Show us your SSD performance

[fatedquest]

This is amazing. Over 500MB/sec transfer rate would correspond to about 5000Mb/sec - that is 5Gb/sec. I wonder how the Sata bus (3Gb/sec) handles that.

SATA bus handles it just fine as each SATA port gets 3Gb/s. So until SSD drives individually can push over 300MB/s the SATA 3.0Gb/s is more than adequate.

The entire drive controller obviously has some sort of limit, but I believe that with the Intel ICHxR controller can handle around 800MB/s in total.

I've heard that ICHR9 max is 600MB/s

 

[whs]

This is amazing. Over 500MB/sec transfer rate would correspond to about 5000Mb/sec - that is 5Gb/sec. I wonder how the Sata bus (3Gb/sec) handles that.

SATA bus handles it just fine as each SATA port gets 3Gb/s. So until SSD drives individually can push over 300MB/s the SATA 3.0Gb/s is more than adequate.

The entire drive controller obviously has some sort of limit, but I believe that with the Intel ICHxR controller can handle around 800MB/s in total.

Thanks for clarifying the "per port" capacity. I had genuinely forgotten that.

 

[mpcrsc562]

for anyone who is running two drives in raid 0, in your opinion, does the benefit of the increased speed outweigh the fact that trim support is lost by running the array? what do you do to compensate for the loss in trim support?

 

[whs]

for anyone who is running two drives in raid 0, in your opinion, does the benefit of the increased speed outweigh the fact that trim support is lost by running the array? what do you do to compensate for the loss in trim support?

If the Raid setup is used for the OS, I would prefer to keep my Trim. The added data transfer speed from a Raid is relatively irrelevant for the OS since it only reads small amounts of data. In fact I think, there is little to be gained with an SSD Raid setup for the OS all together. I single SSD has the same access time as the Raid - and that's what counts.
For a data disk, however, the situation might be different. But who can afford 2 SSDs large enough to accomodate masses of data.

 

[pparks1]

For an operating system, I don't think there is much benefit to using a RAID 0 array. Of course the benchmarks and the graphs look outstanding....but the running of an operating system is mostly random reads/writes. It's really the access time improvement with SSD which makes the difference and you can get that with a single SSD drive. I guess that some will take 2 smaller SSD drives and stripe them together to make a larger capacity drive.

 

[whs]

I guess that some will take 2 smaller SSD drives and stripe them together to make a larger capacity drive.

I would not even do that in this case - unless the SSDs are puny. But a 30GB SSD is ample for the OS and a whole load of programs. If I had a second SSD, I would rather use it by itself as data partition. After nearly half a year of operation, my Win7 takes up 18GBs - and it is not a skimpy system, lots of programs installed

 

[BobEve67]

This is my new Intel X25-M 80GB, is my only drive in the system. Have two partitions on it, so far am very happy with it.

 

[garuda]

This is a CrystalDiskBenchmark immediately after installing Win7 and all my applications onto my new Intel X25-M 160GB SSD. WEI for SSD came in at 7.8.

Then later ran the AS-SSD Benchmark. Haven't done enough research yet to know how these number fair with the average Intel 160GB. However, I do know it's much quicker than the old spinner! But the "4K" numbers don't look very impressive for an SSD. garuda.

 

[garuda]

Anyone have a Intel X25-V 40GB?
I've only found benchies for the 80GB version, and they look really good.

Im curious what kind of numbers these 40GB ones are getting as I might want to pick one up.

Wishmaster,
I found this at the Intel SSD Center webpage; hope it's not too late. garuda:

 

[zrtom]

for anyone who is running two drives in raid 0, in your opinion, does the benefit of the increased speed outweigh the fact that trim support is lost by running the array? what do you do to compensate for the loss in trim support?

Depends on what SSD you're using. Although Intel Rapid Storage Technology doesn't currently support TRIM in RAID (it might in the future), the Garbage Collection in the Vertex Firmware I'm running is more than sufficient to keep performance up over the 8 months or so I've been running RAID0. Complicated to set up? Not at all; I create the RAID array in the BIOS, install the OS (or restore an image) and it has run seamlessly. Nightly backups to my Windows Home Server alleviate concerns of the RAID array going sour but so far it hasn't.

I have similar W7 x64 images on a 2xVertex 30GB RAID0, a single Vertex and an Intel x25-Value drive and there is no comparison; the RAID0 array wins hands down by seat of the pants, by reboot times, and by benchmarking.
Tom

 

[Wishmaster]

Anyone have a Intel X25-V 40GB?
I've only found benchies for the 80GB version, and they look really good.

Im curious what kind of numbers these 40GB ones are getting as I might want to pick one up.

Wishmaster,
I found this at the Intel SSD Center webpage; hope it's not too late. garuda:

Thanks. Yes, already have it and Win7 sits on it now

I posted my AS SSD bench on the previous page. It feel faster than my Vertex, but the Vertex is a bit faster in Seq reads.

Im thinking the Vertex will be good for Documents and a game or 2. I think games will benefit more from the faster Seq read than the OS, but I could be wrong.

All in all, for a $120 SSD, cant really complain. They are worth it IMO.

 

[whs]

I have similar Windows 7 x64 images on a 2xVertex 30GB RAID0, a single Vertex and an Intel x25-Value drive and there is no comparison; the RAID0 array wins hands down by seat of the pants, by reboot times, and by benchmarking.
Tom

Tom, do you have any data so that one can get a feel for the difference. E.g. my single Intel boots in under 15 seconds and I wonder how much faster that could be.

 

[whs]

30GB Vertex on sale for $79.99 - Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - SSD

 

[zrtom]

I have similar Windows 7 x64 images on a 2xVertex 30GB RAID0, a single Vertex and an Intel x25-Value drive and there is no comparison; the RAID0 array wins hands down by seat of the pants, by reboot times, and by benchmarking.
Tom

Tom, do you have any data so that one can get a feel for the difference. E.g. my single Intel boots in under 15 seconds and I wonder how much faster that could be.

I don't have data I can put my hands on quickly. If you're booting in 15 seconds, to coin a phrase "it don't get much better than that." You've probably reached the point of diminishing returns. Shaving even one second off that would be difficult (and unnecessary, really).
Eventually I would like to take a day and bench all three in succession. Problem is I don't know were to take the day from!!

As for boot/reboot.... the RAID0 is a bit quicker but now that I've added another eSATA card, the BIOS pauses for that so my reboot times are no longer in the 30 second range.

That's a good buy for the Vertex. They're probably making room for the next gen. Sandforce SSDs. I got one at that price when they ran a similar rebate a few weeks ago and I'm running it in a new Atom D510/Vertex 38-watt (@idle) Windows Home Server.
Tom

 

[pparks1]

I have similar W7 x64 images on a 2xVertex 30GB RAID0, a single Vertex and an Intel x25-Value drive and there is no comparison; the RAID0 array wins hands down by seat of the pants, by reboot times, and by benchmarking.
Tom

I'm guessing that if the reboot times are no comparison that the images are less similar than assumed. The true performance benefit of the SSD with regards to OS loading is fast access times...and this doesn't increase substantially with the addition of more spindles in a RAID array.

As for boot/reboot.... the RAID0 is a bit quicker

Ok, so the comment about there being "no comparison" between the single drive and the RAID 0 configuration with boot/reboot times might have been a bit of an exaggeration?

 

[mpcrsc562]

For anyone interested in the new Western Digital Drive:
Newegg.com - WD SiliconEdge Blue SSC-D0064SC-2100 2.5" 64GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - SSD

Check out Code: WD64GBMAR

 

[whs]

For anyone interested in the new Western Digital Drive:
Newegg.com - WD SiliconEdge Blue SSC-D0064SC-2100 2.5" 64GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - SSD

Check out Code: WD64GBMAR

That's a good deal for $179.95.

 

[Wishmaster]

New Intel Drivers:

With Console:
Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology

Driver Only: (For Device manager Instal)
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18861&lang=eng

They are supposed to support TRIM w/RAID.

<<These are Win7 64bit links>>

 

[zrtom]

Ok, so the comment about there being "no comparison" between the single drive and the RAID 0 configuration with boot/reboot times might have been a bit of an exaggeration?

Probably.....

 

[zrtom]

New Intel Drivers:
Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology


They are supposed to support TRIM w/RAID.

Great news! I installed it and in the help dialog under "RAID enabled systems" it says this:

....Our application also provides support for the following features:...

Trim (Microsoft Windows 7* only)
This feature provides support for solid state disks (SSDs) that meet the ATA-8 protocol requirements. This feature optimizes write operations, helps devices reduce wear, and maintains unused storage area on devices as large as possible.​

Tom​