The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Sequential Read/Write Speed
Finally, to the roundup. We’ll start with the traditional tests. Using the latest build of Iometer I ran a 3 minute long 2MB sequential write test over the entire span of the drive. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length:
Sequential write speed was what all SSD makers focused on in the early days of consumer drives. The JMicron lesson taught us that there's much more to system performance than sequential write performance, and most have learned. Regardless, sequential write speed is still very important and as we can see here the majority of drives do very, very well. The high end Indilinx drives approach 190MB/s, while Intel's SLC X25-E actually breaks 200MB/s.
The same can't be said for Intel's mainstream MLC drives, both of which are limited to 80MB/s. While it doesn't make the drives feel slow in real world usage, it is a significant blemish on an otherwise (as you'll soon see) flawless track record.
The standings don't really change with the drive in a used state. The Indilinx drives all fall around 15%, while the Intel drives stay the same.
Ha! Read speed is ridiculous on these drives. See the wall at around 260MB/s? We're hitting the limit of what's possible over 3Gbps SATA. Expect read speeds to go up once we start seeing SATA 6Gbps drives and controllers to support them.
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Abjuk - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Agreed CM, my current project at work takes about six minutes to build from scratch and CPU usage never gets above about 35%. The process is totally IO bound.It really depends on whether you have several large source files or several hundred small ones.
Weyzer - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Good article and testing, but why was the Crucial M225 not mentioned at all? It's performance is similar to the vertex drives, I know, but I think it could have been mentioned somewhere, if it is in the good or bad range.jasperjones - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
javascript:link('frmText') $997 @ Newegg omgomgomgNeedless to say, that price will come down quickly. So more seriously, after reading the article I really feel I understand better what to look for in an SSD. Thanks!
paesan - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Wow, does NE really think that anyone will buy the Intel drive at that price. OMG!!! Funny thing, it is in stock and it says limit 1 per customer. LolCList - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Obviously someone is buying them at that price or they'd lower it. The people who can't wait two or three weeks and are willing to be gouged for these drives are the ones that allow NewEgg to give us low margins on other products while not going out of business :Dravaneli - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
I just decided to buy one and when I opened newegg i couldn't believe my eyes. I hope that is only because they have a few drives left, and once Intel pumps up some stock in the retailers the prices will go back to Intel's retail.Does anyone know what are the production capabilities of Intel's SSD factories? I don't want to wait a whole year until the market saturates.
LazierSaid - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
This article was so good that Newegg doubled their X25M G2 prices overnight.medi01 - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Yep, very impressive advertisement indeed.HVAC - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
I'd rather have ewoks in the sequels than Jar-jar ...Naccah - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Newegg's prices on all the Intel SSDs skyrocketed. The X-25 G2s are $499 now. Is this price a reflection of the high demand or did Intel change the price again?