PCMark Vantage
PCMark Vantage is the latest benchmark available from Futuremark, and is available only on Windows Vista. Similar to the venerable PCMark05 in its makeup, Vantage modernizes the criteria and test methodology to reflect what users may encounter when running the new Windows OS.
For the HD test suite, the white paper breaks the tests down as:
- Windows Defender: Windows Defender performs a scan operation, resulting in a read-intensive (99.5% read, 0.5% write) benchmark reflecting a common task in Windows Vista.
- Gaming Performance: Streaming performance is measured using actual game mechanics found in Alan Wake. This test is nearly all read (99.95% read, 0.05% write) in nature.
- Windows Photo Gallery: A large collection of images is imported into Windows Photo Gallery. This is the first of the tests which bring write performance into account in a meaningful way, with a roughly 84% read, 16% write ratio.
- Windows Vista Startup: Simulates Windows Vista start-up operations, producing a test that breaks down to roughly 85% read and 15% write operations.
- Windows Movie Maker: The first of the Vantage tests which comes close to equally dividing read and write operations (54% read, 46% write), concurrent video performance is tested both for video read and skip performance, as well as video write operations.
- Windows Media Center: Performing three distinct tasks:
- SDTV video playback
- SDTV video streaming to Extender for Windows Media Center
- SDTV video recording
- Windows Media Player: Adds music to Windows Media Player. This test reverts to favoring read operations (78% read, 22% write).
- Application Loading: The following applications are loaded:
- Microsoft Word 2007
- Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Internet Explorer 7
- Outlook 2007
The total benchmark is roughly 87% reads and 13% writes in nature. We run each test five times per drive, producing a median score that we use for comparison in our results today.
The MTRON unit just destroys the Raptor in the read sensitive tests; the combination of its 0.1ms access time and 108MB/sec sustained transfer rates are too much for the Raptor. However, in the Windows Movie Maker and Windows Media Center tests that balances read and write operations, we see the Raptor performing better thanks to its superior write speeds (77.4MB/sec to 71.9MB/sec). The SSD drives do not perform as well as the Raptor with streaming write operations, a pattern we have noticed in previous testing. Note that performance here concentrates on the storage subsystem and does not represent real-world results; as always, the hard drive is only one part of the entire computer ecosystem. If you are running applications that stress the CPU and GPU, the total performance difference between the Raptor and the MTRON SSD often ends up being negligible.
First Thoughts
Our limited testing today shows both the strengths and weaknesses of this particular drive when comparing it to one of the best performing consumer desktop drives under Vista. The read and write speeds are improved over the previous MTRON drive series, allowing it to further it extend its lead over the Raptor in most benchmarks. However, this drive (actually SSDs in general) still has trouble with large block writes that you typically find in video applications. We will see the same general performance in our video application benchmarks in the full review. The performance in these particular applications is still excellent, but not quite as good as the Raptor yet.
Overall, the MTRON's vastly superior access and random read rates generate top scores in the balance of the PCMark Vantage tests. In fact, in just about every test we have run to date under Vista or XP, this drive is superior to any other drive available in the consumer space and most in the enterprise sector. Add to this the fact that the drive is completely silent, offers significantly better thermals relative to any mechanical drive, and the ability to withstand extreme vibration and shock, and it seems we have a winner.
Now for the bad news: the main drawbacks to this drive are its limited capacity options (16GB to 64GB) and a price tag that will make you think more than twice before whipping out your credit card. The 32GB drive we are testing lists for around $1199 currently, which is significantly better than the $1999 list price of the previous 32GB drive at its introduction. That still comes out to $37.50 per GB of storage - about what you pay for current good DDR2-800 memory! Based upon these two drawbacks, we doubt the high performance SSD drives from MTRON will revolutionize the desktop market anytime soon. However, current pricing trends ($2000 down to $1200 in just a few months) and future capacity growths might make it happen in the next three to five years. Until then, this particular SSD technology is best suited for the road warriors and benchmark junkies. We will see why in our next review.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
48 Comments
View All Comments
alantay - Tuesday, December 4, 2007 - link
I'm hoping to see FusionIO's offer early next year. They target a $30/GB price and offer pci cards up to 640 GB and 700MB/s reads and 600MB/s writes. It seems like this is the technology that will matter in 2-3 years, if they get the price down (to $5/Gb maybe).http://www.fusionio.com/">http://www.fusionio.com/
mckirkus - Monday, December 3, 2007 - link
There is a good reason why they haven't released an IRAM 2.0. It would completely destroy the performance hard drive market and 150GB Raptors are cash cows.Think about it. With a SATA2 interface you would get well over 200MB/s sustained write and read and random read/write would be a non issue. Plus RAM doesn't wear out like flash.
And with RAM approaching $20 a gig you could have the fasted 32Gig HDD ever created for well under $1000. I would like to see Anadtech do a review of the HyperDrive4 as well. Gigabyte probably gets a cut of the revenue from WDs Raptors as long as they agree not to release an IRam 2.0.
That's not a conspiracy, it's just business.
mckirkus - Monday, December 3, 2007 - link
Did some digging. This thing at 32GB is $37 a gig.RAM is going for $19 a gig on NewEgg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Granted you need a device to hold the RAM and some battery backup but the performance is not even in the same league and the cost is about half of flash. An external SATA2 RAM drive with 32GB of 2GB RAM sticks would cost $600 for the RAM and more for the device. Why doesn't this thing exist? Any theories?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 4, 2007 - link
Your conspiracy would work, except there are numerous other problems with the iRAM. For example, the fact that you need to save the data to permanent storage before shutting down, and you need to initialize the data stored on the iRAM before it can be useful. Even then, most users rarely encounter situations where they are truly storage speed limited.That game you only get 12FPS running almost certainly loads all of the necessary data for a level into RAM if you have a 2GB machine, so the fastest storage system in the world is only going to be a bit faster. Even level load times might not improve much, as frequently loading levels involves a lot of additional logic like object instantiation, data parsing, and decompression routines.
The ideal approach would be a setup where you have a huge RAM cache that sits between the storage subsystem and the mass storage. Put some smarts on the cache so that it tries to keep the most useful stuff in memory, give it a battery backup, and commit writes to the actual drives as soon as it is reasonable to do so. That's basically how a lot of SCSI controllers work (and other top-end NAS type configurations).
iRAM was an interesting idea that really needs more work and tuning, and it's still quite expensive. Why limit transfers to SATA when even the slowest current RAM can sustain probably 10 times that data rate? Even better, get a 64-bit OS, figure out a way to add oodles of system RAM, and hopefully the OS can intelligently handle caching. *Hopefully!*
ChronoReverse - Tuesday, December 4, 2007 - link
Eh? The i-RAM has a rechargeable battery pack. DDR2 uses even less power than DDR1 so that pack will last even longer.Furthermore, if you simply Shut Down your computer, the battery pack isn't even needed. The i-RAM is kept alive with the standby power. The battery pack is only used when you unplug the computer completely or take out the i-RAM for which it'll last about 10 hours.
Ocire - Monday, December 3, 2007 - link
Hi,while crawling the net I found some interesting offers from Hama (a german company who mainly does Flash Memory etc.):
They sell a 64GB SSD (3.5", SATA) with a claimed 120/90 read/write for less than 1200 € (1700 US$) and the 32GB version for less than 700 € (1000 US$).
Are those relabeled Mtrons or is it their own product? How is their benchmark performance?
Here links to Hama and a german store who sells them:
http://www.hama.de/portal/articleId">http://www.hama.de/portal/articleId*159787/action*2563 (you can choose the language at the left, right above the customer login box, a little tricky to find ;-))
http://www.alternate.de/html/product/details.html?...">http://www.alternate.de/html/product/de...articleI... (unfortunately they don't seem to have an english version, maybe google or babelfish could either help or confuse you more ^^)
sparkuss - Monday, December 3, 2007 - link
Are you planning on adding any of the RAM drives to the equation? Such as the HyperOS HyperDrive 4. Or are they in a different class/economy to compete here?Reflex - Monday, December 3, 2007 - link
A couple years ago I worked with flash devices extensively, and it was fairly easy to run out of write operations. We could kill a SSD in about a week of stress testing, which translated by our estimates to about a year or two of typical desktop use. Thats not a very good lifespan for a $1200 product with so little storage space. Furthermore, in most cases when the writes ceased you could no longer read data from the device, which is even worse since there is no real warning.I'd really like someone to develop a true stress test for these types of devices. I would want a minimum of five years, with a warning when my writes are nearly finished.
PandaBear - Monday, December 3, 2007 - link
It is common to all NAND flash that the maximum amount of erase/program is about 100k for SLC, and down to as low as 500 for MLC (yes, 500, not 500k).Wear leveling is the key to the survival of these drive. Enterprises that use them for highly randomized read would have the best result. On the other hand, it is not really much of an advantage compare to a well designed system that runs on DRAM with battery backup and automatic hard drive fail over. I don't think I have seen these products personally yet, but I suspect it would be much better performance wise, but more expensive since you need to add a real HD and all the fail safe logics.
As we go into 50nm and 40nm process, the life will just get worse although the price get lower. I wouldn't be surprised if one day MS will provide a utility in windows that shrink your flash drive's capacity to get more life out of it. Or even better, provide a non-LBA based file system that reduce a whole lot of meta data / FAT table updates that slow down write and waste write cycles.
MrPickins - Tuesday, December 4, 2007 - link
Where did you come up with a figure of 500? All the documentation I see shows a typical endurance of 10k read/write cycles for MLC NAND.