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
Final Words
My recommendation still stands: the Intel X25-M is by far the cream of the crop of the desktop SSD world. The Indilinx based drives have the potential to be good, lower cost alternatives to the Intel drive but you still have to approach them with caution. While the OCZ Vertex drive worked fine in my tests and on my testbed, this is a brand new drive with a controller from a company without a proven track record.
In the coming weeks I will be looking at the latest updates to Samsung’s MLC controller. While I haven’t been terribly impressed with the performance of Samsung drives thus far, they are at least reliable and compatible.
While I’ve heard that the JMicron based drives are no longer selling very well, it looks like at least a few manufacturers are going to be using the JMF602B controllers to deliver 512GB SSDs in the coming months. Buyer beware.
I will say this: outside of Intel, Indilinx appears to know what is important when it comes to SSD performance. With more companies releasing drives based on the Barefoot controller, we should hopefully see any compatibility problems get sorted out faster.
There is some even better news that has surfaced since last week. If the 1275 revision ends up being problem-free, it does deliver more than 3x the random-write performance of the Vertex I first previewed and a more than noticeable 10% boost in application performance. That’s not enough to dethrone Intel, but it is more than enough to make the Vertex even more desirable.
The gotcha still applies: this is the first version of an Indilinx controller we’ve seen in the desktop market. Compatibility and longevity have yet to be proven; so far my experience has been positive but that’s merely one datapoint. We have a long way to go my friends.
I’ll keep you posted.
...and Thanks
I spent a few hours last weekend responding to every single email I received about The SSD Anthology. I've got some recent ones that came in while I was at GDC that I still need to get to. For the first year or so of AnandTech I responded to every single email; it didn’t take too long for me to start getting a few hundred a day and for me to have to curb that a bit in order to actually get work done.
The outpouring of support and appreciation in response to my latest article was too good for me not to respond to every single person. To those of you who wrote me, commented, or just took the time to read the article - thank you.
Your words and support are what inspire me to, even today almost 12 years since I started AnandTech, continue to work on things like The SSD Anthology or The RV770 Story. Thank you.
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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...)