installing several applications at the same time? and it would depend on the applications being installed too, since i think i remember hearing that games are very sequential nowkrazyderek - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I DO see the importance when dealing with pre-compressed files like pictures and videos, i agree it would be nice to see a 0% 50% and 100% compressed figures to give people a good overview of things, but still, when would you see highly random sequential data?zdzichu - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Sequentially speaks about data access pattern, highly random is about data itself. It is perfect description of writing movie to a disk - you are storing byte-by-byte and each byte is probably different that preceeding ones.zdzichu - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I think you can skip non-aligned test in future. It is a corner case, not interesting at all.PubicTheHare - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I'm pretty sure we're still 18-24 months away from having SSDs priced at a level that the average SSD-seeker is willing to spend.There will probably be an attractive price differential between what is available now and what price level the same will be available for in 12 months, but I really think it'll take a bit over a year to start seeing "attractive" pricing.
None of this stuff matters to me until Apple supports TRIM or garbage collection (I believe this is "OS-agnostic" TRIM, right?) comes to the drives with the best firmware and price/usable GB.
I just want a 256-300 GB SSD that I can leave 15% unpartitioned and throw into a MBP. I want it to scream.
berzerk101 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Hi,
A little question here I was wondering if those SandForce drive have some Garbage recycling in place like the Vertex with there last FW.
If you look on youtube OWC state that there drive don't drop in performance on Mac but there's no TRIM support on Mac last time I checked.
Because for now the only drive I found having some hardware auto-trim working on Mac is the Vertex with Indilinx controller.
Video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52OpellvMLQ
Thanks
Hacp - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Anand, you mention Intel/indilinx but not the realssd in your final review? It has the lowest cost per gb AND is one of the best performers. It scored very high on your real world benches.GullLars - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
No, not at all. I'm saying if SandForce had made the controller with a SATA 6Gbps interface instead of 3Gbps, it would have maxed the interface anyway for highly compressible data, both reading and writing.With RAW speeds of about 200-220MB/s read and 120-130MB/s write, data compressible to 1:2 could be read at 400-440MB/s and written at 240-260MB/s, and data compressible to 1:3 could be read at 600MB/s and written at 360-390MB/s...
Anand says in his Agility 2 review that sandforce found installing windows 7 and MS office 2007 physically took up less than half of the original size, meaning those kinds of files would be written above 250MB/s and read above 450MB/s...
The sandforce drives get PCmark scores around 38-40K, with a SATA 6Gbps interface i think they would get over 50K, maybe even over 60K. The limiting factor would be the read IOPS, wich tops out around 30-35K IOPS, and wouldn't get a boost by a faster interface since it seems to be controller computing power bound.
Since it seems the 50GB versions are capable of the same both RAW and compressed speeds as 100GB and 200GB versions, a ROC + 2x SF-1200 in a 2,5" enclosure with SATA/SAS 6Gbps interface could be nice. Sort of like OCZ Apex, G.skill Titan, and OCZ Colossus, only made decently with full NCQ support and not tonnes of accesstime overhead. SF-1200 due to price, and (2x10K=) 20K IOPS sustained random write being "enough". Such a drive would give the same numbers as anvil has posted above, at possibly 1,3-1,5x the price, but on a single port, making it easy to scale to insane bandwidth on LSI 92xx for compressible data (over 4GB/s both read and write).
GullLars - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Like the subject says, that was meant as a reply on XS forum...Here is the post i meant to post:
Anand
As always, a great review, but i still miss 4KB random tests at higher queue depths to test out more than just 3 of the flash channels. A graph of 4KB random read with Queue Depth (2^n steps) on the x axis and IOPS/bandwidth on the y axis would also be nice, as it would show scaling by load.
If you were to do this test, you would see that your statement that SandForce's 4KB random read performance on compressed data being worse than Indilinx is false for queue depths over 4, where indilinx tops out at ca 60MB/s = 15K IOPS, while sandforce reaches about 120MB/s. Seing as in that case SandForce has double the 4KB random read performance of Barefoot on uncompressible data, i suggest the statement should be retracted, or at least a note added to state it's not true for higher queue depths.
GullLars - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
A little PS to the above:To back my statement with benchmark data:
xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4352703&postcount=56
AS SSD benchmark and CrystalDiskMark 3.0 use hardly compressible data, as shown by the sequential write speeds meassured.
And for those interrested, the benchmark numbers i was reffering to that anvil posted "above" are these:
xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4352876&postcount=57
It's 2 Vertex LE 100GB in RAID-0 off ICH10R, IRST 9.6, WBC off.
vol7ron - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I just want to stress what the graphs show:The Agility's power consumption at idle or full load, is never more than 1W.
That is amazing.
vol7ron
Mr Perfect - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
"SandForce also claims that its reduced write amplification could enable the use of cheaper NAND on these drives. It’s an option that some manufacturers may take however OCZ has committed to using the same quality of NAND as it has in the past. The Agility 2 uses 34nm IMFT NAND, presumably similar to what’s used in Intel’s X25-M G2."Sounds good. Hopefully other OEMs follow OCZs example.
Impulses - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Why are you using the street of the Corsair Nova on the Pricing Comparison chart at the end? Isn't that drive essentially the same thing as the OCZ Solid 2? You can get said drive for $70 less after MIR! (and the MIR always seems to be running) That dramatically impacts the cost per GB and it's value when compared to the other drives imo... Even the Agility is still $50 cheaper. The price of the 160GB X25-M seems to be off too, it might've spiked up during the days that the review was posted but it's been pretty easy to find at $450... ($40 less)Realistically the X25-M G2 drives and older Indillix drives end up being much cheaper per GB than the chart would seem to indicate, $2.50-2.75... So you pay quite a substantial premium for a C300 or a SF drive, 'specially if you opt for the 128GB C300 (which costs more per GB than the 256GB version, should include both on the chart for reference imo).
I realize prices are always in shift, but these have actually been pretty stable over the past couple of months and I don't think they're likely to change (outside of specials and/or the occasional rebate) 'till end of year when they all start shifting to 20nm NAND flash... It's kind of amusing that the larger C300 breaks the mold and ends up being one of the better values (if you actually do need that much capacity and have the controller to take advantage of it's full performance); the X25-M and the older Indillix drives are probably still the best option for most people tho.
glugglug - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
This is better than we are getting from a Fusion I/O. I know Fusion I/O claims 100K IOPS but I think they need to be 4KB sequential to achieve that.GullLars - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Fusion-IO's IOdrive at 160GB SLC does 100K IOPS 4KB random write.ioXtreme, the 80GB MLC prosumer version on the other hand does around 30K i think.
beginner99 - Friday, April 23, 2010 - link
One thought:Wouldn't it be possible just tp use the vertex 2 "special" firmware for tis drive? I mean as far as i understood the controllers are 100% identical it is the firmware that makes the difference. Same should be true for any SF-1200 drive.
But i'm not gonna try it out myself. ;)
Moonstarr - Sunday, May 9, 2010 - link
Exactly what I was thinking. Take a look at the photos in the gallery and you'll see that the board revisions and controller are identical. Only the branding of the ram looks different.jordanl17 - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link
Does anyone use these SSDs in a server? Image a 7 drive raid-5 array ?!?!? it would be great. (I'm talking about for a Terminal Server 2008 64bit. all new hardware)I'd like to buy either an HP or IBM blade setup and use 2 of these drives in raid-1 in each blade.
Does anyone know if this is possible? I know it wouldn't be as reliable as regular hard drive, but I'd keep a few on hand as backup.
charlielittle - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link
I'm using a 128gb NOVA in a Dell D820 with WinXP. I'd like to keep its great performance up to snuff without doing a full wipe. I was wondering, would it be possible to plug it in as an extra drive on my Win7 desktop and run some utility to force TRIM commands for any/all unused blocks on the drive? Does it have to be the boot drive for TRIM to be enabled by Win7?Thanks,
--C
iwodo - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
While Sandforce was slower in Seq Read / Write with Random Data. Would the setting have any different on other non Sandforce SSD.pesos - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
it would be awesome if a SAS 15k drive could be thrown into these SSD benchmarks going forward for those of us interested in doing enterprise comparisons!remmelt - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
The SSDnow V+ second generation doesn't perform all that well in the individual tests, but scores remarkably well in the overall performance graphs. Considering price per GB, this might be a great alternative.Can anyone explain the difference in the low scores on individual tasks and high scores in the overal benchmarks for this drive?
Squuiid - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
Anand, excellent review as always, thanks very much.Any updates on your Crucial drive? Are you now confident recommending the drive? Has the new one they sent you been reliable and has the performance degradation now been fixed?
Sorry for the million questions.
brain42 - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
I notice that the latest drives have much higher random write performance than the random read performance, even though the typical scenario has more reads than writes.Could this be a symptom that the SSD industry is becoming so focused on random write, that the random read performance is forgotten? When all the reviewers focus solely on the random write performance, you can't really blame the industry for sacrificing performance in other areas.
fishak - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
remmelt, that is my question exactly. Why is the PC Mark score of the Intel G2 controller, so close to Sandforce, while the individual read and write scores of the Intel controller are so far behind?Per GB price of Intel is about $3.50, while Sandforce is about 4 bucks.