Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 8, 2008 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Application Loading Performance
You know what I hate about rebooting my machine? Starting all of my applications back up as soon as it boots, the OS is always crunching away at my disk long after I've hit my desktop and it takes forever to launch my mail application, IM client and start a web browser. These aren't complex requests, but they take forever on a conventional hard disk.
I ran a quick test to illustrate the point. I took my test image and booted it, as soon as I got a cursor in Vista I launched Adobe Photoshop CS3, PCMark Vantage, Google Chrome and Norton AntiVirus 2008. I timed how long it took for all four applications to come up. Note that this is actually a best case scenario, since my testbed image is very clean with a minimal number of applications installed. As you fill up your disk with more applications and files the disparity grows. Remember that HDD performance decreases as your drive fills up, SSD performance doesn't.
| Launch: Photoshop, Vantage, Chrome & NAV | |
| Intel X25-M (Intel, MLC) | 7 seconds |
| Western Digital Green 1TB | 15.6 seconds |
| Western Digital VelociRaptor | 12 seconds |
The differences in time here aren't huge on paper, but they are tremendous when you're actually using the machine. The funny thing about an SSD is you don't always appreciate the benefit when you've got it, but go back to a mechanical disk and it'll feel like something is wrong with your machine. The difference is noticeable.
Now let's look at individual application performance:
Google Chrome launches quickly on pretty much anything, the difference between SSDs is negligible but there is a slightly noticeable difference between running a simple, quick loading app on a HDD vs. a SSD. Again, the differences are small, but noticeable. On an SSD the application launches are instantaneous, on a HDD you can "feel" the load.
PowerPoint is similar to Chrome, but the application does take longer to load on mechanical disks. Again, the differences are noticeable - the X25-M will load PowerPoint in half the time of the VelociRaptor. You can argue that the price isn't worth it, but the point is that the load completes much faster...let's look at what happens when we're loading an application that does take a long time to start.
Photoshop takes its sweet time loading on a notebook drive, over 10 seconds on the Momentus 7200.2:
Even on the VelociRaptor it's a 6+ second ordeal. On the X25-M and all of the other SSDs, we're talking less than 3 seconds (the X25-M is naturally the fastest at 2.3 seconds).
My rule of thumb has always been that a good SSD will cut application launch times in half compared to a desktop hard drive, so if you have a particularly beefy application that takes a good while to load, expect that time to go down considerably. Remember, these are best case scenarios, in a little bit I'll start multitasking and then we'll separate the men from the boys.
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aeternitas - Thursday, September 11, 2008 - link
Wow.#1 Meaning; Great read.
#2 Meaning; Why do you not use World of Warcraft in your testings more? This game still has huge system requirements on absolute full settings in crouded areas. No one is getting 60fps in that game in Shatt on a saterday night 16xAA/AF full distance view. Everything maxed running a high resolution. Also, the disk access of this game may not be as much as Crysis, but its far FAR more prolonged as people play this game for a matter of years, instead of a handfull of months tops.
hoohoo - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
What?! Google Chrome Launch Time? Is this a new benchmark? The world was waiting for that test I can tell ya! Did Google slip a little something in your pocket?Ph0b0s - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Sorry if this repeats what anyone else has said, but I think this is the best harddisk review I have seen. All the other hdd reviews I have read though, all go into detail about how many mb/s the drive can transfer and what the access time is, I/O performance etc. This is all very nice, but all we really care about is how does the hdd perform in real world apps and games in comparision to other drives. How much faster is my browser going to load.And that is why I was so impressed with this review. I realise it probably took more time to create this review, but it was well worth it. You can see how much the drives in the comparision compare to the amount of money you will spend instead of having to extrapolate from throughput benchmarks.
I would feel a lot more confident in putting down money on the X25 after this review. Because I can see what the benefit I would get after in comparsion to other drives. Though the X25 needs to be another $100 dollars cheaper...
Anyway, please more hdd reviews like this...
bruto - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Anand, could you please post map load times for R6 Vegas 2 usingthese drives?
That game was killing me, and I'd like to know just how much
happiness is around the corner :)
FFFFFF - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - link
I am very familiar with the tech works of SSDs and it is interesting to know of the security risk that involves the technology. http://www.techworld.com/SECURITY/NEWS/index.cfm?n...">http://www.techworld.com/SECURITY/NEWS/...cfm?news...This is one reason why I am not going to upgrade to SSD just yet till they figure out a more secure encryption.
cokelight - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - link
RE: PLEASE LEARN HOW TO USE COMMAS! by ggordonliddy, 19 hours agoYou are just making it clear that you do not have a firm grasp of English. You are afraid of those who criticize poor grammar, because you know that you yourself will be exposed for the fraudulent pustule that lies beneath your slimy veneer.
I have a life. I'm just sick of illiterate authors. Just because it is a tech site is no excuse for extremely poor writing skills. I'm talking about skills that should be completely mastered before being allowed to graduate from elementary school.
^
Take your elitism elsewhere. If you actually practiced what you preached then you'd note your own comma abuse:
"You are afraid of those who criticize poor grammar, because you know that you yourself will be exposed for the fraudulent pustule that lies beneath your slimy veneer."
The second clause is dependent. Therefore, it does not necessitate a comma.
aeternitas - Thursday, September 11, 2008 - link
Use the reply link.xenon83 - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - link
"Do keep in mind though, the numbers we're talking about here are ridiculously low - even 900 µs to write to MLC flash is much faster than writing to a mechanical hard disk."But when it comes to random writes ssd's in general - this intel ssd included - fails miserably.
http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=106">http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=106
johncl - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Yes as the other poster say, the Intel drive have solved the issues with small random writes that the OZC and other MLC drives so far have been suffering from. If you read the whole article thoroughly you will see that clearly.Lets hope OCZ can come up with a better controller in their next generation MLC SSDs. We really need the competition here to bring those prices down, the Intel drive is a tad too expensive atm imo.
balotz - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - link
Random writes are exactly as fast as sequential writes on this Intel SSD (10,000 random 4k writes per second).The article you referenced uses data from an SSD which appears to suffer from issues relating to the JMicron controller.
The Intel SSD is obviously not affected, this is clearly shown by the numbers in this very review!