Ssd upgrade

[antonisrsx]

i want to buy a new ssd and i want your advice guys. i m thinking about Patriot Wildfire Corsair Force 3 OCZ-AGILITY3 and Crucial M4.which one ll not have problems and ll have better performance. what do you believe? my motherboard is x58. thank you!

 

[danraies]

The Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 are the way to go. I would get whichever of those two are cheaper.

You might find benchmarks that have those two middle-of-the-pack in performance, but reliability is far more important. In the most recent generation of SSD's, the performance difference between the best performers and the worst performers is very small and usually unnoticeable outside of benchmarks.

 

[antonisrsx]

does it matter that m4 has the half write speed than the others?

 

[danraies]

[strike]I don't know how they get away with advertising those write speeds - it's total bull.[/strike] I own a 60GB Agility 3 and a 128GB M4 and I'll post the benchmarks for both. Now, keep in mind it's not a fair comparison because larger drives are a little faster than smaller drives. That being said, I'll post the advertised speeds of both drives:

Crucial M4 128GB advertised speeds:
*Seq Read: 500 MB/s
*Seq Write: 175 MB/s

OCZ Agility 3 60GB advertised speeds:
*Seq Read: 525 MB/s
*Seq Write: 475 MB/s

Now here are my AS SSD results (I couldn't get the images to post as images but the links work):

*Crucial M4: 501 MB/s read and 200 MB/s write
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ihDtSpczu0o/TvIsgeLs2uI/AAAAAAAAAlQ/CzTvYkTQQsM/s503/M4-benchmark.png
*Agility 3: 167 MB/s read and 51 MB/s write
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-w7R8nVofluw/TvIsgooQZUI/AAAAAAAAAlU/-1lBpSBDxnc/s503/Agility-benchmark.png

(Here's a corroboration of my surprisingly low Agility 3 results: http://compreviews.about.com/od/storage/gr/OCZ-Agility-3-60GB.htm )

 

[danraies]

Actually, I figured out where the advertised speeds come from. The previous benchmarks I ran were using AS SSD benchmarks and I ran them again using ATTO. Here are my results:

*Crucial M4: 532 MB/s read and 205 MB/s write
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-k9ubKc_3pPg/TvI-3QYqVnI/AAAAAAAAAlk/qDnpyWsHS60/s502/ATTO_M4_benchmark.jpg
*Agility 3: 526 MB/s read and 442 MB/s write
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-tQPcjkKKyaQ/TvI-3V3JtII/AAAAAAAAAlg/b1vERpB6dFA/s502/ATTO_agility_benchmark.jpg

These benchmarks are about consistent with the advertised speeds. The reason is because ATTO uses compressible data and AS SSD does not which makes the AS SSD results much lower but more useful for comparisson. Compressible data is where sandforce shines but compressible writing is going to make up a relatively small percentage of your drive usage in most cases.

There is one exception to that - some people install windows with compression. I think it's pretty rare but it saves some space by sacrificing a little speed. If you're going that route (which I don't recommend) then compressible writing becomes more important.

 

[armand_h]

Hi antonisrsx!
All sandforce 22XX based SSD's are not worth to buy, because of lame firmware and BSOD!
the best reliable SSD's are those that come with marvell's!
I have agility 3 which is dead and have 2 corsair performance pro 128GB for my PC and 1 intel 120GB 320 series on my notebook! both of them are good but intel SSD's are expensive! i suggest you to buy corsaire performance pro! they have solid performance, even better than crucial m4 and samsung 830 series!
they have 512MB (2x256) modules of Nanya DDR3-1333 DRAM used both for speed and garbage collection!
here read some reviews:
http://www.pureoverclock.com/article1415.html
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/storage/32900-corsair-performance-pro-ssd-256gb/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/corsair-performance-pro-256gb-ssd-review/15
http://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/zardon/corsair-performance-pro-256gb-ssd-review/

 

[antonisrsx]

HI Armand_h! i didnt hear about this model of ssd before and i cant find it on ebay! is it a new model?

 

[danraies]

Hi antonisrsx!
All sandforce 22XX based SSD's are not worth to buy, because of lame firmware and BSOD!
the best reliable SSD's are those that come with marvell's!
I have agility 3 which is dead and have 2 corsair performance pro 128GB for my PC and 1 intel 120GB 320 series on my notebook! both of them are good but intel SSD's are expensive! i suggest you to buy corsaire performance pro! they have solid performance, even better than crucial m4 and samsung 830 series!
they have 512MB (2x256) modules of Nanya DDR3-1333 DRAM used both for speed and garbage collection!
here read some reviews:
http://www.pureoverclock.com/article1415.html
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/storage/32900-corsair-performance-pro-ssd-256gb/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/corsair-performance-pro-256gb-ssd-review/15
http://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/zardon/corsair-performance-pro-256gb-ssd-review/

Based on your own reviews the Corsair Performance Pro has impressive sequential write speeds but otherwise performs the same as any of the other most recent marvell-based SSD's (and sequential write is rarely used in practice). In fact, except for sequential write speeds my crucial M4 128GB benchmarks are almost the same as the Corsair Performance Pro 256GB benchmarks (some going either way) which implies that the 128GB M4 results are going to beat the 128GB Performance Pro results because the speeds are slower in smaller-capacity drives (and downgrading from 256GB to 128GB gives the largest change in performance between any capacities).

So basically, the claim that the Performance Pro outperforms the M4 or 830 is not substantiated by the reviews that you gave (in my opinion). It seems to me that all three drives (I checked benchmarks on the 830) have similar performance except in the area of sequential writes which is not really an important category (because it is rarely used in practice). Now when choosing between those three I think that reliability is more valuable that the sequential write speed. The M4 is definitely considered a very reliable drive and Samsung has a reputation for making very reliable SSD's (even though the 830 is maybe a little too new to be officially called reliable). The Performance Pro might turn out to be an excellent drive but Corsair doesn't have the highest reputation for SSD's and I'm not going to risk buying a Performance Pro or recommend it to anyone else until it proves itself reliable.

Also, @antonisrsx, yes the Performance Pro is very new.

 

[armand_h]

hi antonisrsx!
yes it is! you can find it on newegg!

danraies m4 is 1 step behind Performance pro in read and if you look at write and
IO/s performance m4 is far far away from Performance pro!
and you are right about 256gb have better performance than 128gb model but in write performance!
i compared the result of my 128gb SSD and some 128gb reviews with 256gb model and it has read better performance!?!))) i will post the comparison of these 2 SSD's!

 

[armand_h]

comparison:
http://www.p30up.ir/file/n8neqsy062jfeg51jjnf.jpg
http://www.p30up.ir/file/c4bk4rrp7vtptqjsdjs.jpg
http://www.p30up.ir/file/7xttbjzfeexr2qrtfct.jpg

 

[armand_h]

hexus have good review and comparison of these 2 SSD's!

 

[danraies]

comparison:
http://www.p30up.ir/file/n8neqsy062jfeg51jjnf.jpg
http://www.p30up.ir/file/c4bk4rrp7vtptqjsdjs.jpg
http://www.p30up.ir/file/7xttbjzfeexr2qrtfct.jpg

Where did these numbers come from? The M4 and 830 should have no problem hitting 500MB/s seq read speeds.

 

[armand_h]

just google m4 128Gb review and you will see where did they came from!
if you want i can post the links!

 

[danraies]

I did google it and I found a couple that were closer to 420MB/s but I also found plenty that were closer to 490MB/s.

Example: http://www.guru3d.com/imageview.php?image=34975

Also, I posted one earlier that got 500MB/s sequential read. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ihDtSpczu0o/TvIsgeLs2uI/AAAAAAAAAlQ/CzTvYkTQQsM/s503/M4-benchmark.png

So...as I said before...the Performance Pro performs the same as any recent Marvell-based SSD except in sequential writes. And although sequential write speeds are not completely useless, they should not be the deciding factor in buying an SSD. Even so, we're talking about performance differences so small here that a user will never notice them outside of benchmarks.

In fact, when comparing any two SSD's you should always choose reliability over performance. It doesn't matter how fast the system is if it's unstable. I'm not saying the Performance Pro is necessarily going to be unstable but I don't know yet and I know that with the M4 or the 830 I'm getting a stable drive.

 

[armand_h]

yes! you are right! these benchmarks doesn't matter in real world use!
these are like theoretical!i believe than no SSD can reach that read/write speed in real wold use!
my point is why don't buy ssd that have better write performance with the same price as m4!?

 

[danraies]

yes! you are right! these benchmarks doesn't matter in real world use!
these are like theoretical!i believe than no SSD can reach that read/write speed in real wold use!
my point is why don't buy ssd that have better write performance with the same price as m4!?

Because if sandforce has taught us anything, reliability is a major concern in SSD's. The M4 and 830 are definitely reliable drives and at this point all I can say about the Performance Pro is that it might be a reliable drive (because Corsair doesn't have the reputation that Crucial and Samsung have). "Definitely reliable" trumps "maybe reliable" for me.

I will admit that drives are only getting better and that the sandforce issue was kind of a fluke so there's an argument that performance is worth the risk more today than a year ago. However it's not a risk that I'm going to take or recommend.

Anyway, both sides of the argument are valid - it's not like there's an absolute right answer here. Each user can decide which aspect is more important.

 

[Badelhas]

I have a 60Gb Vertex 1 SSD (1st gen, I believe). Did anyone here upgraded from a 1st gen to a 3rd gen SDD?
Do you think I will see any real gains if I upgrade to this 3rd gen SDD (vertex 3 120Gb, for instance)? I have a Z68 board with Sata 3.
Thanks four your input.

Cheers,
Andre

 

[armand_h]

hi Andre!

yea you will notice the difference! I had an agility 60gb first gen! and now i have an corsair performance pro 128gb sata III on my PC and intel 320series 120gb on my notebook!