While all those benchmark charts displaying 200+mb/s read and 150+mb/s write are impressive to see, it´s also good to actually have some idea of what that extra performance brings you in real life. We prepared two identical laptops with Windows 7 and Windows XP, one had a conventional HDD, the other a brand new OCZ Vertex SSD. The result is worth checking out.
Windows XP and Random I/O Test
Windows XP Startup & Application Loading
Windows XP is the old dinosaur of operating systems still used on desktops today, it was released in October 2001, that’s closing in on 8 years and it’s still going strong (64% of PCs in the world still run XP according to a study done in February 2009).
While SSD is a brand new technology, created long after the Windows XP OS, it’s important that this new hardware works correctly with this major Windows release. This OS does a bit less of pre-fetching and caching than Vista/7 but there are still a few tweaks you can do to make it work better with SSD devices.
So how does the OCZ Vertex cope with Windows XP? Let’s watch and find out.
The embed movie from youtube already has HD mode enabled, if you click the fullscreen button you can view the original 1280x720 HD source.
Startup of Windows XP goes pretty fast on the SSD, the Windows logon prompt shoots by but then it seems to pause for a while, the HDD powered D630 seems to catch up at about 30 seconds into the movie… but then the SSD continues with a blistering fast loadup sequence of all the Office applications (and even 3D pinball), Outlook 2007 takes a bit longer than on Vista, but still fluent, after approximate 1:17 the system with the OCZ Vertex has stopped loading.. the other D630 takes another minute before it catches up.
On these portables Office 2007 runs so-so, Outlook especially is very I/O intensive, especially with larger PST/OST files; while not shown in the movie, I did some tests with help of a colleague to navigate and use Outlook side by side on both machines, searching through 1.2+gb PST file, just listing ALL emails took about 3-5 seconds on the SSD powered system, the D630 with 7200rpm HDD took 20-30 seconds to list them all. Opening a large email with some Excel, PDF and Word documents goes about equally fast on both machines, but opening those attachments is again a world of difference, I’m not exaggerating if I said the SSD did it 5x faster.
So while the SSD offers some blistering fast read and write speeds, these speeds can be matched by some high end conventional HDDs in a RAID array; sequential read/write is not very hard for a hard drive, SSD has it easy there too; where the two differ the most is random read/write speeds; and it’s this difference which make the Laptop with the OCZ SSD so fast; sure its maximum read/write speeds are higher, but it can read data stored randomly on the drive with latencies below 0.1 millisecond. A hard drive on the other hand has to move its mechanical read/write head over the platters to do the same thing, at best you get 7 millisecond access times, but the SSD keeps it below 0.1ms with random I/O, the HDD has 7ms only with sequential, throw a bunch of random I/O at it and performance will suffer tremendously.
To demonstrate this I used the Windows XP setup, loaded up a full disk virus scan with McAfee and ran the HD Tune HDD benchmark at the same time; this is READ only test; McAfee is accessing all the files on the hard disk, checking them for viruses, these files are stored on different locations on the disk, the HD Tune benchmark does a simple sequential read test over the whole disk.
The embed movie from youtube already has HD mode enabled, if you click the fullscreen button you can view the original 1280x720 HD source.
You’ll want to look at the minimum read speeds achieved on both systems, as well as the progress made by the virus-scan, it’s a bit longer than the other movies this one; no need to sit it out, unless you want to.. cutting to the chase:
The SSD lowest value is still 3 times faster than the HDD average. The HDD min speed is 24 times lower than that of the SSD! Access time on the SSD remain at 0.1ms, the HDD is all over the place, averaging at 21ms, while double that value can also be observed.
I summed up what I think of the OCZ Vertex SSD on the last page, but it’s worth repeating: This drive (or the Intel X25 if you can spare the money) is the single most important system upgrade you can do in 2009.
Hope you found this article interesting. For the more high-end enthusiasts out there, we have an article lined up comparing SSDs in RAID, versus multiple Gigabyte I-Ram and a 5.25” device which can hold DDR2 sticks; 350Mb/s+ transfer speeds ahead!
Comment
from jort@ 2009/04/01
wow what a difference :O :O
Next laptop is with SSD for sure !!! pity i can't swap the hdd
Comment
from jmke@ 2009/04/02
put it in your desktop, works just as well FYI
Comment
from jort@ 2009/04/02
The problem is that i don't have a desktop anymore atleast for 2.5 years...
I checked google and it seems there might be a chance it would go
need to check it out in the future because i hate startup time when i am talking with a custumor.
grtz
Comment
from blind_ripper@ 2009/04/02
Quote:
Originally Posted by jort
The problem is that i don't have a desktop anymore atleast for 2.5 years...
I checked google and it seems there might be a chance it would go
need to check it out in the future because i hate startup time when i am talking with a custumor.
grtz
ask massman how to swamp a HD from a laptop .
the SSD is really something for in future, price/performance i dont know.
The Eee PC from a friend i had here some time ago, had 4GB flash HD did about the same like that SSD.
Comment
from jmke@ 2009/04/02
EEE PC has low end CPU; stick SSD in a higher end system to get the most from it
Comment
from blind_ripper@ 2009/04/02
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmke
EEE PC has low end CPU; stick SSD in a higher end system to get the most from it
yeah i know john, but u could see how it came to end with low-end cpu.
Comment
from jmke@ 2009/04/02
those SSDs in netbooks are low end, SD cards with build-in converter to SATA, they have very low I/O , nowhere near the performance level of these OCZ Vertex drives
Comment
from blind_ripper@ 2009/04/02
i see, though its nice that u tested it .
would work well for PC mark huh.
lol looks like il be needing a SSD soon to bench PC05 .
Comment
from Massman@ 2009/04/23
No, SSD is being kicked in the nuts by Ramdisks. At least, in PCMark05
Comment
from jmke@ 2009/04/23
you obviously have not seen 4xSSD Vertex on a PCIe raid controller
1000mb/s read speed !
Comment
from Massman@ 2009/04/23
With MFT ... which is not allowed on hwbot
Comment
from jmke@ 2009/04/23
that's without MFT Massman
with MFT you can reach those speeds with a single oldie SSD
Comment
from thorgal@ 2009/04/24
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmke
you obviously have not seen 4xSSD Vertex on a PCIe raid controller
1000mb/s read speed !
4 of my core v2 get about 700Mb/s on my pcie raid controller, but still perform like sh*t in PC05.
Comment
from jmke@ 2009/04/24
that's because Solid/Core v1/v2 series is nowhere near performance levels of Vertex
Comment
from thorgal@ 2009/04/24
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmke
that's because Solid series is nowhere near performance levels of Vertex
Sorry John, I think you're mistaken there. On a raid card solid series performs almost like core, cache is integrated in raid card, on-disk cache makes zero difference. Only difference is the theoretical 20-30mb/s for peak bandwidth (they're rated 200 vs 170 or something).
Edit it's 230 vs 170, sorry 'bout that, but still these are theory numbers. I can get my 4x170 no prob when benching with the raid card, but in PCM05 I get about 80 To be clear I have a core V2, not a solid.
Comment
from jmke@ 2009/04/24
core, solid, all the same JMicron which fails at 4k random write; PCMark05 XP startup IS random read/write; Indilinx controller with latest OCZ firmware on the Vertex is massively better than JMicron SSDs;
Quote:
Sorry John, I think you're mistaken there.
got any data to back up your claim? theoretical bandwidth means nothing, PCMark05 HDD is all about random mixed read/write IO; raw sequential speeds tell us nothing hence the specs don't matter;
RAW data, random 4k write:
- X25-M 23mb/s
- Vertex 6.47mb/s
- JMicron Core/Solid V1/V2: 0.02mb/s
Vertex is 323x times faster than Core/Solid SSD, Intel X25-M is 1150x times faster
Quote:
but in PCM05 I get about 80
that's because XP startup is a random read/write 4k benchmark, where JMicron drives suck compared to Vertex/Intel
Quote:
I can get my 4x170 no prob when benching with the raid card, but in PCM05 I get about 80
X25-E is faster still SLC vs MLC;
but are we looking at price or not?
fastest is Software RAM DISK if you must now; but impossible at this time to load OS on there... maybe in the future
6000mb/s read speeds
Comment
from blind_ripper@ 2009/04/24
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmke
X25-E is faster still SLC vs MLC;
but are we looking at price or not?
yes and then the vertex wins by miles .
Comment
from thorgal@ 2009/04/24
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmke
core, solid, all the same JMicron which fails at 4k random write; PCMark05 XP startup IS random read/write; Indilinx controller with latest OCZ firmware on the Vertex is massively better than JMicron SSDs;
got any data to back up your claim? theoretical bandwidth means nothing, PCMark05 HDD is all about random mixed read/write IO; raw sequential speeds tell us nothing hence the specs don't matter;
RAW data, random 4k write:
- X25-M 23mb/s
- Vertex 6.47mb/s
- JMicron Core/Solid V1/V2: 0.02mb/s
Vertex is 323x times faster than Core/Solid SSD, Intel X25-M is 1150x times faster
that's because XP startup is a random read/write 4k benchmark, where JMicron drives suck compared to Vertex/Intel
These numbers mean nothing when you don't test with a raid card. Everyone knows that jmicron is a culprit when used standalone. There have been ZERO reports of stuttering when the solid/core drives are used with a hardware raid controller WITH CACHE.
Comment
from jmke@ 2009/04/24
please quote me where I talk about stuttering?
single vertex reaches 80~100mb/s in XP startup test
two in raid double of that, 4x of them in RAID without MFT who knows
cache can only help so much...
anyway, for benching, to answer Blind's answer: most affordable and fastest is ACARD (€350) with 4~8gb DDR2 (€80~120). Buying a RAID card (€350) and 3~4x 30gb Vertex will be more expensive, not necessarily faster.
Comment
from thorgal@ 2009/04/24
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmke
please quote me where I talk about stuttering?
single vertex reaches 80~100mb/s in XP startup test
two in raid double of that, 4x of them in RAID without MFT who knows
cache can only help so much...
I don't dispute this, but have you already forgotten about Massman's troubles with single/double Core V2's in PC05 ? There wasn't any scaling at all... this has nothing to do with 4k random read/write, but is a SSD scaling problem in PC05.
Comment
from Massman@ 2009/04/24
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmke
two in raid double of that
Raid0 doesn't give you doubled performance:
Comment
from jmke@ 2009/04/24
Quote:
Originally Posted by thorgal
I don't dispute this, but have you already forgotten about Massman's troubles with single/double Core V2's in PC05 ? There wasn't any scaling at all... this has nothing to do with 4k random read/write, but is a SSD scaling problem in PC05.
he didn't use a dedicated PCIe card
Comment
from fhenus@ 2011/05/07
I work on a big project and we have been using SSD's for some months now and we noticed a LOT of improvement.
Here is a post with some real usage stats: codemadesimple.wordpress.com
Next laptop is with SSD for sure !!! pity i can't swap the hdd