Help me pick an SSD

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bastage

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So I am crosstrading/Selling my current SSD's & need to find a replacement.

Currently I have a g1 Intel x18m 80gb that is going away (did have 2 in raid 0 before one had to go in for RMA).

What I am getting for them is a 40gb x25v that I am going to put in my SageTV server. & I Would like a single drive in the 60gb+ range for my main machine (with OS, & sc2 installed sitting a hair under 30gb used ATM) There is no storage drive in this system so the SSD will be the only drive.

I am basically looking for opinions between the following drives

125 G.SKILL Phoenix Pro Series FM-25S2S-60GBP2 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
134 Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

I am not opposed to hearing any other sudgestions & I do have a few dollars more then the above to work with. I just don't need larger.

My motherboard does not have SATA III and I dont see that changing any time soon.

Also OCZ need not apply as I am personally boycotting anything with there name on it because they make crap PSU's (yea I know its petty, but thats me).
 
I vote for the C300. I have one and it performs just as the spec's suggest, unlike the Sandforce SSDs.
 
I would go with the C300, but the SandForce drives have a pretty good following too. I just don't care for how their advertised speeds are inflated due to the use of a best-case scenario (compressible data). Much of your data is not compressible and the speeds will be lower, but it's still a pretty good drive.

I haven't heard anything bad about the speeds of the C300; only one or two blips about firmware or controller issues but that was months ago and hopefully resolved by now.
 
My biggest hesitation with the c300 is that to get its full speeds I need a SATA 3 controller which I don't have and don't see myself getting any time soon. On the plus side though crucial is a local company to me which I like. infact my brother in law works for them . unfortunately there employee discount doesn't beat newegg prices.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
You do not really pay a premium for the 6 Gbps SATA, and since it works great on 3 Gbps SATA, you can safely ignore the 6 Gbps capability.
 
bastage said:
My biggest hesitation with the c300 is that to get its full speeds I need a SATA 3 controller which I don't have and don't see myself getting any time soon. On the plus side though crucial is a local company to me which I like. infact my brother in law works for them . unfortunately there employee discount doesn't beat newegg prices.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
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If the biggest problem is that the drive is too fast for your SATA controller, I think that's a good problem to have. I wouldn't let that be an issue.

And yeah, I hate "employee discounts" that are higher than retailer prices.
 
I Dont know that I need the extra capacity, but I may spot a few extra bucks for this one. Still a SF controller.

As for the c300 its probably the wiser choice, but to be honest I have worked with 1000's of micron (which makes crucial) products & my feeling has always been very blah. Nothing every really impressed me, but nothing really turned me off about them either. Also thinking long term, is anyone else even using that same marvell controller as the c300.. Or is it just them hanging out all alone.
 
So first Crucial is a company that you like and then you say you feel blah about them, lol

Go for the Sandforce drive then and let us know how it goes. It'll be a heck of an upgrade over a HDD either way. The good thing about the C300 is that even though you can't take advantage of SATA 3 now, you can take advantage of the extra speed when you upgrade your mobo to one with SATA 3. On the other hand, that Mushkin drive gives you 90GB of space over the 64GB of the C300...
 
bastage said:
9 bucks more is still a premium..
Click to expand...

I think you misunderstood my implication. You do not pay a premium for 6 Gbps SATA [all other things being equal]. The cost per GB is not out of line with Intel SSDs, which have 3 Gbps SATA.

I do realize the C300 is $9 more in your example, but I think the performance of the C300 justifies that difference, even on 3 Gbps SATA.
 
Ordering tomorrow AM.. Any other input folks..

Missed this till just now
imyourzero said:
So first Crucial is a company that you like and then you say you feel blah about them, lol

Go for the Sandforce drive then and let us know how it goes. It'll be a heck of an upgrade over a HDD either way. The good thing about the C300 is that even though you can't take advantage of SATA 3 now, you can take advantage of the extra speed when you upgrade your mobo to one with SATA 3. On the other hand, that Mushkin drive gives you 90GB of space over the 64GB of the C300...
Click to expand...

I am currently using a x25v after selling my 2 x18m's that were in raid 0.. I am not exactly expecting a performance increase.. & as I pointed out there will be no SATA III in my system anytime soon & I have no reason to think that will change as this is a mITX AMD system & since to date there is exactly 1 motherboard that could be considered "enthusiast" grade I don't foresee anymore rocking my socks soon..


john4200 said:
I think you misunderstood my implication. You do not pay a premium for 6 Gbps SATA [all other things being equal]. The cost per GB is not out of line with Intel SSDs, which have 3 Gbps SATA.

I do realize the C300 is $9 more in your example, but I think the performance of the C300 justifies that difference, even on 3 Gbps SATA.
Click to expand...

So this performance difference you speak of? where is it? I haven't came across any reviews that says the c300 is better then the sandforce drives. Just excels differently. & I haven't seen anything that compared a Sandforce vs a c300 on SATA 2

Edit: This is quoted from the AT article & I cant find anything else that compares them directly that doesnt seem completely biased
In terms of new, out of box performance, the Crucial RealSSD C300 does very well. It performs like a next generation drive and is significantly faster than Intel's X25-M G2 or anything based on an Indilinx controller. The 128GB C300 tends to be slower than the 100GB SandForce drives while the 256GB C300 is about on par and sometimes faster. The 256GB C300 also pulls ahead if you move to a 6Gbps SATA controller.

For Crucial the achilles heel is our old friend: the read-modify-write, a used C300 can potentially lose a good amount of its initial performance. The major disadvantage for SandForce is if you’re writing perfectly random or highly compressed data. Again I’m talking about data that’s random in nature, not random in terms of access pattern. Our heavy downloading workload shows this best where the 256GB C300 remains on top while the 100GB SandForce drive drops to Indilinx-like performance.
Click to expand...

Last Edit.. NM I am going to deal with the tiny ass 40gb ssd for a month till black friday & order a 6850 instead
 
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bastage said:
So this performance difference you speak of? where is it? I haven't came across any reviews that says the c300 is better then the sandforce drives.
Click to expand...

On 128GB and 256GB models, it shows up after the drive has been used significantly (filled and erased several times) and TRIMmed. The C300s still write at their spec'd speed, but the SF drives drop to around 80MB/s sequential writes on incompressible data.

I cannot recall having seen a similar test on a 64GB SF drive. It may be less of a difference at that capacity. But the fact that the issue is there in other SF drives still makes me nervous.
 
john4200 said:
On 128GB and 256GB models, it shows up after the drive has been used significantly (filled and erased several times) and TRIMmed. The C300s still write at their spec'd speed, but the SF drives drop to around 80MB/s sequential writes on incompressible data.
Click to expand...
Link showcasing this? This is the first I've read about this.
 
For the record here is the 64gb C300 I'm using here at work:

c300%2010.0.0.1046.PNG


Anyone have an AS SSD shot for the other drive?

Edit: The above was after a clean boot a few days ago. I just now ran another benchmark of 464 while I had some apps running (Outlook, Explorer, Firefox, Archicad, and Stucalc).
 
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[LYL]Homer;1036329262 said:
For the record here is the 64gb C300 I'm using here at work:

c300%2010.0.0.1046.PNG


Anyone have an AS SSD shot for the other drive?

Edit: The above was after a clean boot a few days ago. I just now ran another benchmark of 464 while I had some apps running (Outlook, Explorer, Firefox, Archicad, and Stucalc).
Click to expand...

wow.. talk about a low right speed.. the x18m g1 I just had consistently got higher.


On the SSD side I am going to be waiting a month or so & unless things change I am going to get a sandforce drive. Either G.Skill or Mushkin. The choice between the 2 will be based on deals at the time.
 
Typically, the C300 64GB AS-SSD scores for sequential writes are a little higher than that, around 75 MB/s.

But before you jump to conclusions, I suggest you look up the AS-SSD scores for 64GB SF drives. You cannot trust the spec's on the SF drive, you have to actually measure the speeds, preferably after the drive has been filled up with files and used.

Also, the incompressible data sequential read speeds of the SF drives are a lot lower than the C300, even with SATA 3 Gbps.

Here's what you get for a 60GB Phoenix when it is unused:

60G-asssd.jpg


Here's another 60GB Phoenix. This benchmark got lower sequential write, I guess because the SSD had been used. But it is hard to know for sure, since the write speeds of the SF drives are erratic:

as-ssd-1.jpg
 
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