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Intel X25-E Professional Flash SSD (32 GB)

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Throughput Testing

Intel’s X25-E professional SSD managed to maintain more than 200 MB/s throughput regardless of what type of workload we threw at it. Only the sixth run showed decreased minimum read throughput.

There is a very noticeable impact on sequential write throughput as you switch from sequential to I/O testing. Although the impact on maximum write throughput is minor, and average results suffer at acceptable levels, the minimum write throughput drops significantly. However, the minimum throughput on this SLC flash SSD still is much better than on the MLC based drives.

I/O Testing

To summarize: there is no substantial performance drop in the case of the X25-E. The SLC flash-based drive is capable of maintaining its performance level even if you keep changing the type of workload. Very impressive, indeed.

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mrubermonkey 04/27/2009 7:16 AM
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Props to you guys for this review.

Tindytim 04/27/2009 7:47 AM
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I really wish we were able to Thumb up or Thumb down articles. This one would get a large thumbs up from me.

chookman 04/27/2009 7:58 AM
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Thumbs up on this one too from me. Although if anyone desires more in depth understanding of the problem i found the PC Perspective articles better in that aspect.

Intel Firmware change
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=691

OCZ Indilinx Chip
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=670

chookman 04/27/2009 7:58 AM
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chookman 04/27/2009 7:59 AM
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empstar 04/27/2009 8:55 AM
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why don't show the HDD read / write data here together with SDD?

lire210 04/27/2009 10:56 AM
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snotling 04/27/2009 11:29 AM
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lire210 :
this will not matter at all to servers until the price gooes down. the speed does not make sence in the 4+ bucks a gig. normal hd are safer just in the fact that you can put 7 hd and put it in a raid one fails o well. plus 800 bucks for 64gb o my god


Servers are actually where these drives makes the most sense, and you can RAID SSDs just like you RAID HDs... and about being "safe" well I would put my money on the technology with no moving parts!

xsamitt 04/27/2009 12:27 PM
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I keep waiting for a reviews of new monitors.it seems we keep getting almost the same kind of topic every week lately.

rubix_1011 04/27/2009 1:37 PM
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I have to agree with most people on this one...a flashback to the really good reviews Tom's did in the past. A very relevant review for most people with some good data and testing steps.

arkadi 04/27/2009 1:39 PM
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Well it like it was written specially for me. Grate job! One of the best articles i encounter in long time.
I posted a question on storage configuration just few day ago, with no reply btw, with exactly the same thing on my mind. Hope we can go deeper with that, and talk how we can take an advantage of what we learned here in different situations with diffident storage/system configuration's, combining SSD with regular drives, raid configurations, moving tmp/swap some programs etc.. to different drives etc...

arkadi 04/27/2009 1:40 PM
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tipoo 04/27/2009 1:45 PM
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Nice review. So will you guys be reviewing the 1TB PCI-Express OCZ SSD? :-)

anonymous 04/27/2009 2:50 PM
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So if your SSD starts to slow down, does a reformat get rid of that issue?

yourhighness 04/27/2009 4:22 PM
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You guys had any problems with that Power Supply?

I bought an OCZ Elite Extreme 800W PSU last year an dhad 3 of them die in 6 months....The RMA process was long and slow, but they eventually made it right by upgrading me to a PC Power and cooling PSU.

Area51 04/27/2009 4:49 PM
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lire210 :
this will not matter at all to servers until the price gooes down. the speed does not make sence in the 4+ bucks a gig. normal hd are safer just in the fact that you can put 7 hd and put it in a raid one fails o well. plus 800 bucks for 64gb o my god


You need to have a better understanding of the problem before you make statements like this...

1. The number of HD required to get the same IOPS will put the total price to be higher than SSD's
2. The power requirement is much higher for the number of HD that you need to get the same performance as a single Intel SLC SSD. This can drop the power consumption of a server significantly down from regular HD, and increase it’s performance.
3. Remember that in many servers it’s not the capacity that matters, It’s the performance that is more important.
4. Since SSD's can do a very nice job of simultaneous read, and write running multiple jobs is not derogated by the SSD's as it is with regular HD's.
5. SMART command in SSD’s can give you a predictive failure analysis, something that you cannot do with HD’s, HD’s can only show you if the Drive is good or bad. This is very important since data can be copied before the drive goes bad.
6. MTBF of SSD’s (at lease Intel’s) are much higher than HD’s. 2M hrs. vs 1.2M hrs on HD’s


krazyderek 04/27/2009 11:06 PM
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wheres the OCZ vertex ?????

krazyderek 04/27/2009 11:08 PM
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lire210 :
this will not matter at all to servers until the price gooes down. the speed does not make sence in the 4+ bucks a gig. normal hd are safer just in the fact that you can put 7 hd and put it in a raid one fails o well. plus 800 bucks for 64gb o my god


have you seen how much SAS drives are??

hustler539 04/28/2009 11:07 AM
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Good to see more review sites doing articles on these performance degradations, helps us make a better informed decision when purchasing new hardware.

Here's another great article which gives you a good in depth look at it
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/s [...] i=3531&p=4
a must read if you are thinking of upgrading to some of those new shiny ssds

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