The SSD Update: Vertex Gets Faster, New Indilinx Drives and Intel/MacBook Problems Resolved
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Real World Sanity Check
I wouldn’t dream of just relying on iometer tests to make sure that the new firmware actually made things faster - it’s far too easy to optimize for just a couple of tests. I spot checked the Vertex’s performance with the 1275 firmware using a few application launch benchmarks:
The Fresh Test is the 3-application launch benchmark I used in the original review. For those who don’t remember, I fired the testbed up and immediately upon hitting the Windows desktop I launched three applications (Photoshop CS4, Pinnacle Studio 12 and IE7). Pinnacle also had a large project to load on top of all of that. I reported the time it took to load all three applications.
As you can see, performance is about the same between 0112 and 1275. So far, so good.
I ran a couple of application launch tests and the 1275 firmware performed similarly to the original:
I used PCMark Vantage as another spot-check for performance. While application launch tests are mostly random read benchmarks, Vantage stresses both reads and writes - the latter showing a large improvement on the new firmware:
Vantage showed a close to 10% improvement in overall performance, and 23% when we’re just looking at the synthetic HDD benchmarks. Surely the performance increases are all due to the Vertex’s improved write speeds; in some scenarios the gains are large enough to be noticeable in normal use of your machine.
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Dennis Travis - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Thanks SO MUCH for your update on the who SSD situation. Things seem to be looking up! Great Job. Keep em coming! :Dzonteck - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
yes i have to agree, this updating on the ssd situation has been invaluable to me too. you hear good things on the forums about the new firmwares and it's so good to see you share how things have changed even since last week.Mastakilla - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Hi!Great article once more!!
Looking at the price / performance ratio of the Intel and Vertex does leave 1 interesting question open:
how does a RAID 0 of Vertex drives compare to a single Intel (in price it is about the same)
Also interesting to invest is the compability between SSDs and RAID controllers (I have read about issues between non-Intel SSDs and the Intel based RAID controllers (like most Arecas))
Keep up the good work!
7Enigma - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
Should destroy the Intel drive in all real-world tests. All it takes is to look at a single Vertex drive with the new firmware to see it is within ~1 second load time, and already significantly faster with copying larger files. Honestly, Intel should be scared to death of this bugger, or else they realize they milked the teat for as long as possible without competition, and can now drop the price inline with OCZ and Supertalent.Hauk - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Some two weeks ago I reports that Super Talent had an Indilinix based drive on the market. Was surprised at the lack of information. Nice to finally see details surfacing. A product with such potential has been poorly marketed to this point in my opinion.Props to OCZ for their work in getting Vertex up to speed. Many have been critical that they rushed the product to market. Yea it sucks that flashing destroys data; but look at mobo manufacturers. We should be used to bug fixes through firmware updates. Intel needed some form of competition.. good for everyone.
I flashed my Vertex 60GB to 1275 without issue. It's a simple process. Would like to see instructions on something other than a forum post however. How about a .pdf to accompany the files..
Eri Hyva - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
How abouthttp://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives...">http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/f...ives/ocz...
?
Two links there:
Vertex Firmware Update and
Firmware Install Guide (pdf-file)
Hauk - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Nice!Nickel020 - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Thanks for the update!One thing I missed in your articles though is alignment and its importance for performance. The drives ship with a partition on it and it's supposed to be aligned, but the partition on my drive seems to be off, as I only got about 195/75 MB/s read/write max on ATTO when it was "new" and like 105/35 MB/s now that it is "used". I have yet to re-install the drive and properly align it, but either I have a defective drive or this is caused by alignment, making proper alignment extremely important. I'm on the 0122 FW btw.
Another thing I missed is RAID1, you do not mention it at all. You can basically get 2 Super Talent 60GB drives for the price of an Intel 80GB and use them in RAID1. This will still have lower random 4KB performance, but the increased performance in many other areas should be dramatically higher than the Intel's.
I have never used RAID1 though, but I would love to hear your opinion on this, as I'm considering getting a second 60GB OCZ.
Nickel020 - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
I meant RAID0 of course, that stuff always gets me confused...Shinshin - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Seems that the speed is limited by the chip as stated in their website 230MB/s read and 170MB/s write.I'm looking forward their next-gen chip which will support sata v3 and will have 500MB/s throughput (!) by the end of 2009.
(btw, they have a great website IMO...)