The SSD Landscape
The market is now flooded with SSDs, and although this type of storage still isn't mainstream, SSD technology is now vastly popular, readily available, and considered the premier choice for enthusiasts and anyone else looking to eliminate performance bottlenecks. All SSDs presented in this review provide read performance between 150 MB/s and 320 MB/s. They substantially change your experience during boot-up and heavy multi-tasking. In fact, utilizing a decent SSD has a more subjective performance impact than a faster processor or more RAM. Is this worth a few hundred dollars? You bet.
Although only few companies design and manufacture solid state drives, there are roughly 30 vendors selling the drives, everyone from A-Data to Western Digital. Keep in mind that most of them utilize flash memory and controllers provided by only a few key companies.
Intel
With its X18- and X25-series SSDs shipping for almost two years, Intel is one of the few companies that designs and manufactures all components, from the controller to the flash memory. I/O performance and throughput are state-of-the-art thanks to a 10-channel flash design, but write speeds are somewhat limited. This isn’t an issue for most consumer environments, though. Several other vendors sell Intel hardware under their own labels. You can recognize these both by the performance discrepancy between reads and writes, and by the exterior. The second-generation X25 drives based on 34 nm flash memory are considered excellent client SSDs.
Samsung, Toshiba
The Korean and Japanese memory specialists have been very active in the SSD space, but neither has been aggressive in retail markets—yet. Products from both companies are rebranded and sold by multiple memory vendors and used by system builders. Samsung and Toshiba design SSD controllers, and they both utilize their own NAND flash memory. We found that Samsung and Toshiba SSDs tend to be more focused on overall balance than breaking performance records. Toshiba’s T6UG1XBG controller and Samsung's S3C29RBB01 both utilize a SATA 3Gb/s interface, but Toshiba does not support NCQ.
Indilinx, JMicron, SandForce
These three companies offer SATA 3Gb/s SSD controllers. Each meets performance expectations, but effective performance can vary due to different firmware optimizations and the number of flash channels used by SSD vendors. The latest models are Indilinx’s Barefoot controller, with up to 64 MB of cache and four-channel, 16-bit flash, and Indilinx's Amigos controller. Modified versions with more channels should follow soon, as the 6 Gb/s successor (Jet Stream) won’t be available before 2011.
JMicron’s JMF612 supports up to 256 MB of DDR2 cache and eight 8-bit flash channels. This controller also supports USB 2.0.
SandForce’s SF-1200 series is another eight-channel device with built-in, 256-bit AES encryption. SandForce provisions some of the NAND flash for transaction buffering, hence these solutions don’t have an external cache memory.
Marvell/Crucial
The RealSSD C300 by Crucial, based on Marvell’s 88SS9174, is the first SSD to utilize the faster SATA 6Gb/s interface. So far, this drive is by far the fastest when it comes to read performance. I/O performance is average, and application performance varies from good to excellent. You need a SATA 6Gb/s controller and Windows 7 with TRIM support to take full advantage of these drives.
While the RealSSD did not fully convince when we first tested it, Crucial made a few significant changes to its firmware. The version we tried first was 001; consequently the update is named 002. In a nutshell, Crucial tweaked the TRIM feature to be more aggressive, along with a few more details. Here is the change log:
- Improved Power Consumption
- Improved TRIM performance
- Enabled the Drive Activity Pin (Pin 11)
- Improved Robustness due to unexpected power loss
- Improved data management to reduce maximum write latency
- Improved Performance of SSD as it fills up with data
- Improved Data Integrity
Many of the changes are hard to trace, but the performance features that are based on efficient TRIM support require Windows 7 or another operating system that supports it. We’d expect significant performance impacts without TRIM.
- 1 / 5
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Good, before I saw this my decision on getting an Intel would have been fine.
Have (2) 30GB OCZ Vertex in RAID 0. They are pretty darn quick.
You can get the Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB for $240. Only problem is the sketchy firmware (read about at anandtech) and poor performance in RAID.
SSD's I have (I always look for deals and buy when I think it's the lowest):
1. (2) Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB ($240) - Fast, great price, used for video editing and programming.
2. Intel x-25m 160GB ($380) - Fast, expensive, used on my server.
3. (2) Corsair P128 ($260, $290)- Decently fast, very low power consumption, decent price but now expensive, used for my HTPC and laptop.
4. Kingston SSDNow V-series 64GB ($110) - Fast enough, somewhat cheap, used for my gf's computer.
Luckily none have gone bad on me, and would buy them again. Glad to see other SSD's in the mix, though. More reviews and benchmarks never hurt, and THG's always used when I need more information to make a decision.
Nice piece very informative.
G-Skill Phoenix 100GB looks like a good all rounder.
OWC a good 2nd choice for me.
Western digital would have been my 1st choice but seems to lack a lot.
The rest is too all over the place with it's performances for me.
I just used 2 120 GB Phoenix Pros in RAID 0 for a friend's build. It's freakin FAST! I got one for my parents as their HDD just crashed. They love it.
"reads and whites" is that supposed to be some sort of play on words? Just kidding. Good article, much appreciated.
I got 2 intel 80 G2s in RAID0 and they haul. sure under heavy 4K scenarios they do fall behind, but for most use its no problem. you can also purchase 2 intel 160G drives for slightly more than a C300 and you'll get far better results per dollar per GB in a RAID0 setup.
I get 525MB reads and 175MB writes. For an OS drive that doesn't do a whole lot of writing I'm ok with the performance.
For my dollar I'll do a smaller OCZ Vertex 2 for a boot drive...they have great performance and come in under $150.
I'm still rocking a Intel X25-M G1, no probs at all. I see no point to change.
I just picked up the kingston SSDNow-now SNV-425, Im happy with it but am thinking about picking up another for raid 0. Does anybody have this setup?Im curious to know your read/write numbers as I cant find anybody with this setup on the net. Please Post.
Two corrections to the graph titles (other SSD articles have the same problems):
- it says "[t in ms]" (should be "t in us")
- it says "including rotational latency"; which parts of the SSD are rotating and have latency? ;-)
I like how you did the price/performance index. People don't usually buy SSD's for storage but for performance so it makes much more sense to show the performance vs dollar metric than gigabyte vs dollar. This way, people can pick what capacity will suffice for them then decide which drive will give them the most performance for the money. Kudos!
Interesting.
Guess I'm still waiting for the Gen3 Intel drives.
I have been saying that for a while now...
Though I will avoid RAID for a boot drive, and RAID 1/5 only for storage.
I've had enough headaches from RAID.
I just ordered an OCZ vertex 2 60GB for ~155 USD, excluding shipping and other costs, if the performance is close to the 120GB version then I'm in good shape, but I highly doubt that. Any one got a good comparison between the 2 drives?
Great stuff ... thanks guys.
Sorry I came across so rude in your other article P & A.
I have a soft spot for core2.
Maybe I missed this in the tables, but was the Crucial drive tested on a 6 Gb/s interface only? For those of us with only 3Gb/s boards, it'd be interesting to see how the performance compares. I seem to recall from Anand's review that throughput was somewhat less than saturated.
Patrick and Achim, great to see you included price in your performance ratios! The previous articles focused on power consumption, which is less relevant for SSD (a 1W difference when your laptop CPU consumes anywhere between 13 and 35W, and your GPU anywhere between 7 and 50W?)
128GB C300 SSD's are already barely above $2 per GB. I can't wait for the next generation of intel SSD and the widely predicted price drops at the end of the year.
Raid does NOTHING to improve SSD speed....
Western Digital should hang their head in shame. Pathetic SSD offering and I cant see anyone actually buying one.
I'm kind of surprised seeing the aggregate performance chart with the intel V series outperforming the indilinx drives. Seems fishy to me.
Not surprised with WD as I've noticed the same thing myself. If you look at the lower capacity WD drives though you'll find the price competes with the intel (and Kingston) V series but performance is closer to the indilinx and M series (I can only assume as I'm not sure I've ever seen the smaller cap versions benched). A much better buy in my opinion.
That said, I really want a Vertex2 (or larger cap C300) but I'm waiting for a reasonable capacity under $200. I think that threshold is shared by many and the first mfg to make it there is going to make a killing.