Help me decide. Intel X-25 G2 160gb vs OCZ Vertex Turbo 120gb

[Vesper8]

I've been looking at SSDs for too long now... I feel like I'm about to make a purchase!

I seem to have narrowed it down to 3 drives.. (mostly two).

The OCZ Vertex Turbo 120gb for 440$
The Intel X-25 G2 160gb for 485$
The OCZ Colossus 120gb for 430$

I really don't like the fact the colossus is not firmware user-upgradable. So it's really between the Turbo and the X25 G2.

With 160GB.. I just might make two partitions.. one for the OS and one for games.

And what about the fact that the OCZ doesn't have TRIM and instead has their own OCZ proprietary garbage collection protocol.

I tend to think paying 45$ more to get 40GB more is a pretty good deal.

What do you think I should get?

 

[DukeN]

I'd get the Intel -hands down better performance wise and cheap/GB for the extra GB.

The OCZ has TRIM but the performance just isn't there compared to an Intel (still light years better than anything spindle based IMO).

 

[solofly]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=126&p2=129&c=2

I don't know how much faster is Turbo Vertex but here you have a standard Vertex vs Intel benches...

 

[Vesper8]

That's a cool tool! Too bad the Vertex Turbo isn't selectable from the list.

As far as I know the Vertex Turbo has got a significant edge over the Vertex

 

[Makaveli]

Its not that significant!

 

[MagickMan]

Intel, but I'm biased because I have the 160GB and love it dearly.

 

[EarthwormJim]

That's a cool tool! Too bad the Vertex Turbo isn't selectable from the list.

As far as I know the Vertex Turbo has got a significant edge over the Vertex

There's a negligible difference between the two drives. About the same difference as a Vertex with Intel 32nm flash vs the other flash used by OCZ.

I would go with the Intel drive. It has better performance all around (other than sequential writes) and it has more storage space. Remember that SSD speeds do degrade as you fill them up. So if you put 120gb of data on a Vertex, it's going to be quite a bit slower than if you put 120gb on an Intel drive.

Have you also looked at the new OCZ Solid II? It's as fast as a Vertex and Vertex Turbo. It was just on sale for $269 last week, and is still hovering around $300 I believe.

OCZ does have trim, I have no idea where you heard otherwise (they were the first to come out with TRIM). They had two firmware available, TRIM firmware and garbage collection. They have since combined the two features into one firmware (1.5).

I really don't see the benefit of doing two partitions. It's not like you're having one partition closer to the outer edges of the platter in your drive; there is no platter in SSDs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7476&cm_re=ocz_solid_2-_-20-227-476-_-Product

 

[TXAngel08]

Intel, for the support if nothing else...

I just installed the 160GB Intel drive last week, almost went for the standard Vertex 120GB drive, but was won over by the better Intel support. For OCZ you end up in a user forum that probably is fine, but has too much of a hacker feel for my taste. "use this firmware if you have that firmware, but not this firmware if you have that one. If you have 1.42 you can't update yet, but if you have 1.41 you can, next week we'll have a fix for that"

No thanks...

I can say that it is amazing... Boot time is 20 seconds from cold boot to usable desktop. Shutdown takes 5 seconds flat.

Office 2007 SP2 installed so fast I thought it failed.

All I can say is, damm, that is the best upgrade ever. Expensive, but no more than a high end CPU or GPU, and far more improvement.

 

[Voo]

All of the drives are perfectly well and if I look back the last few months the drives with the most problems were clearly the Intel ones (I think I'd prefer waiting a bit longer for a FW upgrade that doesn't brick a goog percentage of drives.. twice).. though that wasn't that tragical as well.


But in this case I think the choice is really easy: The intel drives are at least as good as the OCZ ones and.. 45$ for 40gb more is a no-brainer imho. If you're already spending nearly 500$ getting 33% more space for 10% more is a great deal.

Other than that I'm really happy with my 160gb G2 drive, biggest upgrade I ever made.

 

[Computurd]

intel drives have an inherent problem with their writing. that is why the vertex toasts it, and by ALOT, in the heavy usage pattern.
when you are writing at the same time the read speeds of the intel go into the tank.
it is the only weakness of the intel drives, and a heavily documented one, however it can be the greatest weakness of all. in real life usage you will notice it if you run a torrent in the background at the same time as you load a game or different types of usage you will notice a definite and pronounced difference in performance. outside of benmarks in real life usage if you test, you will see.

 

[EarthwormJim]

intel drives have an inherent problem with their writing. that is why the vertex toasts it, and by ALOT, in the heavy usage pattern.
when you are writing at the same time the read speeds of the intel go into the tank.
it is the only weakness of the intel drives, and a heavily documented one, however it can be the greatest weakness of all. in real life usage you will notice it if you run a torrent in the background at the same time as you load a game or different types of usage you will notice a definite and pronounced difference in performance. outside of benmarks in real life usage if you test, you will see.

Who downloads torrents to an SSD?

I haven't heard of this writing issue. I'm not disbelieving you but do you have any links? I thought Intel drives were usually tops when it came to IOPS.

 

[TXAngel08]

Intel drives are slower during sequential writes, but they are pretty fast during random writes.

The 160GB drive only does 100MB/sec during sequential writes, maybe half the speed of the OCZ drive.

However, how often do you do that, and 100MB/sec isn't that bad either. Intel ROCKS when it comes to random reading and writing, and that is really why hard drives are slow.

And yes, who downloads torrents to a SSD, that is what networked drives are for.

 

[Voo]

intel drives have an inherent problem with their writing. that is why the vertex toasts it, and by ALOT, in the heavy usage pattern.
when you are writing at the same time the read speeds of the intel go into the tank.
it is the only weakness of the intel drives, and a heavily documented one, however it can be the greatest weakness of all. in real life usage you will notice it if you run a torrent in the background at the same time as you load a game or different types of usage you will notice a definite and pronounced difference in performance. outside of benmarks in real life usage if you test, you will see.

Lets see if I can come up with a good test for that, so far I haven't read anything about something like that. The only known weakness of the Intel drives are their rather slow sequential write speeds, which imho explain the bad results in some of the "heavy tests" which usually involve copying a lot of stuff around.

Other than that: Who would ever download a torrent to a SSD? That's probably the most useless thing you can do. In real usage tests I don't think that the slow sequential write is a big problem except in some rare cases... at least for me that's true.

 

[Computurd]

it is not the point of downloading a torrent to an ssd, not specifically. it is the principle of the process. are you aware of how many writes that your system is dropping right now as you read this very post? your browser is writing files at a constant rate, not to include all of the other stuff running there as well. can you say antivirus? the torrent is just a way to explain it in a clearer more understandable (for some) manner.
the crux of the point is that while writing, the intel responds slower. anyone who has a clear understanding of the computer operating system that they are using understands very well that it is CONSTANTLY writing, therefor you are always exposed to this weakness of the controller in a constant manner. the answers that you seek are in the very link above from anandtech:

also you should not be concerned with the fact that the intel writes slower. you are missing the point of the discussion. it is a weakness of the controller that during writing (which is constantly occurring) the intel reads slower. its nand controller cannot process both tasks at the same time in an efficient manner. it doesnt matter if the writing is sequential or random guys, regardless it effects the read speed. you guys who know your stuff fire up iometer and do a run with 4k at 20 percent write/80 percent read distribution. now take that same number and compare it to the read speed when it is doing only 100 percent reading. there's your answer.
asd you can see from that thar pic above the vertex is 37 percent faster when these types of things are happening, it is going to effect the performance of the intel to varying degrees, of course, more pronounced in heavy usage, but always a factor. if you wish to read more about the issue with intels and writing, go on ahead and skip your way over to the anandtech ssd anthologies and read up, or maybe you could trouble yourself to google it

 

[EarthwormJim]

I still don't see from what you're drawing the conclusion that Intel drives respond slower in comparison to Indilinx drives while writing.

The benchmark you have posted is the Heavy Workload, it's highly sequential in nature so of course a Vertex with nearly double the sequential write capabilities is faster. BTW the Anandtech Storage Bench does not have updated scores for Intel G2 drives with newer firmware.

A 160gb G2 with Trim firmware scored 532 in the SSD Improv review:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667&p=8

It's also worth noting the Light Workload benchmark which is highly random in nature:
Intel 160gb G2 TRIM - 798
OCZ Vertex - 616

Also if you look at the rest of the Storage Bench results (despite them being for slower firmware) the Intel drive pretty much wins them all.

So do you have a link that actually demonstrates what you are saying? Every review I've ever seen shows Intel drives being all around faster.

You say that an SSD acting as an OS drive is constantly being written, which I'm not disputing, it is correct. So since that is true, why in benchmarks like AS SSD Benchmark of SSDs acting as OS drives, do Intel drives still have all around faster sequential reads and all around faster random reads and writes than Indilinx drives?

The only thing that Indinilnx drives do faster are sequential writes.

I certainly would rather have a 160gb Intel drive than a 120gb Indilinx drive judging strictly from a speed standpoint, let alone having 40 more gb of storage (let's also not forget Intel's lower write amplification).