64GB SSD on the Desktop: Samsung and OCZ go mainstream
by Gary Key on May 15, 2008 11:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Game Level Load
This test centers on the actual loading of a playable level within our game selections. Our application timer begins when initiating the level load process and ends when the game play screen is visible.
In Company of Heroes, the separation between the test group is around 3 seconds. Our VelociRaptor is the quickest mechanical drive in this test but loses out to the SSD drives. In Crysis, we see a separation of five seconds between the drives with the Samsung/OCZ drives once again scoring a win. Subjectively, the SSD drives seemed to offer quicker transitions between levels as we extended the game play length. Also, the Crysis level load dropped to 28.37 seconds on the Samsung/OCZ drives on subsequent loads if we did not clear the pre-fetch folder; comparatively, the WD VelociRaptor dropped to 33.09 seconds.
Nero Recode
Our encoding test is quite easy - we take our original Office Space DVD and use AnyDVD to copy the full DVD to the hard drive without compression, thus providing an almost exact duplicate of the DVD. We then fire up Nero Recode 2, select our Office Space copy on the hard drive, and perform a shrink operation to allow the entire movie along with extras to fit on a single 4.5GB DVD disc. We leave all options on their defaults except we turn off the advanced analysis option. The scores reported include the full encoding process and is listed in seconds, with lower numbers indicating better performance. We delete each image after use.
The superior write speeds of the VelociRaptor and Mtron drives are indicative of a test that features large data blocks in a sequential pattern. The Samsung/OCZ drive performs very well and is around 21 seconds faster than the previous generation Samsung 64GB drive.
WinRAR 3.71
Our WinRAR test measures the time it takes to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, 10 folders, and 602MB of data. While the benchmark is CPU intensive for the compression tests, it still requires a fast storage system to keep pace with the CPU. A drive that offers excellent write performance can make a difference in this benchmark.
This test relies on the CPU and the burst rate of the storage system. The results in this test surprised us; we fully expected the drive to score even or slightly worse than the Mtron drive due to slower write speeds. We ran the test several times and even tried a new image but the results stayed the same.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
38 Comments
View All Comments
ameatypie - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - link
i think in one years time, these are going to be the default laptop hard drives. The price of flash memory is going down so fast..... a year ago, a 4GB flash drive was &70 USD or more.... now you can get em for $5. If that sort of trend continues, we are going to have super-quick laptops in no time at all.....Zak - Monday, May 19, 2008 - link
I remember couple of years ago they were promising huge speed improvement and energy savings but when SSD finally hit the store shelves they're quite underwhelming considering the price. What's most disappointing is almost no improvement in battery life on laptops! At least that's the case with Air. Still, this is new tech so I hope things will get better in the next couple of years, so I'm not writing SSD off yet.Z.
FXi - Monday, May 19, 2008 - link
Would have been helpful if just one fast laptop drive had been included in the mix to see for that segment of users what degree of speedup is gained.I figure you'll get to it in time. These kinds of reviews are far from over :)
MadBoris - Saturday, May 17, 2008 - link
This is solid state?I don't understand how people can look at this as anything but a good tech demo.
Comparing actual physical RAM to a Hard drive is night and day and yet somehow a solid state drive can barely compete or even falls short of a hard drive at times.
Isn't the point of solid state that we all desired for decades the huge performance gains???
Their is something really wrong with this picture when it still can't compete with a hard drive yet costs 4 times as much.
Give me a quality RAM Drive on an OS any day, address the volatility of the RAM or load the ram drive on startup of the computer, using the HD as a cache during startup and shutdown just like sleep does.
Until solid state will improve performance over a hard drive by 2-3 times then it is just a tech demo. I would be happy to have something much smaller and yet much faster memory for installing some programs on, specifically an OS and some main applications, not data.
The good thing is their is great opportunity for competition and advancement in this market. Wake me up when we get there.
Nice article although I disagree it is award worthy as a technology regardless how much improvement took place, their is a galaxy of room left for improvement for it to be worthy of consideration above .01% of consumers.
Harkonnen - Saturday, May 17, 2008 - link
I would love to see Anandtech test out this SSD.http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-memoright,...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-memoright,...
codeThug - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link
About as mainstream as Bigfoot Networks $249.99 Killer NIC M1http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N8...
TheriusDrake - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link
I'd love to see the game load times on the fastest Core2 Duo on an Intel and Nivida Mobo to see if there are any major differences in those benchmarks.shabby - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link
Who would spend that much money only to receive 1 year of warranty on the ocz ssd?Arbie - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link
Do the vendors quote these? Are there any verifications / experience? Not one SSD review I've seen has even raised this issue.Of course any drive can fail at any time (random), and all mechanical drives will eventually wear out too. What I'm talking about is unexpectedly near-term, statistically-predictable wearout.
Arbie
chizow - Friday, May 16, 2008 - link
Given the storage demands of the latest HD media and PC games, I just don't see how SSD will overcome standard HDD any time soon. I can see them surpassing HDD in speed, but not both speed with increased storage capacity. And that's before considering pricing. I have a hard time justifying even the $1/GB VelociRaptor nowadays given the price to performance of the larger drives, and that's coming from someone who owns two 150GB Raptors.I think SSD has a much better future serving the performance sector in that gap between DRAM and conventional HDD storage. I'd like to see them get closer to DRAM speed, keeping capacity lower, but perhaps implementing something like integrated RAID to speed things up. As more people move towards 64-bit OS and multimedia apps and games continue to grow, 8GB of RAM may not be enough in the not too distant future. Games are already spilling onto multiple DVDs with install folders easily surpassing 10GB for a single game after patches and expansions.
This may pose a problem for board and dimm makers, as it seems increasing memory capacity is a limitation that can't easily be overcome. Current solutions are limited to 4GB per dimm I believe and server boards with additional dimm slots or daughter cards. Mainstream solutions would be reluctant to adopt these changes as they'd increase cost/size significantly. Introducing a fast, hybrid SSD solution could help bridge the gap between system RAM and HDD storage giving programs faster performance as needed.