Conclusion
New flash SSDs are being released almost on a weekly basis, and it is getting difficult to stay on top of all of them. Some have their own designs using third party logic (Intel), others design the entire product in-house (Samsung, Mtron), and others simply purchase SSD designs and relabel them. We believe that it’s the results that count; and even though we’re interested in finding out how a product works internally, our conclusions typically don’t assess the approach taken.
Solidata: A Step Backwards
Solidata managed to really shock us. Its X1 and X2 drives are based on SLC and MLC flash, and come in 64 GB and 128 GB storage capacities, respectively. These devices provide fast read performance, but only average write performance, and poor I/O capabilities.
This alone would not be much of an issue if you intended to use one of these drives on a notebook PC, where I/O performance is not a crucial factor. However, these products require so much power that they got hot during our testing. Even a high performance 3.5” desktop hard drive requires less power than these two offerings. I’m sorry to say it, but these products are a perfect example of what SSDs should not be.
Samsung: Large, Fast and Efficient
Samsung offers a perfect counterexample, which doesn’t come as a surprise. Samsung is one of the few companies that actually designs and manufactures all components in-house. The result is impressive, as the PB22-J offers record efficiency in sequential operation, providing high throughput at impressively low power levels.
It cannot beat Intel’s maximum throughput, nor the crushing I/O performance of the X25-E drives, but Samsung finally created a flash SSD that combines high capacity, high performance, and true efficiency. Unfortunately, Samsung does not (yet) intend to distribute the new 256 GB drive at retail. Who knows, maybe OCZ will decide to become a customer and offer relabeled drives based on this design.
Related Stories :
- Deals Jan 15: 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD $214.99
- Deals Dec 17: 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD $253.99
- Deals August 22: 256GB Samsung 830 Series SSD $179.99
- Deals Feb 23: Samsung 256GB 830 SSD + Ghost 15 $340
- Samsung PB22-J 256GB SSD is Sizzling Hot
- Samsung's Fast 256GB SSD Goes Into Production
- Deals Dec 11: 256GB OCZ Agility 4 SSD $129.99
- Deals Sept 4: 256GB Plextor M5 SSD $194.99 FS
- Deals August 1: 256GB OCZ Agility 4 SSD $165
- Deals for May 4: 256GB Crucial M4 SSD for $199 FS
Nice artice, but 1 small note, on page one.. isn't Samsung’s new PB22-J available a little bigger than 256 MB? Seems small..
Can we have the drop down list of pages back?
I really don't want to go through every single page to get to the results and conclusions.
jpdykes there is a table of contents at the very top.. but i to like the drop down menu
Price?! I can't seem to find it in the article...
Also note that on the graphs the Intel x25-M is labeled as 64GB, where on pg 8 it says it comes as 80 or 160.. Also did the x25-M have the new firmware?
Good point - I missed that!
i like the new table of contents
nice edit
The 256Gb Samsung is available for general sale in the UK; I bought one last week.
I just wish new Table of Contents (TOC), or drop down was on every page, after I get past page 1, you either have to go back to page 1 to jump ahead/around or page though
no OCZ Vertex?
Considering that the Samsung PB22-J is a MLC-based drive like Intel's X25-M, Samsung beats the crap out of Intel with write speeds.
Also, Register Hardware reviewed the same drive six weeks ago!
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/ [...] mmd0e56g5/
@ 1st poster. It think they meant GB
page 2 hard drive specs, 80-500gb??? shouldn't that be 2tb?? and price $100 for 320gb?? try $50 for 320gb or $80 for 500gb
We used to get 3 and 4 new articles a day.Now it's been reduced to one.
I would think with all new teck in the market place we can find more than just hard drives to talk about.
As I mentioned before there are a new host of monitors out there.One that do 120htz and the response times have gotten better.It would seem the 24 inch monitors have been catching up to the smaller 22 inch counter parts in terms of speed.
This is the would be article you won't get for a long time I am afraid.
What I also find odd is that there are more ads on Toms than before but they get rid of our avatars?I have to wonder why?
Thank You for making the "Table of contents" actually accessible!!!
Place the table of contents in every page, not just the first. And put it at the bottom of the page, so you can use it after you read the page. Currently you read the page and have to scroll up to use it.
This article avoids detailed discussion of the controllers used in the SSDs, does not emphasize the importance of small random write tests, and implies that OCZ does not have a product, when in reality the OCZ Vertex using the Indilinx controller has the second best performance to Intel at half the price. The JMicron controller is garbage. Read the vastly superior articles on AnandTech "The SSD Update" and "The SSD Anthology" for more information.
Perhaps this is an irrelevant question, and you'll understand why in a moment, but would owning an SSD with a throughput of over 200 mb/s help in situations where the amount of available ram is exceeded? IE - in games where instead of writing to RAM, the program would have to write to the HD as virtual ram. Oftentimes I would notice a stuttering when a new area in a game was streamed from the HD when I didn't have available ram, would this effect be eliminated? (The reason I felt it was somewhat irrelevant would be because those of us who can afford to buy a $400-600 SSD drive can probably afford a few more gigs of ram - or would have the ram in the first place.)