Fastest 60GB SSD?

M

MetalX

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 6, 2003
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Been out of the loop for a while, just ordered a new lap top and want to get the best 60GB / 80GB SSD for under $200.

Is it the Vertex 2? I'm seeing some conflicting answers with Google, a lot of bs fluff reviews with little substance. Which 60/80GB SSD would you guys get for raw speed for under $200?
 
The Corsiar F60 and the OCZ Vertex 2 60GB are looking pretty good for the price but I haven't a clue which to choose over the other.
 
I also recommend the X25-M G2. If an Intel SSD is in your price range, I think it is usually the best choice. The Sandforce drives may have a slight edge in write performance for compressible data, but except for rare applications, the difference is not noticeable. And you cannot beat the Intels for reliability.
 
I would go with the Vertex 2 because of the sandforce drivers, but OCZ's tech support is a little iffy. It's pretty much the guy who looks on forums answers the tech support call. I had a big problem trying to put 3 x 30 ocz vertex in Raid0 (non sandforce drivers) and couldn't them to run fast at all.
 
I've got both the Intel and Vertex2.

The Intel has more "wow" factor because of it's screaming read speed but the OCZ is better "well rounded".

IMHO most would like the Intel better.
 
I've had 2 different OCZ drives and now have 2 Intel drives. Intel all the way. Keyword: reliable. The technology is too new to go with the smaller design houses IMO. Intel got it right.

The only drives that will pry these from my cold dead hands are the G3's.
 
I'm looking for a 60-100gig SSD for my Win7 PC as I need to reload it, and going to an SSD makes sense.. I don't need the fastest in the world, but I want good speed and reliability. I prefer to not have to constantly mess with drivers and firmware all the time.

Is Intel really the best route to go? I have a friend recommending Corsair Performance (Samsung) or Extreme series (Indillinx) over SandForce . But I'm seeing the write speeds on SandForce seem to blow everything else away, including X-25M G2's. I'm a little confused as to why the X-25M G2's are commended as the fastest because of this. Can someone explain?
 
The X25-Ms are limited to 70-80MB/s sequential write speed (100 MB/s for the 160GB). But of all the I/O that people do with SSDs, large sequential writes are the least common, since SSDs are not a good choice for storing very large files. The most common SSD I/Os are small file random reads, and then small file random writes, then sequential reads. The X25-M excels at all of those.

Also, the Sandforce drives tend to benchmark better than they perform in real life applications. They compress data before writing it, which gives them nearly a 2 to 1 write speed advantage in benchmarks that write a bunch of zeros rather than data that is hard to compress.

In short, it is unlikely that anyone will notice, in daily use, the slower sequential write speed of the X25-M, since sequential writes are uncommon, and the real-life speed is not so much worse than Sandforce as some benchmarks seem to suggest.
 
Thanks for the explanation. What about other factors like reserved space, loss of performance over lifespan, TRIM support, quality of drivers and firmware when comparing Intel to SandForce? For me personally, my biggest concern would be having to reload from scratch all the time because of performance loss, or having to worry about a firmware or driver update that is "highly recommended" causing corruption.

I'm using this drive exclusively for OS and Apps and some personal data (like Outlook PST, random office docs, QuickBooks database). But I won't be dealing with large video files and that kind of thing.

When looking at benchmarks on SandForce drives and AnandTech's 2MB sequential write, some of these drives show 200-250MB/s versus Intel's 80-100MB/s. But you say that's due to compression. Is this really not going to be a difference you see on a typical OS/apps drive use?

Drives I've been looking at are as follows (pricing form Amazon): Intel X-25M G2 80g for $200, Corsair F100 80g for $220, OCZ Agility 2 90g (3.5") for $235 and OCZ Vertex 2 90g for $245 (3.5").
 
john4200 said:
The X25-Ms are limited to 70-80MB/s sequential write speed (100 MB/s for the 160GB). But of all the I/O that people do with SSDs, large sequential writes are the least common, since SSDs are not a good choice for storing very large files. The most common SSD I/Os are small file random reads, and then small file random writes, then sequential reads. The X25-M excels at all of those.

Also, the Sandforce drives tend to benchmark better than they perform in real life applications. They compress data before writing it, which gives them nearly a 2 to 1 write speed advantage in benchmarks that write a bunch of zeros rather than data that is hard to compress.

In short, it is unlikely that anyone will notice, in daily use, the slower sequential write speed of the X25-M, since sequential writes are uncommon, and the real-life speed is not so much worse than Sandforce as some benchmarks seem to suggest.
Click to expand...

Great post, thanks.
 
The Intel firmware is more mature than that of the Sandforce SSDs. X25-M reserved space is about 7% ( 1 GiB / 1 GB ). Intel has a good implementation of TRIM that works well with Windows 7 (or you can run their TRIM tool manually). With TRIM, you should not see much performance degradation. There is no special driver required, it is just a normal SATA drive. But you will get better performance if you set your BIOS to AHCI mode, and use your OS AHCI driver.

It seems your budget increased.
 
john4200 said:
It seems your budget increased.
Click to expand...

Yea, possibly. Wasn't really too sure what I'd find at budget, so after looking around more, I've realized it might be worth increasing the budget . The real question becomes, is it worth spending more money or not.
 
Hmm, I got the wrong person (I was thinking you were the OP, with under $200 budget), but I guess your budget did increase? The perils of SSD shopping...
 
Intel is definitely the way to go IMO. The lower write speeds haven't been an issue for me at all. The drive takes care of itself; maintains performance, no worries with flashing firmware, and the anecdotal failure rate has been extremely low from all the threads I've read. The X25-M just works, and works damn well. If all you care about are benchmarks and you're willing to trust your data to something that may be less reliable & proven, go with the Crucial C300 or one of the Sandforce drives.

Work just purchased a C300 for me, but I was on vacation this week and haven't been able to install it. I'm looking forward to playing with it; time will tell how reliable it is and how resistant it is to performance degradation.
 
I posted this earlier in another thread, but here were some results I saw between the 2 machines listed in my signature. Used Diskbench to create/read actual files, not synthetic. $130 Agility 2 comes pretty damn close to my $400 Intel.


Code: 
### Copy File Bench started

Copy C:\Users\Public\Documents\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft\Data\patch-3.MPQ to C:\Users\Documents\SSD Test\patch-3.MPQ
Size: 605089137 (590MB)

Intel G2 160GB
  Time: 5844 ms
  Transfer Rate: 98.744 MB/s
Agility 2 60GB 
  Time: 6710 ms
  Transfer Rate: 86.000 MB/s



### Read File Bench started

Read file: C:\Users\Public\Documents\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft\Data\patch-2.MPQ
Size: 1403129115 bytes (1.37GB - Read 32MB Blocks)

Intel G2 160GB
  Time: 7811 ms
  Transfer Rate: 171.313 MB/s
Agility 2 60GB
  Time: 8310 ms
  Transfer Rate: 161.026 MB/s


### Create File Bench

Created file: C:\Users\Desktop\DiskBench2.bin
Size: 419430400 bytes (2MB x 200 blocks = 400MB)

Intel G2 160GB
  Time: 1194 ms
  Transfer Rate: 335.008 MB/s
Agility 2 60GB
  Time: 1950 ms
  Transfer Rate: 205.128 MB/s
 
Go with the intel, I had a vertex le 50gb which has advertised sustained write of 235mb (around that). The highest write I ever got was 160mb but the average write I got was 95mb (in real file transfers, not benchmarks), even slower than my kingston value drive, and no where near it's sustained speed. Sandforce is good but not as great as the benchmarks make it out to be.
 
munkle said:
I had a vertex le 50gb which has advertised sustained write of 235mb (around that). The highest write I ever got was 160mb but the average write I got was 95mb (in real file transfers, not benchmarks), even slower than my kingston value drive, and no where near it's sustained speed. Sandforce is good but not as great as the benchmarks make it out to be.
Click to expand...

Apparently it can get even worse than 95 MB/s. Have a look at this benchmark, particularly the sequential writes "post TRIM" for the Vertex 2:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2010/08/17/ocz-vertex-2e-review-120gb/3
 
john4200 said:
Apparently it can get even worse than 95 MB/s. Have a look at this benchmark, particularly the sequential writes "post TRIM" for the Vertex 2:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2010/08/17/ocz-vertex-2e-review-120gb/3
Click to expand...

Im surprised the sandforce crew hasn't showed up. Usually there is that group that refuses to believe that sandforce isn't the greatest in the world. It's good but is lacking in a lot of areas. I refused to buy ocz after that drive I bought. I contacted ocz to find out why it was so much slower than advertised. They told the drive speed is based off of atto and iometer, and that real world numbers will be lower. Basically they falsely advertise their drives.
 
What, your real-world usage does not consist of writing long strings of zeros to your SSD? :rolleyes:

Actually, even Anand screwed up when he tested the resiliency of the Sandforce SSDs. Anand's technique for testing SSD resiliency is to fill a drive to 80% capacity and then do a bunch of random writes to the drive. Then he runs an HDTune sequential write, and watches the write speed drop, at least for non-Sandforce SSDs. When he did it to the Sandforce SSDs, the result was, not surprisingly, a straight line with no drop. But HDTune is just writing zeros, so Sandforce compresses those zeros and barely writes anything. So of course there was no observed drop. I'm not sure how Anand missed that -- he is usually more on the ball than that.

The best way to test resiliency is to borrow Calypso Systems' technique. Take a fresh (or secure erased) SSD, and use IOmeter (the version that gives you the option to write random data) to continuously do 4KB random writes across the entire SSD. Leave it running for hours, and take a reading as often as possible (every minute if it can be scripted). Then plot write speed vs. time, and see how it degrades. Then TRIM and try again.
 
Last edited:
munkle said:
Im surprised the sandforce crew hasn't showed up. Usually there is that group that refuses to believe that sandforce isn't the greatest in the world. It's good but is lacking in a lot of areas.
Click to expand...

I agree that the Sandforce drives are pretty good, and that they also have some deficiencies. The biggest downside for me is their sequential read speed for incompressible data. The Intel drives can do about 250 MB/s, but the Sandforce drives can only manage about 210 MB/s. I guess Sandforce has to decompress the data (even though it probably did not achieve any compression in the first place) and that slows it down.
 
You'll get the best compatibility and almost the best speed out there by going with an Intel X25-E if you can afford it.
 
Get the intel buddy. You wont regret it. I have been using mine for 7 months.
Adding or Deleting videos and It still works as new. It never gives me any trouble.
 
Sorry for the offtopic :
I have now my OS on the HDD,and i created an image backup, with Acronis.
What do you think, if i recover the backup image on the SSD, same size ( 50 GB ) would that work ?
Same hardware. Soon i'm gonna but an SSD, and there is a lot of work, i mean, installing Windows,drivers ,optimize, customize and so on...
Thanks.
 
greyx said:
Sorry for the offtopic :
I have now my OS on the HDD,and i created an image backup, with Acronis.
What do you think, if i recover the backup image on the SSD, same size ( 50 GB ) would that work ?
Same hardware. Soon i'm gonna but an SSD, and there is a lot of work, i mean, installing Windows,drivers ,optimize, customize and so on...
Thanks.
Click to expand...

It's better to do a fresh install with a SSD with Windows 7 since the SSD will be properly aligned. Cloning a HDD Windows 7 install to a SSD has severe performance decreases as a cloned Windows 7 install will not align the SSD.

My source:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1534491
 
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