WD SiliconEdge Blue SSD

[TGA]

I was going to post this in the hot deals thread for this drive but it’s really not the place to discuss the drive. So I will ask my questions here.

Hot deals thread is here.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1035762614#post1035762614


So is storage review no longer a good place to go to compare drives anymore?

The X25-V deal thread seemed to indicate they were a fine drive for the money.

Looking at storage review this WD seems to beat the X25-V in every way.

What am I missing here? If the X25-V is a fine drive then why is this one getting shit on?

Also some commented that it uses a Jmicron controller, I guess if Jmicron did supply the controller it could explain why SR mentioned WD being so tight lipped about the controller. But even if it is a jmicron it can’t be the same one we are all familiar with so why does that automatically make this one bad?

As I already stated in the deals thread I was looking at ordering the X25-V before I seen the price on this WD and compared the 2 on storage review. Now I am favoring the WD.

EDIT: ok I looked through the data again and did notice this time that random small writes are shown to be over 2x better on the Intel drive but other then that the WD seems to meet or beat the Intel.

Does this one aspect really kill the drives ability to perform as an OS drive?

 

[InvisiBill]

Check out WD releases first SSD - SiliconEdge Blue 64/128/256GB.

Final Words

I've repeated it enough times that you should get the point by now - Western Digital's SiliconEdge Blue is just a bit behind the performance of an Indilinx based SSD. The drive performed relatively well in our tests. TRIM worked as expected under Windows 7. Compared to a standard hard drive it's great, but so are just about all other SSDs. Given that the Blue isn't the fastest SSD in the world, what this really boils down to is price.

At $529 for 128GB, the SiliconEdge Blue just isn't worth it. To be honest, the Blue needs to be priced similarly to Kingston's SSDNow V Series to even make sense. It has to be cheaper than both Intel and Indilinx drives, which means cutting the MSRP in half. Not to mention that I received and tested a 256GB version of the drive priced at $999. It remains to be seen how the 128GB drive performs as that one will most likely be the sweet spot of price/capacity/performance.

For $130, it seems like a decent value. For the $279 MSRP three months ago, it was one of the worst SSD values you could find.

EDIT: ok I looked through the data again and did notice this time that random small writes are shown to be over 2x better on the Intel drive but other then that the WD seems to meet or beat the Intel.

Does this one aspect really kill the drives ability to perform as an OS drive?

Pretty much. With an OS drive, you're doing mostly small random accesses, and very few large sequential accesses. While all manufacturers like to plaster the huge sequential transfer rates all over (bigger numbers == better product!!!!), that aspect doesn't really have much to do with real-world OS drive performance. It's sort of like advertising the handling of a car at 200mph when you'll never drive it over 60mph. It's great that it handles well at 200mph, but if that means a crappy ride at 60mph where you'll be driving it, then it doesn't do you much good at all. If a product isn't good for what you want to do, it sucks, even if it's really really good at things you don't use it for.

This too:

And LegitReviews seemed to run into some write performance issues (more so than I saw on the other reviews).
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1233/5/

Benchmark Results: The WD SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD had solid read performance numbers in HD Tune Pro 4.01, but in the write test the benchmark results fell flat on its face. The average read speed was found to be 208MB/s with an average write speed of 48MB/s. The read test had an access time of 0.1ms, while the write test had an access time of 2.6ms. It is interesting that both HD Tune and HD Tach are showing something strange happening in the write tests.

Comparison Chart: When comparing the WD SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD to the competition, it had both the slowest average read and write speeds of all the SSDs that we have tested on this system. It also had the lowest burst rate and slowest random write access times as well.

Assuming you don't run into any major problems due to write performance, it should still be a lot better than an old HDD. However, the 80GB X25-M can be found under $200 and the 40GB X25-V under $100. The WD is a little cheaper per GB, but you're getting what you pay for. It's hard because it's also in the middle of those two based on size. The 40GB seems quite a bit smaller, while the 80GB seems quite a bit more expensive. However, if you're dropping the money on what could be considered a high-end "luxury" PC part, you may want to spend a little more to get a proven leader, rather than a budget model that might give you less-than-optimal results.

 

[sub.mesa]

JMicron beating Intel SSD controller? Perhaps in sequential benchmarks; not anything else. Besides Intel SSDs have the lowest read latency of all SSDs.

 

[outspoken]

Does this one aspect really kill the drives ability to perform as an OS drive?

it's just that compared to those around it in that price range it's not really a deal, i would consider $69.99 to be a deal for this drive.