NAND Flash Faces Off - Synchronous vs. Asynchronous @ [H]

You guys are getting a little off topic but I'll play along.

I spoke with OCZ late last week and they are working with MS on the RAID TRIM stuff. I have a Revo 3 x2 here that I'm toying around with. An article is coming shortly. TRIM is not ready for RAID just yet so you have to work on a few things yourself. I have a Ducati 999R with a bunch of WSBK parts on it. The bike corners like nothing else and makes big power but the motor has to be rebuilt 2x more than any other Ducati motor since it's an R model. A regular Japanese bike can go for 40-60K miles before a teardown, my Duc needs it every other year, 10K miles or so. Is it a pain in the butt, yep. Is it worth it, yep!!!! It's the same thing with most exotic Ferraris and RAID. You have to keep everything within spec to have that level of performance.

Those still on the charts: I'm not an Excel Master, more like an Excel Beginner. I've used it for years to do what I need to do, make charts. Somewhere while building my SSD charts I clicked something. Kyle is going to fix it and send the doc back for future use.....sorry if they ruffled your feathers, look at the numbers please.


Now that these real world numbers are out and about we can start to look at other products. Many of these articles are based on another. The next part will show where the Marvell drives (Intel 510, Crucial m4, Corsair Performance 3) fit into the mix. I think everyone is in for some surprises.

Somewhere yesterday posted about owning a handful of drives and talked about them all in the same system. You are correct, the access times are very close and everything feels fast. If you are spending 200 Dollars on a part then I want you to get your money's worth.


The OCZ / SandForce issue. I've deployed several of these new SF-2281 drives and not had a single issue with BSODs. That changed this weekend. We loaded up BF2 with all of the expansion goodies and my friend loaded League of Legends on my gaming computer while I rebuilt his system. We played for around 6 hours one night and my Vertex 3 Max IOPS blue screened 3x. This was the first time the system ran into the issue. Later tonight I'll toss the latest firmware on the drive and see if that fixes it and report back.
 
Random BSOD's scare people bad, anything that causes them is avoided like the plague. Sole reason I'm avoiding ALL SSD's atm
 
I haven't seen anyone having issues with the Intel 512, Crucial m4 or Corsair Performance 3.
 
Yes, you caught one that I did not find this morning. My apologies. If you are going to do that, please put the data in on ALL the others and lets look at those too if you would like to be fair about it.

As I spelled out in the other post of mine directly addressing this subject, this will be "fixed" moving forward. Again my apologies.
 
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A quick search of the SandForce SF-2281 controller 240GB SSDs on Newegg I found that not a single one listed if it was asynchronous flash or synchronous flash.
 
Hexen525 said:
A quick search of the SandForce SF-2281 controller 240GB SSDs on Newegg I found that not a single one listed if it was asynchronous flash or synchronous flash.
Click to expand...

You need to look at the model, for example, Vertex 3 = synchronous, Agility 3 = asynchronous. It's explained in the article which drives have which type of flash.
 
mt2e said:
Random BSOD's scare people bad, anything that causes them is avoided like the plague. Sole reason I'm avoiding ALL SSD's atm
Click to expand...

That's wrong aproach.

Just avoid anything with letters O , C and Z on it and everything with CrapForce controller :D

So in other words use Crucial M4/Intel 510/Samsung 470 drives and you will be fine.

Intel 320 once they repair firmware should be good too.
 
Hi,

I would like to purchase two 120 ish GB ssd's and place them into raid 0, however after reading this article it seems the way to go for optimal performance is a 'synchronous' drive. However, while reviewing various vendor sites and reading their descriptions I'm not seeing them label their drives as asynchronous or synchronous, is there a tip or something I should be aware of when looking? Or maybe i'm just blind :)
 
ChrisRam said:
The OCZ / SandForce issue. I've deployed several of these new SF-2281 drives and not had a single issue with BSODs. That changed this weekend. We loaded up BF2 with all of the expansion goodies and my friend loaded League of Legends on my gaming computer while I rebuilt his system. We played for around 6 hours one night and my Vertex 3 Max IOPS blue screened 3x. This was the first time the system ran into the issue. Later tonight I'll toss the latest firmware on the drive and see if that fixes it and report back.
Click to expand...
Did you see what the Stop Error was? Was it a Sandy Bridge board?
 
drueb said:
Hi,

I would like to purchase two 120 ish GB ssd's and place them into raid 0, however after reading this article it seems the way to go for optimal performance is a 'synchronous' drive. However, while reviewing various vendor sites and reading their descriptions I'm not seeing them label their drives as asynchronous or synchronous, is there a tip or something I should be aware of when looking? Or maybe i'm just blind :)
Click to expand...

The last page of the article stated what to buy. I don't mess around with your money, I'll just come right out and say what I think is the best value in black and white.
 
qdemn7 said:
Did you see what the Stop Error was? Was it a Sandy Bridge board?
Click to expand...

I didn't see, I was a bit red in the face like everyone else with the issue. I was pissed to say the least.

The board is a GBT X58A-UD7 with the drive running off of a Marvell PCIe to SATA III bridge.

I loaded the latest firmware last night and played BF2 for an hour, no problems. I'm hoping to have more time with it tonight.
 
ChrisRam said:
I didn't see, I was a bit red in the face like everyone else with the issue. I was pissed to say the least.

The board is a GBT X58A-UD7 with the drive running off of a Marvell PCIe to SATA III bridge.

I loaded the latest firmware last night and played BF2 for an hour, no problems. I'm hoping to have more time with it tonight.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I guess that decides for me. No Vertex 3 for my X58 Big Bang XPower until they get their SFs fixed.
 
The fix may already be there, I'll report back when I know for sure.

It's really not fair to just say OCZ and leave out the others. SF makes the firmware, manufacutes like OCZ pay for which switches are turned on and distribute the products. Nearly all of the companies have their own PCB and manufacturing techniques but the firmware comes from SF for the most part.
 
anyone else getting a constant 404 if you try to view any page of the article besides the introduction?

'cause i am...



Code: 
hardocp[dot]com/article/2011/08/07/nand_flash_faces_off_synchronous_vs_asynchronous/2

is a 404
 
ghost6303 said:
anyone else getting a constant 404 if you try to view any page of the article besides the introduction?

'cause i am...



Code: 
hardocp[dot]com/article/2011/08/07/nand_flash_faces_off_synchronous_vs_asynchronous/2

is a 404
Click to expand...

Are you still seeing this?
 
Can you check to see if you are seeing this now?

Thanks

ghost6303 said:
anyone else getting a constant 404 if you try to view any page of the article besides the introduction?

'cause i am...



Code: 
hardocp[dot]com/article/2011/08/07/nand_flash_faces_off_synchronous_vs_asynchronous/2

is a 404
Click to expand...
 
interesting review. maybe now that the hoopla over the graphs is over we can discuss the review :)

curious here...the differences are very pronounced with the SandForce drives...what about with non-SF drives? Any non-sf drives using the ONFI 1.0 NAND?

What are the differences with those drives? i suspect that the differences are only so significant with SF drives, as they rely heavily on the compression.

of note: these tests/ especially PCMark Vantage, are done at extreme high Queue Depths, in scenarios that will rarely present themselves to a typical user.
 
Computurd said:
of note: these tests/ especially PCMark Vantage, are done at extreme high Queue Depths, in scenarios that will rarely present themselves to a typical user.
Click to expand...

the test I always check for is 4k qd1, but ONLY if it's as-ssd. it's the only bench that doesn't seem to inflate scores and it's the best direct comparison for me.
 
Great article, BUT we need a list of model numbers that list the different types. The Manufactures hide way to much info, and feed us hype.
 
Well, I feel like a dick now harping over the graphs, its just a pet peeve of mine. Don't let that discourage your fine work. It's essentially investigative reporting, which is direly needed everywhere in society.
 
This is an excellent, excellent article.
It is tech journalism at it's finest. Well timed for me since I was going through benchmark #$#@ trying to understand why compressed data was so poor on a drive. This explains it all, and very well.

I was curious why Read performance on asynch would be relatively bad vs. synch. I (think) I get why write performance would be bad due to compression, but not sure I understand why Read would be bad.

Thanks again!
 
Thanks Chris for this great article. It was exactly what I was looking for. Very informative and pretty straight to the point.:cool:

ChrisRam said:
Now that these real world numbers are out and about we can start to look at other products. Many of these articles are based on another. The next part will show where the Marvell drives (Intel 510, Crucial m4, Corsair Performance 3) fit into the mix. I think everyone is in for some surprises.
Click to expand...
Any word on this? or is this still in the testing phase?

drueb said:
Hi,

I would like to purchase two 120 ish GB ssd's and place them into raid 0, however after reading this article it seems the way to go for optimal performance is a 'synchronous' drive. However, while reviewing various vendor sites and reading their descriptions I'm not seeing them label their drives as asynchronous or synchronous, is there a tip or something I should be aware of when looking? Or maybe i'm just blind :)
Click to expand...
I was wondering this myself. Basically two questions that I'd like answered...
1: What drives have synchronous memory besides the ones listed in the article?
2: how do Intel and Samsung drives fair with these kind of tests?
 
pwrusr said:
Any word on this? or is this still in the testing phase?
Click to expand...

After the unfortunate flame-fest above (which was deleted), he's only posted a few times, and nothing for about 2½ months now -- the follow-up may not be coming ...
 
xorbe said:
After the unfortunate flame-fest above (which was deleted), he's only posted a few times, and nothing for about 2½ months now -- the follow-up may not be coming ...
Click to expand...

Easy tiger:) Q4 is always really busy around the house due to my wife's work schedule this time of year. It usually goes something like work till you drop, sleep three hours and work some more. It's that way 7 days a week for three and a half months. I watch the three kids and coach basketball at the same time.

I've spent a lot of time building real world tests to use. It's time to get off the synthetic pipe and do things different. Look for content shortly.
 
Cool Chris! Take care of the kids and wife first. Then when you have a few toss some benchmarks up :D :cool:
 
Ok. So now the real question is how can you figure out which drives are synchronous and asynchronous when making a purchase?
 
Well this is what I have gotten in my search for anyone interested Not quit sure where the thread went so I will try and get back on track
Synchronous NAND SSD's
Crucial M4 Marvell 88SS9174.
Patriot Wildfire is synchronous with SF-2281
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe SF-2281

Asynchronous NAND SSD's
Patriot pyro SF-2281
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos SF-2281

I have not dug many reviews on any other SSD's So i dont know about the Intel 310, 510 or the samsung 580 if anyone knows could you share.
 
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Or by price - if you have two SandForce drives with similar speeds and one of them is 25% cheaper than the other it's likely asynchronyous :D

Still I'd suggest staying away from anything with Sand Force controler inside and anything made by OCZ.
 
With this great article by HF in mind I could really use some help determining the difference between the Mushkin MX version and the DX version and which is better.

I started a thread on it: Mushkin SSD DX vs MX
 
I'm curious how the Samsung 830 holds up?

Samsung says that they make their SSD all in house i.e. they make their own controller, DRAM, NAND and software. So, Samsung doesn't use the Sand Force SF 2281 controller.

"Samsung manufactures and uses its own 2x-nm Toggle-mode DDR NAND which is fairly similar in performance to the ONFi 2.x NAND used by Intel and Crucial (133Mbps data rates per interface).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4863/the-samsung-ssd-830-review/1

SAMSUNG 830 Series 128GB on sale for $90 with the Newegg code
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-147-163
 
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