The SSD Improv: Intel & Indilinx get TRIM, Kingston Brings Intel Down to $115
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 17, 2009 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Overall System Performance using PCMark Vantage
Next up is PCMark Vantage, another system-wide performance suite. For those of you who aren’t familiar with PCMark Vantage, it ends up being the most real-world-like hard drive test I can come up with. It runs things like application launches, file searches, web browsing, contacts searching, video playback, photo editing and other completely mundane but real-world tasks. I’ve described the benchmark in great detail before but if you’d like to read up on what it does in particular, take a look at Futuremark’s whitepaper on the benchmark; it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be a member of a comprehensive storage benchmark suite. Any performance impacts here would most likely be reflected in the real world.
The overall impact of the TRIM firmware is negligable, no real improvements here - something you'll see echoed in nearly all of the PCMark results. The 40GB Kingston drive does well for its price, delivering performance similar to an Indilinx drive as it is crippled by a small amount of free space.
The memories suite includes a test involving importing pictures into Windows Photo Gallery and editing them, a fairly benign task that easily falls into the category of being very influenced by disk performance.
The TV and Movies tests focus on on video transcoding which is mostly CPU bound, but one of the tests involves Windows Media Center which tends to be disk bound.
The gaming tests are very well suited to SSDs since they spend a good portion of their time focusing on reading textures and loading level data. All of the SSDs dominate here, but as you'll see later on in my gaming tests the benefits of an SSD really vary depending on the game. Take these results as a best case scenario of what can happen, not the norm.
In the Music suite the main test is a multitasking scenario: the test simulates surfing the web in IE7, transcoding an audio file and adding music to Windows Media Player (the most disk intensive portion of the test).
The Communications suite is made up of two tests, both involving light multitasking. The first test simulates data encryption/decryption while running message rules in Windows Mail. The second test simulates web surfing (including opening/closing tabs) in IE7, data decryption and running Windows Defender.
I love PCMark's Productivity test; in this test there are four tasks going on at once, searching through Windows contacts, searching through Windows Mail, browsing multiple webpages in IE7 and loading applications. This is as real world of a scenario as you get and it happens to be representative of one of the most frustrating HDD usage models - trying to do multiple things at once. There's nothing more annoying than trying to launch a simple application while you're doing other things in the background and have the load take forever.
The final PCMark Vantage suite is HDD specific and this is where you'll see the biggest differences between the drives:
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Celeus - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link
No comment regarding Anand, but the quote of $85 seems to be based on a press release from kingston.http://www.kingston.com/press/2009/flash/10c.asp">http://www.kingston.com/press/2009/flash/10c.asp
Now, I've been trying to find these for that price at Newegg, and can't. The drive now shows up (just the 2.5" one, not the one including the bracket) but for $124.99 before rebate $104.99 AR.
I bet this is an error they will fix, as $104.99 Before Rebate would make $84.99 AR, which is what Kingston mentions in their press release.
Rebate looks good for 2 per person, so I plan on buying two for a new Windows 7 box.
virtualgeek - Saturday, October 31, 2009 - link
Disclosure, I work for EMC (an enterprise information infrastructure - which includes all sorts of storage arrays).Looking at some of the comments, I'm not sure if people understand the impact of the x-25 getting down to the prices they are (both via kingston OEM and the 80/160GB drives).
Flash will rapidly replace all high-performance disk use cases. There will only be room for very large SATA and SAS disks, and all high performance use cases will be dominated by Flash.
Some people don't understand that even at TODAY's prices, for some (many) use cases (just not consumer focused ones), they are more economical. For example, the kingston drive, measured in IOPs/dollar is 37x **cheaper** than a 15K SAS drive. That's the acquisition cost. When you think that it would take 37 15K SAS disks, consuming more power, space and cooling - you can immediately imagine the impact this has on the enterprise storage market.
The rapid price decline we've all seen over the last year (a 40GB MLC drive cost ~$900 at the beginning of the year) means that in the next year or so, we'll have SSD with the $/GB of a large, fast rotating magnetic media disk, but still 100x better random IOps/$
While perhaps PCM non-volatile storage will eventually replace flash, that will happen well after flash replaces spinning media.
Great article Anand!
I did a post on it here...
http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/1...">http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_...ill-chan...
iwodo - Friday, October 30, 2009 - link
If V Series stays at $85, then making a Raid with 2 40GB V will be an VERY attractive option.So may be do a review on 2 40GB V series with Intel Software Raid? as well as other raid card?
excalibur3 - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
Thanks for the great article! I am just curious if the Kingston UltraDrives can use the same firmware update as intel and can be considered the same drive or if it is something like with OCZ and Super Talent in that they have separate firmware updates. Would the Kinston be a cheaper alternative to the Intel?Saturn1 - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
Is there a way to get the manual trim to run from the toolbox if you do not have that last firmware update?linster - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
Apparently Intel pulled the iso. Here's what you get after you click on the link,"02HA Firmware Upgrade for Windows 7* Systems - Unavailable
Intel has been contacted by users with issues with the 02HA firmware upgrade on Windows 7* systems and are investigating. We take all sightings and issues seriously and are working toward resolution. We have temporarily taken down the firmware update while we investigate.
Thank you for your patience."
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
Can you guys do some testing on the Runcore Pro IV 16GB PATA SSD? It supposedly uses the indilinx controller.coconutboy - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
Good article Anand, and I like the new tests you guys came up with. I have a request for a new type of test and I know others in the various hardware forums have these same questions.SSDs are too small for many of us to use as the lone drive in our system, and we thus have to combine an SSD as an OS/app drive w/ a traditional hdd for our file storage. Given that this is a reality for many of us eager to jump into SSDs, it'd be great if we could see a test that demonstrates a real-world scenario of users loading DBs/pictures/videos etc from our storage drive while still running our apps/OS from the ssd.
I know it's probably not something you guys could do regularly because the amount of testing would be a huge burden, but perhaps you fellas could do a one-off article just to highlight the differences? Maybe show a couple different usage scenarios such as:
~ a budget/midrange P55 setup w/ OS/apps on a small Indilinx ssd and a single 1TB drive for storage
~ an older Core 2/AMD system with the new Kingston offering used for OS/apps and the storage drives being pair of 640GBs in RAID 1.
I think this kind of article would be very useful to your readers and I know there's lots of us in various forums who are hesitant to jump into a hybrid ssd/hdd setup because we're unsure of exactly how it will affect us.
coconutboy - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
Still not a lot of info out there showing real-world usage scenarios w/ an ssd as the os/app drive and a regular 7200rpm or two as storage, but perhaps for others interested in this kinda testing something like this will suffice. From the MSI p55-gd65 review-http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3655&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3655&am...
krumme - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
How about this collection:http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=34...">http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=34...
It measures where the speed matters most (sorry can not get link to work)
Is the world that different today than 2009?
We need to se results balanced like this
I do get a feeling that the 2009 test suite is heavely favoring the g2 drives
It is plain and simple what takes time. Not iops, we need seconds. And seconds where you can feel it; fx. seconds for diferent types of filecopying, handling large files, working while making backup, working while having virus scan.
The g2 is way overhyped, the samsung way underrated
Reading the results you can have the impression the velociraptor doesnt work for desktop use
The need for trim is overhyped and having severe consequenses
And the results from defective and bad bios updates from indilinx and espec. Intel, was to be seen in advance.
Are we going to se some new benchmark suite when gfx lrb arives??
The end results. Ordinary desktop people having hdd for servers and gfx for research.
It doesnt make sense.
Some bad thought creap into my mind. Help me. Is the Intel marketing a problem, if you dont behave? :) - or did they just give you the random 4k engineering hammer?
Anand - we need another ssd article !!! :)
Take care