The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Tying it All Together: SSD Performance Degradation
More spare area is better for random workloads, but desktop workloads aren’t random enough to justify setting aside more spare area to improve performance; most reviews don’t test in a used state, and more users would simply flock to lower price-per-GB drives with less spare area.
Drives that drop the most in performance from new to used state have the most to gain from the TRIM instruction. Depending on how you use your drive of course:
| % Performance Drop in Used State vs. New State | |||
| 4KB Random Write | 2MB Sequential Write | PCMark Vantage HDD Suite | |
| Intel X25-E 64GB (SLC) | 26.1% | 5.4% | 9.7% |
| Intel X25-M G1 160GB (MLC) | 35.5% | 3.8% | 16.7% |
| Intel X25-M G2 160GB (MLC) | 0.7% | 2.2% | 15.3% |
| OCZ Agility 128GB (Indilinx MLC) | 44.8% | 15.0% | 4.4% |
| OCZ Summit 256GB (Samsung MLC) | 72.4% | 3.0% | 23.6% |
| OCZ Vertex EX 128GB (Indilinx SLC) | 60.5% | 20.8% | 0.8% |
| OCZ Vertex Turbo 128GB (Indilinx MLC) | 44.0% | 15.4% | 4.5% |
| Patriot Torqx 128GB (Indilinx MLC) | 44.6% | 15.6% | 3.5% |
Depending on the scenario, all three controllers have a lot to gain from TRIM. Random write performance drops significantly for almost every single drive. The worst is the Samsung RBB controller, which lost over 70% of its performance between new and used states; Samsung needs TRIM.
Intel made some significant improvements going from the G1 to G2 drives, the new drive loses no performance in our random write test. This is thanks to firmware tweaks and having twice as much DRAM to track data in; the more data the Intel drive can keep track of, the better it is at organization, management and garbage collection. From a pure performance standpoint, the G2 might actually be better for server workloads than the X25-E. In terms of lifespan however, the X25-E has the G2 beat.
Only the Indilinx drives lose an appreciable amount of performance in the sequential write test, but they are the only drives to not lose any performance in the more real-world PCMark Vantage HDD suite. Although not displayed here, the overall PCMark Vantage score takes an even smaller hit on Indilinx drives. This could mean that in the real world, Indilinx drives stand to gain the least from TRIM support. This is possibly due to Indilinx using a largely static LBA mapping scheme; the only spare area is then the 6.25% outside of user space regardless of how used the drive is.
Both Samsung and Intel have a lot to gain from TRIM. Samsung’s performances goes from utterly unacceptable to reasonable (but not price justified) with TRIM. Intel’s performance goes from class-leading to more, er, class-leading.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
295 Comments
View All Comments
jengeek - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
As of 09-02-09 from Toshiba Direct:80GB = $243
160GB = $473
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=4...">http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=4...
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=4...">http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=4...
gfody - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
nice thank you, ordered mine from herescrew Newegg! :D
jengeek - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Both are G2, in stock and ship the next dayBoth are retail box including the installation kit
Best price I've found
ARoyalF - Sunday, September 13, 2009 - link
Thank you posting that!I was going to wait out that awful price hike over at the egg.
You rock
ElderTech - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
It's difficult to imagine the amount of time and effort that went into this article, Anand. Just the clean installs of Win7 took a fair amount of extra effort, let alone the other detailed diagrams and testing involved. From an old technology advocate over many years of working to keep pace with Moore's Law in a variety of research environments, your site provides the most satisfying learning experience of all. A sincere thank you!PS: As for the availability of the G2, it pops in and out of stock at a variety of online retailers, including Newegg, of course, as well as MWave. Both had it available for a short while at $249, Newegg on Friday and MWave today, Monday. However, it's out of stock presently as of midnight, EST 9-1-09 at both, with MWave still at $249 but Newegg going from there to $279 over the weekend and now at an amazing $499! OUCH. Sounds like supply and demand gouging if the price holds when they are next available! There is also some stock available in the distributor channel from small Intel Partners, as I confirmed by calling around the Chicago area. You might give this a try tomorrow. Good luck!
blyndy - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
You really got performance anxiety because some high-profile people/sites liked your article and linked to it? It's hardly like it got printed in some prestigious science journal and the publishers are waiting on a follow-up.It was just the first time that SDD operation had been detailed in plain english from a reputable website.
Enough of this 'anthology' nonsense, I don't care if it's 1 page or 20, just tell me how some of the new SSDs perform (eg OCZ, Western Digital). You've already detailed how they work so now I want to know which ones do/will support TRIM and some details on the controller. Nothing to get anxious about.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Indeed I did get performance anxiety after the last one, I even got it after the first X25-M. It's not so much the linkage, but the feedback from all of you guys. I received more positive feedback to the last SSD article than any one prior. More than anything I don't want to let you all down and I want to make sure I live up to everyone's expectations.As far as your interests go, all three manufacturers (Indilinx, Intel and Samsung) have confirmed support for TRIM. When? I'd say all three before December.
Take care,
Anand
cacca - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
Dear Anand i really thank you for your SSD articles, the improvements in this area seem tangible.Can I ask you to test Fusion-IO & ioXtreme, i am really curious to see how this other approach performs.
I know that isn't a perfect apple to apple comparison but at least we could compare the per $ performance.
Best regards
Ca
vol7ron - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Good article.I have a follow-up question regarding your size suggestion.
In more words you say, "get the size you need," but don't these drives perform that much better in a RAIDed system?
The cost per GB isn't that much more if you're looking at getting a 160GB Intel drive, to get the 2x 80GB instead.
SSDs are more reliable than HDs and you have the benefit of more RAM. 2x 32MB for an SSD in RAID0.
Curious to hear your thoughts,
vol7ron
StraightPipe - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Since RAID cards aren't going to support TRIM commands for a while, I'd stick with a large, single SSD.Anybody ahve any experience running these cards in RAID? I'd love to put some of these in my server, but i'm terrified of lossing data through the complexities of RAID combined with SSD.
I'd love to do a simple RAID1 setup, but it looks like i may be better of waiting too.
In the mean time, these look like a mean machine for an OS disk.