Hardware SandForce SSD Group Test

SandForce SSDs boast speeds that push the limits of SATA 3Gbps. We put five to the test.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2010/06/25/sandforce-ssd-test/1

 

Nice review, been waiting a long time for some sandforce reviews on here.

Might want to change the price of the x-25m on the last page, it costs around £350 not £500.

 

Ah, we were working from a silly price on a Gen 1 drive - have updated the article, thanks!

 

Now you've got all this SSD you could try building http:///www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs&fmt=22 Well 24 is different from five but I had to post that vid

 

drives are still to expensive.... I lvoe the idea of hybrid drives though

 

dammit!

I Hoped the sandforce controllers would mean one (or both) of two things:
1) A further alround performance increase
2) Indilix controllers would become cheaper

With this review I do not feel compelled to drop the extra for a sandforce, and I expect Indilix controlled drives will see no reason to drop in price either.
(and yes I know the price is dictated by NAND prices more than the controller price)

Sooooo, based on this review, do youguys at bit-tech still recommend the original Vertex as the SSD of choice??

 

hmm, until we have a look at that Corsair F120 and some other 120GB SandForce drives I'd hold off tbh. The SandForce SF-1200 is faster than Inidilinx's Barefoot, and the 120GB drives are roughly the same price at the moment.

However, there's also the interesting info that SandForce drives can potentially use cheaper NAND than the high-quality stuff in these and Indilinx drives (see page 1). I suspect we'll see big changes in the SSD world, so wait to see what happens over the next few months.

 

Just a quick question: Could we expect similar performance from the smaller sized drives of the same family?

I know that wasn't always the case with HDD's due to differences in platter density & so forth, just wondering how that stacks up with SSD's.

The reason I ask is that I was toying with the idea of the 50GB OCZ Vertex 2 as a boot drive, (currently around £141 from Aria). For myself, my first SSD will probably be one of the smaller ones...

 

SSD's are still too exspensive at the moment and spending that sort of money I would spend it on something more performance related ie graphics card. Untill the price drops i'm keep to my Samsung F1 (if ain't broke don't change it).

These are for people with more money than sense!

 

How is a graphics card more "performance related" than an SSD?

 

The ever-so helpful answer is 'probably'. Manufacturers are telling us there should be no difference in performance, but as they'll need to use new firmware, there's a chance something will go wrong (or improve, obviously). Until we test one, we don't know for sure!

 

SSD's are still too expensive for me... =(

 

Had hoped that it would make the indlinx drives cheaper was hoping to get one if the price dropped a bit. Will be sticking with my f1's for a little longer.

 

I bought a Toshiba based Kingston drive (30Gb) for my HP 6735s laptop (AMD 780G based).
The Toshiba drive works very badly, and crashed a LOT, it was also impossible to install Win7 directly.

Went to a Intel 40gb Value SSD, no probs whatsoever.

Latest BIOS and Firmwares all round.

Some older chipsets may not have the neccessary BIOS updates, or may just be purely incompatible with some SSD's, so check before you buy, that someone has already had it working in the same type of config.

Will be waiting for the next gen controllers in sept-oct before making any more SSD purchases, this time round was just to get my laptop more sturdy

 

That's fair enough - thanks for trying!

I think I'll hold off for a while longer then. I'm approaching willingness to spend £100+ on my first SSD, I just don't have the stomach for £200+, at least not until I've experienced it first-hand and can make a better judgement on whether it's worth it or not for me.

I had always said it'd take breaking the £1 per GB barrier for me to jump in, but truth be told, they're slow at doing that and I'm getting impatient!

 

Got my 80GB X-25M for £170, no buyers remorse here...

 

I'm not in a position to comment on these specific drives, but the Crucial 64GB drive does suffer from 'small drive syndrome':

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/25/lexar_crucial_64gb/

"As we add more NAND die to the C300 platform, the drive can perform more parallel transactions, which increases write performance."

"The other capacity-specific difference is the amount of over-provisioning that is available. NAND natively has around 6 percent over-provisioning built in, so as SSD capacity goes up so does the corresponding percentage of over-provisioning. This increase in 'spare area' results in greater performance in the larger capacity drives."

 

i couldnt be happier with my Intel X25-V 40GB SSD. For £90 i got a drive that changed my whole experience with using computers, and i don't have any issues managing my OS storage etc.

 

I had my work pick me up an OCZ Vertex LE 100GB (based on the SF-1500 controller). I really really need both the random write speeds and the sequential reads from the SF controllers, and in the end, it's not my money they are spending. Hopefully I'll have the drive in the workstation in the next couple of weeks.

Now for my personally PC, I'll wait till Q4 when Intel starts to talk more about their 25nm based drives which should have a new controller as well. Prices should be a lot cheaper by Q1, so I feel like it's a good time to wait if you aren't desperate to move to an SSD (like I am at work).

 

why do you 'need' it?

what do you do for a living i only ask as i have been itching to try a few sql databases on one see what performance gains i acheive