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Storage PCI-E SSD reaches 1500MB/s write speed

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by pimonserry, 17 Sep 2010.

  1. pimonserry

    pimonserry sounds like a party.

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    [​IMG]

    Product page:
    http://www.photofast.co.jp/power-drive.html

    Comes in 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB flavours, reads at 1400MB/s and writes at 1500MB/s (apparently...)

    And according to this it goes on sale next month! :eek:

    I can't see anything on pricing yet...
     
  2. TARIKK

    TARIKK Minimodder

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    Probably this is better for our mental health :D
     
  3. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    Photofast always seem to challenge OCZ for cutting edge consumer gear. Shame their brand is so unknown and undesirable.
     
  4. Fingers66

    Fingers66 Kiwi in London

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    Is the brand name a direct (bad) translation from something Japanese or do they actually make stuff related to photography?
     
  5. Xtrafresh

    Xtrafresh It never hurts to help

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    Is it bootable? That's what we all wanna know i guess. I see in the name on the card it uses an LSI raidcontroller, and they make some bootable models, so i have high hopes :)
     
  6. Rofl_Waffle

    Rofl_Waffle What's a Dremel?

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    Thats very interesting. Does it uses NAND flash or RAM chips?

    Also it would be nice if they showed a picture of the board rather than this 3D shopped picture of what it might look like.
     
  7. Fingers66

    Fingers66 Kiwi in London

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    "Quick, what's bright red, crazy fast,and comprised of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory?"

    "Other bodacious features include 512MB of onboard DDR2 cache, an internal RAID controller, and robust support for a variety of OSes, including Windows Server 2003/2008/2008R8, Windows 7, XP, Vista, several versions of Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, VMWare ESXi 4.0, and more."

    sauce: http://hothardware.com/News/PhotoFasts-Smoking-Fast-PowerDrive-SSD-Makes-Us-Giddy/
     
  8. Guest-44432

    Guest-44432 Guest

    Sauce or Source? lol:thumb:
     
  9. Fingers66

    Fingers66 Kiwi in London

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    deliberate...:D
     
  10. sb1991

    sb1991 What's a Dremel?

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    Hmm... if the slower one they're selling now costs £1300 for 256GB, it can't be cheap...
     
  11. Fingers66

    Fingers66 Kiwi in London

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    LOL, I think that is about the only thing we DO know about it at the moment - it will cost loads.
     
  12. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    Not quite sure that this is 'consumer gear'...

    Yeah, assuming the specs are valid across the whole range (well, lower sized options having a tendency to be slower) then it's 100MB/s faster for writes than the later 1TB Z drives but the same for reads that were out in April.

    Yeah, d.t. the price, it's more likely that it'll be the RevoDrive X2 that'll be the next consumer pcie solution @ 740MB/s & 730MB/s r/ws...

    ...though before too long there 'should' be some good SATA 6.0Gb/s SSD that actually start getting a bit nearer the ~572MB/s limit of the interface (rather than somewhat limping over the line) & so they could quickly be eclipsed by a pair of those in R0...

    (obviously the RevoDrives & Photofast &... pcie things all use raid so it is effectively comparing apples with apples)
     
  13. Xtrafresh

    Xtrafresh It never hurts to help

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    Putting truely speedy Sata3 drives in RAID will start getting close to the maximum bandwidth the SB has to the NB/CPU, so you'll need to use PCIe anyway through a RAID controller card. Which brings us right back to these cards which have a raidcontroller and two ssds on them :hehe:
     
  14. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    Ummm... but that doesn't stop the Z-Drive or this Photofast thing not exactly being consumer SSDs d.t. the pricing... ...esp if we assume that the new 256GB is going to be more expensive than the £1300 current model.


    Then, what you've said isn't 'exactly' the case... Whilst you're entirely correct that that's it's true with the current onboard controllers/drivers, better performing/higher spec 6Gb/s controllers which support more devices will obviously take their toll...

    ...well, forgetting the use of 3rd party chips, in order for (for example) intel to fully implement pcie 3.0 then there will obviously need to be more pcie lanes available on the chipset which in turn 'should' (well it'd be kind of foolish if they didn't) release more bandwidth to the SB -> NB/CPU.

    (&, to repeat, i do accept what you were trying to say was based on current tech though)


    Okay, so let's ignore that premise & look at the pros of one of these pcie SSDs vs a decent raid controller with SSDs.

    Now, firstly, what you've entirely ignored is that pcie SSDs are not (generally) upgradeable - you buy the thing & then you're limited to that performance until you upgrade, whereas with a raid card you can add extra SSDs &/or replace them with better models when your budget allows without having to also swap out & replace an expensive controller...


    Then, secondly, you've ignored the scalability of SSDs (other than 4K, which are a very small no of r/ws, they scale roughly linearly) - esp since the pcie cards use raid.

    Well, whilst 1 or 2 SSDs on a raid controller vs on board isn't going to add much, certainly the read speeds of the Photofast cards were beaten (as there's not a write benchmark given) back in mid 2009...

    Now obviously these are using 2 cards so, worst case, a single card would halve the performance down to 1700MB/s max reads... ...though clearly this testing was done using very decent SSDs they don't have the max specs of some of the newer ones (so limiting the testing both compared to the current market &, as said, the 6Gb/s SATA/SAS bandwidth gives a max of 572MB/s) & older firmwares/drivers/etc on the cards...

    ...that the lsi cards do have higher read maxes, & so greater potential once something can utilise them & are likely to be vastly cheaper to fully populate than either the Z-Drive or this Photofast thing...


    Now, not having 8 SSDs in an array then, to give an idea of things with current drives then, with 4 well used 50/60GB V2s (with no pre-recovery time, time left to recover between b/ms or the artificial closing of programs or any background services) -

    over 1200MB/s max reads & just under 1100MB/s in ATTO (using 1GB test patterns to limit any effect from the controller's cache - a standard 256MB test was run first & the results were slightly foolish; 2600MB/s max reads, though the cache will have an effect in certain r.l. usages this isn't entirely representative so not used) & 835 & 410MB/s in AS SSD (where the SFs really don't shine d.t. the compressed data)...

    ...which, as SSDs scale kind of linearly (note for 2a & b below)...


    & thirdly there's cost.

    Well a 9260-8i card would set you back ~£400 inc cables &, for example, 8x SFs would take it up to ~£1250 for... ...vs ~£1300 for the current 256GB Photofast model (the assumption earlier being that the new ones would be more expensive - at least initially).


    So, whilst all SSD manufacturer's will cherry pick their results, even if we pretended that the new 256GB Photofast model cost no more than the current one, could do it's max specs in either b/m & never slowed down (since my testing was in a well used state without recovery), using 8 current 60GB SFs -

    (1) all of the money doesn't have to be spent in a single chunk since you can add extra SSDs when your budget allows.

    (2a) 'if' their results were based on ATTO, the 8x V2s would be pushing up to 800MB/s faster max reads, though the writes would be ltd to 1850MB/s d.t. the card limitations - albeit that this is still 350MB/s faster than the Photofast.

    (2b) 'if' their results were based on AS SSD (which is hugely unlikely), the 8x V2s would be pushing up to 170MB/s faster reads, but 680MB/s slower writes.

    [i do note that bittech 'tends', once in a while, to claim that write speeds are unimportant so is this an issue on the basis of faster reads? :confused:]

    (3) you'd get 447GB vs 256GB for slightly less money (so could do some decent OPing & have GBs to spare) - though, of course, it's hugely unlikely that the new thing will go on sale for £1300 so...


    Of course though, this is simply using current tech to gauge them - *not* future SSDs or when decent on board 6Gb/s solutions are available, which was my original comparison point.

    So, since the lsi card maxes out @ 2,875MB/s & 1,850MB/s, hopefully all of this typing actually does show that when decent 6Gb/s SSDs exist to a sensible performance level#, someone who's bought a single card that can't be upgraded (& is slower for the all important reads in every case using current tech) hasn't made the best choice.

    [#well, at a roughly equivalent total budget, whilst the 64GB C300s have faster reads (nowhere near the ~572MB/s limit though) than the SFs, they're slower in writes than the SFs]
     
  15. Fingers66

    Fingers66 Kiwi in London

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    Jeez mate, you been on the double expresso's all day or something?
     
    pimonserry likes this.
  16. Ph4ZeD

    Ph4ZeD What's a Dremel?

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    The speed potential of SSDs has never been in doubt. What still needs to be proven is affordability. I'm definitely hoping that Intel's G3 drives will smash the affordability barrier - their leaked slides showed the cheapest "value" SSD at 80GB, so if that could hit £99.99, then you would see the market really take off.
     
  17. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    Am i normally known for being succinct? - will have to work harder on increasing my general verbosity... :p

    Actually deadly tired - co-running a training seminar yesterday evening for Sheffield Mind & 4hrs sleep last night (hurray for insomnia) - but kept on looking at what i'd written & couldn't see anything much that could be taken out whilst keeping a cogent argument going...

    Oh well, whilst a bit of a read, at least it kind of gets the point(s) across that, whilst seeming fabulous, it's important to actually look at the comparative specs of what can already be done now, cost/GB & what's going to be coming out before too long (in that we all kind of know that there's going to be a plethora of 6Gb/s SSDs in the next few months that are all going to be vying to be the fastest - if possibly expensive to start with)...

    ...& maybe it'll help someone else get to sleep tonight. ;)



    & just realised that i'd completely missed noting something else...

    Now, Fingers66 had quoted the hothardware.com article -

    "Other bodacious features include 512MB of onboard DDR2 cache"

    - which has made me wonder exactly how fast the NAND actually is(?).


    Now, since it was clear with my V2 testing that the DDR2 on the 9260-8i does increase the R0 specs to an extent even when it's swamped by 1GB patterns, the same effect is very likely to be the case with this which 99.999999% means that it similarly relying on this to get its 1400/1500 MB/s max speeds.

    Obviously, i'm not suggesting that this is necessarily a bad thing of itself (though the apparent lack of the option for a battery for the Photofast could cause data loss from the cache in the event of a power failure - albeit that the battery for the 9260 cards is extra & isn't cheap), but...

    Okay, it's only going to be by having some more useful b/ms for the card that it's going to become clearer, but it does provisionally mean that what i've used as a comparison is very much nearer to comparing apples with apples.
     
    Last edited: 18 Sep 2010
  18. Rofl_Waffle

    Rofl_Waffle What's a Dremel?

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    Gigabyte should remake their RAM drive. Even DDR 1 memory tops 1700mb/s. If they got DDR3 memory in a RAM drive it would be OMG fast. Though getting even 64GB of DDR is going to cost some money.
     
    Last edited: 18 Sep 2010
  19. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    If it was purely industrial it wouldn't have a bling red cover ;)
     
  20. RichCreedy

    RichCreedy Hey What Who

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