[Solved] Crucial Sata III or Intel Sata II ssd?

I decided to purchase an ssd for my for my mainstream/professional Intel i7 860 system. I'm not much of a gamer. I've got it narrowed down to two drives.

Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] D=10521304

Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH120G2K5 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820167035

My system only supports Sata II so I am thinking of getting the Intel drive. Would there be any benefit to installing the the Crucial ssd in my system?

Does anyone have any experience using ssd's with photo and video editing applications? Any significant improvements?

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Hey skeleton brother

I'm using the Crucual 300D's in my builds unless I need to cut a few $ to meet a budget and going then with Vertex 2's

This one's $199
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227551

I's save the $ and get the Vertex 2 in this case as it has better write speeds. The biggest performance boost w/SSD's will come from locating swap, tmp and scratch disk there. Won't fit a lot of movies there....but should be able to locate the one you're editing there.....can always RAID 2 of em

------------------------------ If a man speaks in the forest and no woman hears him, is he still wrong ?
Reply to JackNaylorPE

Hiya Jack!

I checked customer reviews at a number of vendor web sites. Normally I don't pay too much attention to customer comments but there seem to be too many doa's and premature failures of that OCZ drive.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to JohnnyLucky

i go with a vertex 2 60GB as my boot drive..

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Reply to malmental

Best answer

Hey Johnny
On the C300
(1) for about 25 bucks you can get the Asus U3S6 card and that will provide you with 2 USB 3 external ports and 2 SATA 6 internal ports (I have one in my P65-UD4P MB)
(2) when you upgrade MB downstream you will have support for Sata 6 and can move it over
(3) I believe they have released one with an upgradded controller - better garbage collection.

On Sata 2 SSDs
(1) you are not limited to OCZ, There are several others that use the SF12xx controller which are very simular. I have the Pheonix Pro 120 Gig and am very satisfied.
(2) They have also started to release SSDs with an improved controller (SF1200 -> SF1222 and I believe there is a SF1500 (SF 1500 might be at a premium price)

Take care and ENJOY

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by RetiredChief on 01-11-2011 at 07:13:40 PM

Reply to RetiredChief

I'd go with the C300 even on SATA 3Gb/s.

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Reply to saint19

Retired Chief - Slapping myself upside the head. I never thought of an add-on card!!!

Anyone have any new info on the new Intel ssd's that are supposed to be released next month?

Message edited by JohnnyLucky on 01-12-2011 at 02:03:54 AM

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Have not heard much on the "New" Intel SSD using Sata III. I believe they released an updated G2 Version, however the SF 1200 and New SF based SSDs still out perform the IMproved Intel SSD - SATA II catagory.

Couple of articles you may want to read on upcoming SATA III SSDs.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4086 [...] 5mbs-reads
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4116 [...] benchmarks

On vertex SF2000 based.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4100 [...] rce-sf2000
Note other venders should start producing SSDs based on the newer SF controller - SF1500 and SF2000

Message edited by RetiredChief on 01-12-2011 at 05:00:51 PM

Reply to RetiredChief

Chief - Intel has a new G3 ssd in the works. Release was delayed until next month. Several news articles indicate it is a "new and improved" version of the G2. If the news articles are correct, it will probably be a SATA II drive. I'm wondering if Intel is going to surprise us.

In the meantime I went over to Anandtech today and and read all of their ssd reviews and articles. Anand Lal Shimpi wrote a review last July that got my attention. His review included a variety of synthetic benchmarks and a suite of PCMark Vantage tests. The PCMark Vantage tests come closer to benchmarking real world use. Of particular interest were the productivity and gaming results.

Here's a link the PCmark Vantage benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812 [...] ssd-c300/4

BUT WAIT! There's more! Anand also ran "storage bench tests". He used a light load and a heavy load of real world applications. The results are really interesting:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812 [...] ssd-c300/6

Looks like Crucial SATA III is the way to go for now. That will probably change in a few months, especially when new controllers are ramped up for mass production.

Message edited by JohnnyLucky on 01-13-2011 at 03:55:25 AM

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Micron plans the C400 for next month, so, we need check both sides (SF and Marvell) and the performance with new generations.

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Reply to saint19

JohnnyLucky wrote :

Hiya Jack!

I checked customer reviews at a number of vendor web sites. Normally I don't pay too much attention to customer comments but there seem to be too many doa's and premature failures of that OCZ drive.

Were you reading on Newegg? They typically have a few comments per item with DOA, could just be the shippers or poor packaging.

As to the question, any SSD beats any HDD as far as programs go. However, if you don't have SATA III then a SATA III drive should perform like a SATA II.

Reply to jaymthespinoza

RetiredChief wrote :

Hey Johnny
On the C300
(1) for about 25 bucks you can get the Asus U3S6 card and that will provide you with 2 USB 3 external ports and 2 SATA 6 internal ports (I have one in my P65-UD4P MB)
(2) when you upgrade MB downstream you will have support for Sata 6 and can move it over
(3) I believe they have released one with an upgradded controller - better garbage collection.

On Sata 2 SSDs
(1) you are not limited to OCZ, There are several others that use the SF12xx controller which are very simular. I have the Pheonix Pro 120 Gig and am very satisfied.
(2) They have also started to release SSDs with an improved controller (SF1200 -> SF1222 and I believe there is a SF1500 (SF 1500 might be at a premium price)

Take care and ENJOY

Hey RC,

I checked the AUSUS support site for the Asus U3S6 card and its no longer listed.
Have you ever gone to that site?
Do you know what they are listing in under now?

Thanks

Mark

Reply to mark_k

mark_k - no longer at newegg.com either. Had to google for it.

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Looks like newegg is just out of stock, still listed on Asus site so does not appear to be a discontiniued item.

http://www.asus.com/Search.aspx?SearchKey=u3s6

However did not see an "instock" at microcenter or zippzoomfly

Message edited by RetiredChief on 01-19-2011 at 06:22:43 PM

Reply to RetiredChief

RC,

It use to be listed in the forum area. Look at the upper right side drop downs. Its no loger listed.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.as [...] uage=en-us

Reply to mark_k

jamesthespinoza - Here is a link to an article published last month about disk failure rates:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/ [...] _than_hdd/

I also read an ssd article published last August that happened to have a chart of ssd failure rates:

http://www.hardmac.com/news/2010/1 [...] eliability

Intel 0,59%
Corsair 2,17%
Crucial 2,25%
Kingston 2,39%
OCZ 2,93%

Those are a lot better than failure rates for mechanical drives.

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Retired Chief - Thank you for mentioning the Asus U3S6 PCIe card. It should be a very good temporary upgrade at a very affordable price. It sure beats the heck out of upgrading a motherboard and cpu just to get SATA III capability. I am very satisfied with my Intel Core i7 860 system for the the semi-professional work I do. Currently there is no reason for me to upgrade. The situation is probably different for hardcore gamers about to embark on a do or die mission to save the planet from alien invaders.

I still haven't decided on an ssd. I am going to be patient and see what happens in the near future. We've got a lot of new ssd's being released starting next month. Personally I'd like to see what Intel is going to actually release. News articles from last September suggested that the final version of the Intel G3 ssd's might be SATA III drives rather than SATA II. I could not find any current information. It would be nice if Intel hurried up and surprised us.

There is too much advertising hype that does not match reality and too many benchmarks measuring different processes. It can be quite confusing and frustrating.

Yesterday I ran across several news articles that were very interesting. Intel, Micron, Marvel, Crucial, OCZ, and many other companies involved with ssd's have formed a consortium to make PCIe the standard for ssd's. SATA data transmission rates are a bottleneck that will hamper ssd performance. It looks like SATA will eventually disappear. Seems to be sort of similar to DisplayPort replacing DVI.

BTW - military retiree myself - 30 years - US Army!

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Hey Johnny

Concerning the OCZ customer feedback, I think I can shed some light on that. I don't know about other SSDs, but OCZ SSD drives are not pre-formatted like hard drives are. I recently tried to clone my old laptop HDD to my new SSD and Acronis couldn't even see the drive. I used Parted Magic to create a partion on the SSD, and then Acronis was able to recognize it as Unallocated. I'm guessing many people just assume the drives are DOA when they are not immediately recognized. Just my two cents.

To all current and former US Military - Thank you for your service!

Message edited by LordConrad on 01-24-2011 at 12:09:42 AM

------------------------------ Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.6 GHz
Gigabyte 790FXTA-UD5 Mobo
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Reply to LordConrad

LordConrad
I do not recommend cloning a HDD to an SSD as partition alignment may be incorrect and drivers installed on HDD may be incorrect. I cloned a 80 gig Intel G2 SSD to a Pheonix pro 120 gig SSD (SF1200 Controller). It worked, but performance was poor - Had to reinstall win 7.

Johnny
23 Yrs USAF, retired 1983. Had a Very enjoyable career.

Reply to RetiredChief

God bless all current and retired and passed-on Military service people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reply to mark_k

thank-you for the shot out...
US-Navy retired (1989-1992)
PO2 (petty-officer 2nd class) / GS2 - Gas Turbine (electrical)
(Kuwait veteran / Desert Storm)
USS Deyo (DD 989) / Charleston, SC
also TAD'd (temporary assignment duty) USS Ortolan (ASR 22 - submarine rescue)

Message edited by malmental on 01-25-2011 at 02:29:06 AM

------------------------------ A+, Net+, MCDST, DSCE (Dell)
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Reply to malmental

RetiredChief
Thanks for the advice. I checked the SSD alignment after Acronis finished and there were no problems. I also upgraded my AHCI drivers to Intel RST. Windows recognized it was now on an SSD and configured itself accordingly by turning off System Restore and all the Superfetch/Prefetch stuff. I went in and turned off Drive Indexing. I also turned off the pagefile since I never come close to using up my laptop's 8GB of RAM. So far there doesn't seem to be any issues and the drive speed is amazing.

------------------------------ Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.6 GHz
Gigabyte 790FXTA-UD5 Mobo
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Reply to LordConrad

Great - ENJOY

Reply to RetiredChief

Well, I've got the ASUS U3S6 PCI-e board that Retired Chief recommended. According to page 4 of the user manual the board is compatible with my ASUS Sabertooth 55i motherboard. The U3S6 board comes with a cd-rom disc with appropriate drivers and I can even make a Marvel driver disc. So far, so good.

I've read lots of announcements about SATA III ssd's that will be introduced in the near future. Still waiting for their release.

I've also read a lot about PCI-e x16 ssd's. Yes, that's right, PCI-e x16 ssd's. Right now they are only meant for mainstream big business.

Reply to JohnnyLucky

I'd go with the C300, it is a faster drive.

However, it would probably be worth waiting a month or two and checking out all the new drives, as most of the new drives are coming out before March (though the SF-2000 drives will be a bit after that).

If you need any more help, let me know!

Reply to wfriction

Wait few days more and you will see the C400 comes out to the market.

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Reply to saint19

There are ssd drives that are faster than a C400 or an OCZ Revo X2.

For $2,000.00 US Dollars you can get one of these PCI-e x8 ssd's:

https://www.photofast.com.tw/HardWa [...] e-SSD.html

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to JohnnyLucky

JohnnyLucky wrote :

There are ssd drives that are faster than a C400 or an OCZ Revo X2.

For $2,000.00 US Dollars you can get one of these PCI-e x8 ssd's:

https://www.photofast.com.tw/HardWa [...] e-SSD.html

Excellent, two ordered for my rig :lol:

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Reply to saint19

@ Saint19
be a SAINT and send one this way, as us poor retired (well almost) folks can not affort!!!

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by RetiredChief on 01-25-2011 at 07:39:53 PM

Reply to RetiredChief

I don't believe the ASUS U3S6 works as well as onboard SATA III (6gb).
Anyone else here the same thing?
I think it has to do with the architecture?

Reply to mark_k

RetiredChief wrote :

@ Saint19
be a SAINT and send one this way, as us poor retired (well almost) folks can not affort!!!

Sure!! :lol:

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Reply to saint19

Saint - If I had known you were financially well off, then I would have posted a link to a PCI-e x16 ssd. :lol:

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Here is a link to SATA III Architecture issues:

http://www.asus.com/FeatureList.as [...] &F_ID=4432

Reply to mark_k

mark_K - The Asus U3S6 comes with the extra expansion bridge chip shown in the animation you linked to. Asus makes a big deal about it on the box the card comes in. I know for certain it is not a good idea to connect two USB 3.0 devices and two SATA III ssd's. If you try using all 4 devices at once there will definitely be a major bottleneck. Just about all of the technical reviews focused on the USB 3.0 and pretty much neglected SATA III.

Message edited by JohnnyLucky on 01-26-2011 at 03:02:56 AM

Reply to JohnnyLucky

JohnnyLucky wrote :

Saint - If I had known you were financially well off, then I would have posted a link to a PCI-e x16 ssd. :lol:

:lol: Sure :lol:

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Reply to saint19

For the cost concious - latest newegg email special:

OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - $99.99 after mail-in rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] D=10521304

Here's the link to the latest newegg email specials:

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEema [...] _email.png

Message edited by JohnnyLucky on 01-26-2011 at 11:19:26 AM

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Really good deal, the good thing for your guys is that you live in the USA and can buy from newegg without problems.

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Reply to saint19

@ Mark_K
Your link points to a bottleneck when using a addon card utilizing the pci-e X1. The U3S6 card is an X4 card. The X4 card does have a drawback in that performance would be drastically reduced if all four devices were to be accessed at the same time. For the average user concurrent access would be to/from USB3 to say sata 6 Drive, or transfer between two sata6 drives in which case not much (if any bottleneck)

Also the added on card is really only a recommendation when U3 and/or Sata 6 is not supported by the motherboard. The U3S6 card is a good option, untill the MB is upgraded at which time the card could be transfered to the New system to extend the Nr of available USB 3 ports and the Nr of Sata 6 ports.

@saint19
"Sure!! " Great, when can Johhy and I expect deliever - Probably when the "Lake" freezes over - RIGHT.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by RetiredChief on 01-26-2011 at 04:33:30 PM

Reply to RetiredChief

RetiredChief wrote :

@saint19
"Sure!! " Great, when can Johhy and I expect deliever - Probably when the "Lake" freezes over - RIGHT.

Right :lol:

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Reply to saint19

Hi,

I bought one VERTEX OCZ 2 GB of 120.
I hesitated a bit from version 2.5 "and version 3.5".
Finally, I bought version 2.5 "because the adapter to position it in a rack 3.5" desktop was provided.
Luckily I chose this version ... the bios of my motherboard asus Sabertooth 55i (Intel P55 LGA 1156) can't detect the SSD OCZ! :fou:

Unlike my Dell laptop that recognizes the OCZ SSD without any problem ...

Reply to fabrice_13

fabrice_13 I might suggest that you start a new thread with topic/question "problem with my Vertex-2 120 Gig SSD"

Many who might provide a response to you will overlook this thread as they have already read it.

Message edited by RetiredChief on 01-26-2011 at 10:31:21 PM

Reply to RetiredChief

SOME GOOD NEWS - Corsair Performance 3 ssd's are now available at newegg.com.

Here's a link to all of the Crucial and Corsair SATA III drives currently available at newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] SATA%20III

Prices average about $20.00 higher than the Crucial C300 drives except for the Corsair 265GB version. It's a lot more expensive. I was hoping prices would be about the same.

Other than some info from CES 11 over at Anandtech there's isn't very much info about the Corsair drives. I would have thought technical reviws would have been published by now.

Message edited by JohnnyLucky on 01-27-2011 at 01:52:29 AM

Reply to JohnnyLucky

I noticed that also just befor I left work - it looks like it has better performance than the C300, But that might just be that the firmware is a newer version (Both use the marvel controller I believe).

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to RetiredChief

RetiredChief wrote :

I noticed that also just befor I left work - it looks like it has better performance than the C300, But that might just be that the firmware is a newer version (Both use the marvel controller I believe).

Yeah, I want see what can do the C400 series against those Corsair.

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Reply to saint19

Retired Chief - I'm sitting here with the ASUS U3S6 installed in a PCI-e 2.0 x16 slot in my Asus Sabertooth 55i LGA 1156 motherboard. Windows 7 64bit didn't have any problems recognising it. Unfortunately I don't have any USB 3.0 or SATA III device to plug in. Looks like I am on hold for the time being.

Although Asus listed my motherboard as being compatible it does not have a PCI-e 2.0 x4 slot for the card. I've got two x16 slots, three x1 slots, and one legacy PCI slot. The thing about those two x16 slots is that if you have two video cards, then they each drop down to x8. Since I never planned to use two video cards it didn't matter. I tried to find out if adding the U3S6 would trigger the change. I dug down into the Asus forums. I found people asking but nobody replied - zip, zero, zilch!!! I checked technical reviews for all three versions of the motherboard. One of the reviews for the brand new Sabertooth P67 LGA 155 indicated if only one video card is used, then the second slot still functions as x16. Hoping it's the same for my motherboard.

Message edited by JohnnyLucky on 01-27-2011 at 06:00:44 AM

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Johnny,
ASUS used to have a decated list in their forum for the U3S6 but now its gone. What list are you asking your questions in?

Reply to mark_k

mar_k - I used Google to search the Asus forums for questions about the Sabertooth 55i and U3S6.

Actually it may not matter. Windows 7 64 bit is playing nice with the card. When I get home from work today I'll plug in my SATA II optical drive and see what happens.

Reply to JohnnyLucky

Johnny
I have the P55-UD4P MB (Not the "A" ). Have no PCI-e x4 slot. And as you, I do not plan on adding a 2nd GPU so pluged the card in to the 2nd x16 slot. Have a WD 1 TB sata 6 HDD pluged into it (A real waste). I did try the USB port with a SSD installed in a USB3 enclosure, just to see if it worked, did not check transfer rates.

Reply to RetiredChief

Why not just run GPU-Z? It will tell you how many PCIe lanes your video card is currently using.

Message quoted 1 times

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Reply to LordConrad

Lord Conrad - GPU-Z shows PCI-e 2.0 x16 running at x8 v1.1

UPDATE - Just for the heck of it I connected my optical drive to one of the SATA III headers on the U3S6 and my USB mouse to one of the USB 3.0 headers. Booted up and both components worked fine. Ran GPU-Z which still showed gpu running at x8 instead of x16. Pulled the U3S6 and ran GPU-Z again. Now I'm back to normal x16. Hmmmmm......

Retired Chief - Run GPU-Z and let us know what you got.

Message edited by JohnnyLucky on 01-28-2011 at 03:09:33 AM

Reply to JohnnyLucky

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