The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Words
We’ve become complacent. In today’s world of netbooks and nettops where performance is cast aside, we’ve let far too much slide. The bar of acceptability is too low. A good SSD is the anti-netbook, it is the most believable proof that PCs aren’t fast enough today. We don’t need good enough, we need orders of magnitude of performance improvement. And that's exactly what a good SSD can deliver today.
The performance improvement isn't limited to high end machines. In fact, some of the most perceivable differences in performance are on lower end machines, netbooks and nettops. The combination of a slow CPU and a slow hard drive is horrendous; the SSD allows you to at least alleviate some of the bottleneck in these slower machines. And today we actually have affordable options that make sense to even put in a netbook.
A year ago the market was full of worthless SSDs being sold at a premium. Today, we have two real contenders for the throne: Intel and Indilinx. Let me start with Indilinx.
Indilinx is a company that no one knew a year ago, nor would anyone even begin to trust back then. I remember talking to OCZ about the problems with their JMicron drives and being told that their next-generation drive would have a controller by a new company. They told me the name and I was more than skeptical. JMicron couldn't do it, why would this strangely named new company be able to get it right? Even when I first tested an Indilinx drive I was hopeful but still cautious; it's something I used in my system for a short period, but nothing I would commit to. If you wanted an SSD, Intel was still the only way to go.
When I started writing this article I took a big step. I felt that Indilinx drives had reached the point that their performance was good enough to be considered an Intel alternative. I backed up my X25-M, pulled it out, and swapped in an OCZ Vertex drive - into my personal work system. I've been using it ever since and I must admit, I am happy. Indilinx has done it, these drives are fast, reliable (provided that you don't upgrade to the latest firmware without waiting a while) and are good enough. We'll see how the drive holds up over the coming months but I don't have any regrets at this point.
If you're trying to move to an SSD at the lowest possible cost, there's finally a real alternative to Intel. We also have Indilinx to thank for driving SSD prices as low as they have been. If these drives weren't actually competitive, Intel would have no real motivation to deliver a sub-$300 SSD so quickly.
All of this Indilinx praise brings us to the next heir to the throne: Intel. The X25-M G2 is an evolution of the SSD that started it all, we see some specific but significant performance gains and hints of Intel's strategy moving forward. The G2's real strength lies in the fact that it is the only Intel drive that will support TRIM later this year. While the G1, even in its used state, will outperform an Indilinx drive - the G2's TRIM support will ensure that it's even faster than the G1.
The only bad thing I have to say about the G2 is that it doesn't address Intel's only weakness: sequential write speed. While on average the G2 is a better performer than the Indilinx drives in real world use, there are distinct situations where it falls behind.
I should also take this time to chastise Intel for absolutely botching the launch of the drive. I'm not talking about the embarrassing stop-shipment caused by poor validation, I'm talking about the fact that X25-M G2s are still out of stock even as I publish this article. The SSD group at Intel clearly needs to take lessons from the CPU teams: you don't launch product without availability.
Many readers have been emailing me asking what SSD they should get for their new Windows 7 builds, honestly the decision mostly comes down to capacity. Look at this table of prices:
| Price | Cost per GB | |
| OCZ Vertex 64GB | $219.99 | $3.437 |
| Intel X25-M 80GB | $279.99 | $3.500 |
| OCZ Vertex 128GB | $369.00 | $2.883 |
| Intel X25-M 160GB | $499.99 | $3.125 |
| OCZ Vertex 256GB | $725.00 | $2.832 |
You should buy the largest drive you need/can afford. If you only have 30GB of data on your system, buy the 64GB Indilinx drive. If you have 50GB? Opt for the 80GB Intel drive. Indilinx and Intel seem to complement one another more than compete thanks to differing numbers of flash channels on their controllers resulting in different capacities.
Is Intel still my overall recommendation? Of course. The random write performance is simply too good to give up and it's only in very specific cases that the 80MB/s sequential write speed hurts you. Is Indilinx a close runner up? Absolutely. It's truly a lower cost alternative. Am I relieved to be done with this article? You betcha.
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kisjoink - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
"Intel doesn't need to touch the G1, the only thing faster than it is the G2."I've been an avid anandtech-reader since 1998, but this is the first time I'm commenting on an article. I just have to say how much I disagree with this quote!
I've used the x25m since its launch (December 08) and at first I was very happy with the drive. Although really expensive, I got convinced to buy one after reading your first previews and review. And the performance was great, at least for the first 4-5 months. At that time I started noticing some 'hiccups' (system freeze). At first they were few and short. But over time they become more noticeable and now they're a real pain. Sometimes my system can freeze for more than 15 seconds. It usually happens when I edit a picture in photoshop, but it can also happen while writing something in Word, programming java in Eclipse or just surfing the web.
The problem? I'm pretty sure its the Intel drive. After reading too many SSD-articles I immediately suspected the x25m when the I started noticing the hiccups. So I got used to running the "Windows Resource Monitor" in the background - studying the disk activity after every hiccup. Just take a look at this example (just started photoshop and did some light editing on a picture):
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/3073/hickup.jpg">http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/3073/hickup.jpg
I'm sure there are many ways I could tune my system better. I've done a couple of things, like moved the internet temp folder to a mechanical drive etc. And the performance of the drive will probably recover if I do this special SSD-format - but it's a real pain to have to do complete OS installation 2-3 times a year when you claim it's possible for Intel to create a new firmware with TRIM-support. I mean - I really did pay premium price for this product (close to 800$ included VAT here in Norway for the 80GB version in December 08).
So, to summarise - I got convinced to buy the drive after reading your articles (you write great reviews!) - and I understand that the problem that I (and others from what I've been reading on forums) is really difficult to recreate in a testing environment - but that doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist. I just wish you could point this out. The expensive G1 has some really big performance issues that might force you to do a complete reinstall of your system a couple times a year - and although Intel could fix it they wont, because they have a new, better and cheaper product out - and people like me (altough we feel really screwed over by Intel) will buy their next device (as long as its the best device out there).
IntelUser2000 - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Is that after you installed the firmware version 8820 or before?? That reduces the problem a lot unless you filled the drive to more than 70%.kisjoink - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Yes, I forgot to mention that - it's after I upgraded to the 8820 firmware. I don't think I've ever filled it up with more than 80%, usually I have about 30GB of free spaceAnand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
This is actually an interesting scenario that I've been investigating a bit myself. The 8820 firmware actually significantly changes the way the drive likes to store data compared to the original firmware. That's fine for a cleanly secure-erased drive, but what happens if you have data/fragmentation on the drive already?Every time you write to the drive the controller will look at the preferred state specified by the new firmware. It will see that your data is organized the way the old firmware liked it, but not the new firmware. Thus upon every...single...write it will try and reorganize the data until it gets to its happy state.
I honestly have no idea how long this process will take, I can see it taking quite a bit of time but perhaps you could speed it up by writing a bunch of sequential files to fill up the drive? The safer bet would be to backup, secure erase and restore onto the drive. You shouldn't see it happen again.
Think of it like this. I live in my house and I have everything organized a certain way. It takes me minimal time to find everything I need. Let's say tomorrow I leave my house and you move in. You look at how things are organized and it's quite different from how you like things setup. Whenever you go to grab a plate or book you try cleaning up a bit. Naturally it'll take a while before things get cleaned up and until then you won't be as quick as you're used to.
Take care,
Anand
jimhsu - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link
The G2's I've discovered REALLY don't like to be filled up more than 80% or so. When I had 8GB free on the 80GB drive, seq write performance basically plummeted at random intervals (to levels like 30MB/s.) Random writes sometimes dropped down to 4MB/s. Now that I've freed 20GB and tried writing and deleting large ISO files to the drive, the performance is coming back slowly.Dunk - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Hi Anand,I'm blown away by your article series on SSD - absolutely fantastic.
When new Intel firmware is launched with TRIM support for the G2, can I flash it without losing the drive and needing to reinstall everything?
I'm happy using the out of the box MS driver for now in Win7, but would prefer to use Intel's TRIM version once available.
Many thanks
Duncan
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
If Intel follows the same pattern as what we saw with the G1's firmware update, you should be able to flash without destroying your data (although it's always a good idea to back up).Thank you for your comment :)
Take care,
Anand
mgrmgr - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Okay, single X25-M G2s can be updated without losing data. But I am considering two 80GB drives in RAID-0 to overcome the sequential write slowdown with Photoshop. How will updating work for the RAID-0 pair?Do you have an opinion about using a RAID pair for Photoshop?
Noteleet - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Fantastic article, I'm definitely planning on getting a SSD next time I upgrade.I'm fairly interested in seeing some reviews for the Solid 2. If OCZ can get the kinks worked out I think the Intel flash and the Indilinx controller would make a winning combination for price to performance.
Visual - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Where does the drive store the mapping between logical and physical pages and other system data it needs to operate? Does it use the same memory where user data is stored? If so, doesn't it need to write-balance that map data as well? And if that's true, doesn't it need to have a map for the map written somewhere? How is that circular logic broken?Or does the drive have some small amount of higher-quality, more reliable, maybe single-level-cell based flash memory for its system data?