Fastest SSD?
- Thread starter marick626
- Start date
I dont have one yet but almost every post / reply I have seen tauts this as being king right now...kind of like the NH D14
My link
Well the fastest SSD is probably made by OCZ, it's one of their PCIe SSDs so the SATA interface won't bottleneck the performance of the SSD. But these are kind of money is no object type since they costs like 5,000 quid.
But one for the everyday user, Kingston V+, Corsair Perfromance 3 or Mushkin Callisto.
But one for the everyday user, Kingston V+, Corsair Perfromance 3 or Mushkin Callisto.
Yeah, $9,000 isn't in my budget. Will look at those Kingstons. I had some OCZ Vertex 2s in the cart, guess I will have to rethink that decision.
I know that that crucial C300s are the fastest currently because they use SATA 3 like you mentioned. After doing some research I found that the main issue with using sata 3 would come from the motherboard since most mobos today use some sort of Marvell chipset for their sata 3 controllers which apparently are crap and don't work well with raid 0. I could be wrong though, and I am talking about the early sata 3 mobos like the msi big bang. It would be nice if someone could shed some light on the subject. I will keep an eye out on those corsairs although i will most probably end up with something cheaper.
I know that that crucial C300s are the fastest currently because they use SATA 3 like you mentioned. After doing some research I found that the main issue with using sata 3 would come from the motherboard since most mobos today use some sort of Marvell chipset for their sata 3 controllers which apparently are crap and don't work well with raid 0. I could be wrong though, and I am talking about the early sata 3 mobos like the msi big bang. It would be nice if someone could shed some light on the subject. I will keep an eye out on those corsairs although i will most probably end up with something cheaper.
NEVER EVER RAID AN SSD. Disables TRIM, after a year it will be slower than a turtle. The only time RAID works is using a PCIe RAID Controller since from what I've been told, those allow you to keep TRIM. Also larger capacity SSDs tend to be faster than smaller ones.
Rastalovich
New member
The PCIe variants will have similar problems as SATA connected drives, in so much as they're all limited by controllers. A controller has to be present so the OS will know what the heck it is. The main reasoning behind the PCIe drives is the connectivity, they're not designed with your regular pc cases in mind. They've also been around a while longer than ssd sata drives.
I believe SATA1 speeds are yet to be saturated by any device as of yet, the controllers just aren't out there. Not small enough to fit on a 2.5/3.5 pcb anyway.
I really would like to assassinate the person who first came out with the 'bottleneck' explaination for things, cos people use it like chocolate sprinkles !
I believe SATA1 speeds are yet to be saturated by any device as of yet, the controllers just aren't out there. Not small enough to fit on a 2.5/3.5 pcb anyway.
I really would like to assassinate the person who first came out with the 'bottleneck' explaination for things, cos people use it like chocolate sprinkles !
Reason why all SSDs use SATA II instead of SATA I is due to them maxing out the limits of the SATA I interface. SATA I caps out at 1.5Gbits/s while SATA II maxs out at 3Gbits/s. 3Gbit/s roughly translates to a bit less than 300mb/s. 1.5Gbit/s will therefore be less than 150Mb/s, which most SSDs these days can do.
All the SSDs that appear to have the same speed, that's just the maximum speed output of SATA II, but how close they get to that is what seperates the good SSDs from the bad ones.
So why do they have PCIe SSDs? This allows greater bandwidth than SATA, obviously, but it also allows the intergration of a higher end controller capable of RAID 0 what are essential multiple smaller SSDs together to boost speed, but also through the controller, allow Windows 7 TRIM to work.
Rastalovich
New member
What you need to think of in terms of saturation (reaching a limit with hopes of overflowing it) is that if you had an imaginary drive, theoretically capable of 500megabytes per second: if you could hook it up to a SATA1 connection (on paper limited to 1.5g/8 megabytes), it will never reach maybe 75% of this. Although the potential is there, the controller won't allow it. Some controllers are faster than others, but there's effectively nothing in it.
Similarly if you put this theoretical 500mbs drive on either a SATA2 or 3 connection (or even 4), the same overhead exists and the transfer rate will never saturate. Hence the term "controller". Same existed for MFM, IDE, SCSI etc etc.
Although the fashionable SSD drive, to most users, is a 2.5" drive with a sata interface. PCI (even ISA, and now PCIe) "ssd" drives have been around for years prior. All this really is is a "bunch of memory chips" a drive interface (SATA/SCSI/IDE/MFM/anything) and the computers i/o bus.
SCSI is less fashionable for the consumer as the costing involved has always been high - effectively limiting purchases mostly to "businesses" or professionals. With the advent of Ultra and Wide, the original SCSI platform became cheap and was an effective bolt on for pcb "ssd" drives. Still alot higher costing than anything around a traditional harddrive, and of course capacities can't compare.
Some clever companies tried the IDE interface as a translator to the i/o bus. Essentially you get a bunch of chips on a pcb, IDE interface and an ISA (PCI/PCIe) connector to the mobo.
Even with the removal of the traditional style harddrive, with it's mechanical movements slowing it down, these pcbs are still limited, or "controlled" by the IDE interface. Potentially, or theoretically, 130mbs??, but if you got around 75% of that, you'd be happy.
IDE was handy cos it's cheap. Unfortunately, the advent of the SATA interface meant that all the work and result of making these pcbs, the customer could obtain a regular drive that could do the same.
This would still leave the customers that need to use slot "ssd" drives due to connectivity of their platform. Apart from home pcs, the likes of some servers and some workstations will-not have a bank of sata connections for you to connect to. However, they will have slots, in some kind of ISA form (PCI to PCie/mini)
You always have to have a method of translating to the mobo, and in turn the OS, a means of reading/writing to either the chips of your pcb or the mechanical drive. You pop the card in and, if you like, in Windows it'll show up as an IDE drive. And it will relate to it in the same way even tho it's r/w chips and not magnetic media.
In really, really basic terms, your pcb ssd for a slot:
"Bunch of chips" + (IDE/SATA/SCSI/etc controllers) + (ISA/PCI/PCIe interface) => Mobo chipset, detectable by the OS
In similar basic terms, your ssd that looks like a "traditional mechanical drive":
"Bunch of chips" + (SATA controller**) => Mobo chipset, detectable by the OS
**arguably there are other controllers, but not in general circulation.
Similarly if you put this theoretical 500mbs drive on either a SATA2 or 3 connection (or even 4), the same overhead exists and the transfer rate will never saturate. Hence the term "controller". Same existed for MFM, IDE, SCSI etc etc.
Although the fashionable SSD drive, to most users, is a 2.5" drive with a sata interface. PCI (even ISA, and now PCIe) "ssd" drives have been around for years prior. All this really is is a "bunch of memory chips" a drive interface (SATA/SCSI/IDE/MFM/anything) and the computers i/o bus.
SCSI is less fashionable for the consumer as the costing involved has always been high - effectively limiting purchases mostly to "businesses" or professionals. With the advent of Ultra and Wide, the original SCSI platform became cheap and was an effective bolt on for pcb "ssd" drives. Still alot higher costing than anything around a traditional harddrive, and of course capacities can't compare.
Some clever companies tried the IDE interface as a translator to the i/o bus. Essentially you get a bunch of chips on a pcb, IDE interface and an ISA (PCI/PCIe) connector to the mobo.
Even with the removal of the traditional style harddrive, with it's mechanical movements slowing it down, these pcbs are still limited, or "controlled" by the IDE interface. Potentially, or theoretically, 130mbs??, but if you got around 75% of that, you'd be happy.
IDE was handy cos it's cheap. Unfortunately, the advent of the SATA interface meant that all the work and result of making these pcbs, the customer could obtain a regular drive that could do the same.
This would still leave the customers that need to use slot "ssd" drives due to connectivity of their platform. Apart from home pcs, the likes of some servers and some workstations will-not have a bank of sata connections for you to connect to. However, they will have slots, in some kind of ISA form (PCI to PCie/mini)
You always have to have a method of translating to the mobo, and in turn the OS, a means of reading/writing to either the chips of your pcb or the mechanical drive. You pop the card in and, if you like, in Windows it'll show up as an IDE drive. And it will relate to it in the same way even tho it's r/w chips and not magnetic media.
In really, really basic terms, your pcb ssd for a slot:
"Bunch of chips" + (IDE/SATA/SCSI/etc controllers) + (ISA/PCI/PCIe interface) => Mobo chipset, detectable by the OS
In similar basic terms, your ssd that looks like a "traditional mechanical drive":
"Bunch of chips" + (SATA controller**) => Mobo chipset, detectable by the OS
**arguably there are other controllers, but not in general circulation.
Some drives have good garbage collection. This will be used instead when TRIM is disabled when in RAID. It's not quite as good as TRIM, but it's better than nothing.
PCIe RAID controllers AFAIK still won't allow TRIM.
@OP, the C400 drives as well as new Intel drives are due out soon. I'd wait for those to hit before purchasing anything high end.
Yeah apparently Sandforce has an inbuilt garbage collector, but I can't get details on how good it is.
Rastalovich
New member
What is the controller Samsung came up with ? A few years ago it was considered the best (after testing) - I'm sure that could do with a revisiting.
Bunch of ssds, bunch of different controllers, tests.
Used to do a few sneaky things like this on oc3d, cos as we all know, things change.
Bunch of ssds, bunch of different controllers, tests.
Used to do a few sneaky things like this on oc3d, cos as we all know, things change.
