The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Why You Absolutely Need an SSD
Compared to mechanical hard drives, SSDs continue to be a disruptive technology. These days it’s difficult to convince folks to spend more money, but I can’t stress the difference in user experience between a mechanical HDD and a good SSD. In every major article I’ve written about SSDs I’ve provided at least one benchmark that sums up exactly why you’d want an SSD over even a RAID array of HDDs. Today’s article is no different.
The Fresh Test, as I like to call it, involves booting up your PC and timing how long it takes to run a handful of applications. I always mix up the applications and this time I’m actually going with a lighter lineup: World of Warcraft, Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Firefox 3.5.1.
Other than those three applications, the system was a clean install - I didn’t even have any anti-virus running. This is easily the best case scenario for a hard drive and on the world’s fastest desktop hard drive, a Western Digital VelociRaptor, the whole process took 31 seconds.
And on Intel’s X25-M SSD? Just 6.6 seconds.
A difference of 24 seconds hardly seems like much, until you actually think about it in terms of PC response time. We expect our computers to react immediately to input; even waiting 6.6 seconds is an eternity. Waiting 31 seconds is agony in the PC world. Worst of all? This is on a Core i7 system. To have the world’s fastest CPU and to have to wait half a minute for a couple of apps to launch is just wrong.
A Personal Anecdote on SSDs
I’m writing this page of the article on the 15-inch MacBook Pro I reviewed a couple of months ago. I’ve kept the machine stock but I’ve used it quite a bit since that review thanks to its awesome battery life. Of course, by “stock” I mean that I have yet to install an SSD.
Using the notebook is honestly disappointing. I always think something is wrong with the machine when I go to fire up Adium, Safari, Mail and Pages all at the same time to get to work. The applications take what feels like an eternity to start. While they are all launching the individual apps are generally unresponsive, even if they’ve loaded completely and I’m waiting on others. It’s just an overall miserable experience by comparison.
It’s shocking to think that until last year, this is how all of my computer usage transpired. Everything took ages to launch and become useful, particularly the first time you boot up your PC. It was that more than anything else that drove me to put my PCs to sleep rather than shut them down. It was also the pain of starting applications from scratch and OS X’s ability to get in/out of sleep quickly that made me happier using OS X than XP and later Vista.
It’s particularly interesting when you think of the ramifications of this. It’s the poor random read/write performance of the hard disk that makes some aspects of PC usage so painful. It’s the multi-minute boot times that make users more frustrated with their PCs. While the hard disk helped the PC succeed, it’s the very device that’s killing the PC in today’s instant-on, consumer electronics driven world. I challenge OEMs to stop viewing SSDs as a luxury item and to bite the bullet. Absorb the cost, work with Intel and Indilinx vendors to lower prices, offer bundles, do whatever it takes but get these drives into your systems.
I don’t know how else to say this: it’s an order of magnitude faster than a hard drive. It’s the difference between a hang glider and the space shuttle; both will fly, it’s just that one takes you to space. And I don’t care that you can buy a super fast or high flying hang glider either.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Maybe I should compile these things into a book? :)Here are my answers about some stuff:
1) There's a spec for how hard drive makers report capacity. They define 1GB as 1 billion bytes. This is technically correct (base 10 SI prefix as you correctly pointed out). The HDDs also physically have this much storage on them, they are made up of sequentially numbered sectors that are easily counted in a decimal number system.
All other aspects of PC storage (e.g. cache, DRAM, NAND flash) however work in base 2 (like the rest of the PC). In these respects 1GB is defined as 1024^3 because we're dealing with a base 2 number system. There are reasons for this but it goes beyond the scope of what I'm posting :)
Intel adheres to the same spec that the HDD makers use. But the X25-M is made up of flash, which as I just mentioned is addressed in a base 2 number system. There's more flash than user space on the drive, it's used as spare area, woohoo. I think we're both on the same page here, just saying things differently :)
2) We'll see a 320GB drive, just not this year. I don't know that the demand is there especially given the weak economy.
Dreams do sometimes come true... ;)
3) Perhaps, but I don't like the idea of a drive doing anything but idling when it's supposed to be...idle. This does funny things to notebook battery life I'd think.
4) This is true. There's also another thing you can do with the jumper (and perhaps some additional software): flash any indilinx drive with any firmware regardless of vendor :)
5) I had to throw out a lot of data because of variations between runs. It ended up being a combination of immature drivers, immature benchmarks and some OS trickery. The setup I have now is very reliable and provides very repeatable results with very little variation. While I run everything three times, the runs are so close that you could technically do only one run per drive and still be fine.
6) I wouldn't count WD and Seagate out just yet. It may take them a while but they won't go quietly...
7) Samsung makes a ton of money from SSD sales to OEMs, they don't seem to care about the end user market as much. If end users start protesting Samsung drives however, things will change.
In my opinion? Once Apple falls, the rest will follow. If Apple will migrate to Intel (possible) or Indilinx (less likely), we'll see the same from the other OEMs and Samsung will be forced to change.
Or I could be too pessimistic and we'll see better performance from Samsung before then.
8) Agreed :)
I'll finish here too :)
Take care,
Anand
Reven - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Anand, dont listen to the guys like blyndy who diss on the anthologies, I love them. You can find a basic review anywhere, its the in-depth yet simple to understand stuff like these anthologies that make me visit Anandtech all the time.Keep it up, dude!
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Thank you :)EasterEEL - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
I have a couple of questions regarding the Intel® SATA SSD Firmware Update Tool (2832KB) v1.3 8/24/2009.Does this firmware enable TRIM within the SSD to work with Windows 7?
If AHCI is enabled in the BIOS (but not RAID) does Windows 7 use it's own drivers with TRIM? Or does it load Intel’s Matrix Storage Manager driver which does not support TRIM as per the article note below?
"Unfortunately if you’re running an Intel controller in RAID mode (whether non-member RAID or not), Windows 7 loads Intel’s Matrix Storage Manager driver, which presently does not pass the TRIM command. Intel is working on a solution to this and I'd expect that it'll get fixed after the release of Intel's 34nm TRIM firmware in Q4 of this year."
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
That update does not enable TRIM. The TRIM firmware is in testing now and it will be out sometime in Q4 of this year (October - December).If AHCI is enabled in the BIOS and you haven't loaded Intel's MSM drivers then it will use the Windows 7 driver and TRIM will be supported.
Take care,
Anand
uberowo - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
I do have a question however. :DI am building a gaming pc, and I am buying ssd disk/s. Would I benefit from getting 2x80gb intel gen2s and using raid0? Or should I stick with a single 160gb?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
While I haven't tested 2 x 80GB drives in RAID-0, my feeling is that a single SSD is going to be better than two in RAID going forward. As of now I don't know that anyone's TRIM firmware is going to work if you've got two drives in RAID-0.The perceived performance gains in RAID-0 also aren't that great on SSDs from what I've seen.
Take care,
Anand
Ardax - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
A naive guess would be that it depends on the workload. For lots of sequential transfers a RAID-0 should shine -- particularly on reads -- because you're spreading the transfers out over multiple SATA channels.Losing TRIM is a problem. Finding a controller than can handle the performance is entirely likely to be another.
uberowo - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. Not to mention making this awesome site. :)Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
You guys take the time to read it and make some truly wonderful comments, it's the least I can do :)-A