The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
PCMark Vantage: Used Drive Performance
Immediately after finishing my PCMark Vantage runs on the previous page, I wrote one large file sequentially to the rest of the drive. I then deleted the file, rebooted and re-ran PCMark Vantage. This gives us an idea of the worst case desktop performance of these drives as you create, delete and generally just use these drives.
The biggest difference here is that the Samsung based OCZ Summit drops from 5th to 9th place. All of the drives get slower but the Indilinx drives hardly show it. When it comes to dealing with write speed, SLC flash does have the advantage and we see the X25-E and Vertex EX rise to the top of the pack. The G2 is slightly faster than the G1 and the Indilinx drives follow in close pursuit.
The mechanical drives don't change in performance since they don't get slower with use, only as they get more full.
Again we see the two SLC drives at the top, this time followed by a mixture of Indilinx/Intel drives, and the Samsung based Summit is at the bottom of the pack before we get to the HDDs.
The spread in SSD performance here is only 10% between the slowest non-Samsung drive and the fastest. That tells me that we're mostly CPU bound, but the worst performers other than the Samsung drive are the two Intel X25-Ms. That part tells me that we're at least somewhat bound by sequential write speeds. Either way, the Indilinx drives have a good showing here.
Intel followed by Indilinx SLC with Samsung in league with the MLC Indilinx drives. This is an SSD's dream.
Despite the improvements, the G2 can't touch the much lower write latency of SLC flash here. The Indilinx and Intel G1 drives intermingle while the Samsung drive pulls up the rear. All are faster than a regular hard drive of course.
In the multitasking test we once again see Intel rise to the top. The Samsung drive does surprisingly well and the Indilinx drives continue to perform admirably.
The breakdown between SSDs here is almost linear. The X25-E leads the pack, followed by OCZ's SLC drive. The G2 and G1 are next, then a ton of Indilinx MLC drives. The slowest SSD? The Samsung based Summit of course.
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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?