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Intel SSD, VRaptor x2 RAID 0, or SAS & 15k drive

Gargen

Gargen

Golden Member
I was originally thinking of getting an Intel SSD with my latest computer upgrade, but the recent talk that they may not live up to the hype under real world usage has got me thinking VRaptor x2 in RAID 0 or buying a good single port SAS controller and a 15k SAS drive would be better as both of those options are about the same price ($350-$400). Here are my concerns:

Primary Factor:
- Multitasking and general "responsiveness" of the system - The thing that makes me drool over the SSDs the most is not the impressive HDTach or Windows load time numbers, but rather this and this (multitasking performance). The idea that a little random Windows HD grinding, the next song loading in iTunes, or bringing up a 15th tab in Firefox while 3 files are downloading in the background and my AV decides it's a good time to update isn't going to interrupt me sounds awesome.

Other Big Factor:
- Application, Windows, and game loading times - This is still a huge plus.

Lesser Factors:
- Raw throughput - I don't do much heavy data transfer (e.g. no video editing), but this would still be nice when I need it.
- CPU overhead - The budget I set for myself won't allow for an add-on RAID card so I'd be using the motherboard RAID. It's a quad core system so I don't imagine a little CPU overhead would be that big of a deal, but I'd still like to avoid it (NOTE: a full independent SAS card could be worked in if I go with the SAS, this only applies to the RAID setup).

Minor Factors: (tie breakers)
- Power usage - This is a high performance system. The drives aren't going to kill the power consumption on this machine. Less $$$ on electricity is less $$$ on electricity though.
- Data integrity - Since it is my OS/App drive, I won't lose anything important if it craps out on me (i.e. I aint skerd of RAID 0)
- Simplicity of installing Windows - I don't have a floppy drive and installing another CD drive and/or learning how to set up a slipstream would be a PITA. I'd rather not do those if I don't have to, but this is the tiebreaker factor section so it's not that big of a deal.
- Space - I have another drive for bulk storage so 80GB is plenty.



Thoughts?

Anyone out there with hands on experience with an Intel SSD have an opinion on the rumored degradation of drive performance over time?
 
Let's talk buyer psychology and potential buyer's remorse.

You are aware of the possibility that buying an Intel drive will result in you experiencing a slow-down in performance after a period of time.

This knowledge will likely cause you to be forever "on the lookout" for the early signs of such a slowdown, and when it happens you will then forever after be kicking yourself with the "I knew this was going to happen, I can't believe I went ahead and bought this drive anyways, should have just stuck with what I knew would work no matter what".

If you can see yourself responding like this then you can safely rule out any SSD's for the near future.

Regarding raid-0 vraptor vs. 15k drive. The 15k drive will most definitely create a more responsive system for you. The 15k drive vs. 10k vraptor will have much better access times, and putting vraptors (or any drive) into raid-0 actually causes the access time to increase slightly.

What you get from raid-0 with the vraptor option is higher bandwidth, no doubt the read/write bandwidth of this option will be higher than that of the 15k drive. But you already mentioned bandwidth was lower in priority compared to access time (system responsiveness).

So your decision tree appears to collapse down to selecting the 15k drive and sas card. You won't have that constant nagging concern in the back of your mind "so when is this thing going to start acting slower?" and you will know that no other spindle-based solution exists to give you more a responsive system (buyer's remorse is minimized).

Kudos btw on your OP format and presentation style, you clearly invested a lot of time and effort into thinking about your situation.
 
So your decision tree appears to collapse down to selecting the 15k drive and sas card.
Click to expand...
pretty much, although he might just be working himself up unnecessarily and might be plenty happy with a single vraptor with no raid, cards, whatever, and much lower cost.. or even a 640GB 2 platter drive. He might find the improvement disappointing considering the cost difference.
 
I just went from a 7,200rpm laptop HDD to an intel SSD (x-25m).
System responsiveness is great ... but it was that even before.
Installing programs certainly is much faster but in general usage I did not notice that much of a difference.
The hype around SSDs is great but don't expect a miracle.
I would argue that I felt a much bigger difference going from 1GB of RAM to 2GB than going from a 7,200rpm HDD to the intel SSD.
 
I used to have a two drive raid 0 array of 15k cheetahs (2nd gen I believe).

I honestly noticed no difference in system responsiveness compared to my old Western Digital 120gb IDE drive.

I found it annoying to have to wait for the scsi card's boot bios to load every time I turned on my computer.
That completely offset any boosts in Windows boot time I may have experienced (which I personally didn't seem to).

Of course this was awhile ago. The computer the 15k rpm drives were used in was a Pentium 4 2.53ghz. Maybe the bottleneck in the computer was the CPU, and not the hard drives as far as apps and Windows loading.
 
oh yea, boot times will be much worse because the need to load the seperate controller, or initialize the raid array... single drive connected to the mobo itself is always faster on booting windows.
 
Thanks for the info folks.

I think I'll hold off on upgrading my storage for now. The more I think about it, if I knew this is where I would be at the beginning I never would have bothered, but I got sucked in by the big numbers on the SSD reviews and then got slow boiled in to my current choices. Final verdict is choice #4... none of the choices are worth $400.
 
tbh i would say getting 1 Vraptor is definitely worth the go. just pick up one of the new model 300GB ones (the ones with the hotswap ready drive coolers), put an OS on it, and enjoy! i got myself a 150GB one for christmas (didnt have enough for 300) and this thing is a fucking beast! i play a lot of everquest2, so i do a ton of disk loading even while im in game, and when i had to wait up to 5 minutes for some stuff to appear on my old comp because my hard drive was super slow and my system drive (where the page file was) was even slower, and 2GB of ram was just meh, having this drive helped a ton. i have since moved to a faster rig tho, and its currently plowing away as my OS drive. i think im going to get a second tho, im big on data bandwidth lol
 
Anyone out there with hands on experience with an Intel SSD have an opinion on the rumored degradation of drive performance over time?
Click to expand...

Yeah. I have experience with this. And, yes, I do see the benchmarks degrade over time. At first I thought it was a function of the benchmark interacting with the OS (ie. I blamed it on Vista), but now that I've read the articles, it does appear to be the drive. In games, I'm always the first one to load, Windows boots quickly, the system feels pretty snappy no matter what is going on.

I will say that whatever my Crystalmark and other disk scores have dropped to, I haven't noticed a perceptible decrease in snappiness in the system. Everything still seems lightning fast. Note that I work for Intel, but I try not to let that affect my objectivity and there's a few other X25-M owners on here at AT that are saying the same thing - that benchmark performance goes down, but the drive doesn't seem any slower in every day use. If there's anything that I really don't like about my X25-M it's that 80GB is too small. I can barely fit Vista and a couple of games onto it before I'm pushing up against 80GB. This is a function of the fact that Vista is a disk-hog, but also how big games have gotten. Having to decide if I would rather have Left4Dead or Fear2 versus Warhammer Online and then shuffling everything around when I get a new game is the only really major issue that I have with the drive. I think anything over about 150-200GB and I wouldn't have any problems... but 80GB feels "small". (and, yes, whenever I say that 80GB is too small, I remember my IBM PC XT with it's spacious full-height 20MB hard disk that cost well over $1000 in 1980-dollars).


* not speaking for Intel Corp.
 
Originally posted by: pm
Anyone out there with hands on experience with an Intel SSD have an opinion on the rumored degradation of drive performance over time?
Click to expand...

Yeah. I have experience with this. And, yes, I do see the benchmarks degrade over time. At first I thought it was a function of the benchmark interacting with the OS (ie. I blamed it on Vista), but now that I've read the articles, it does appear to be the drive. In games, I'm always the first one to load, Windows boots quickly, the system feels pretty snappy no matter what is going on.

I will say that whatever my Crystalmark and other disk scores have dropped to, I haven't noticed a perceptible decrease in snappiness in the system. Everything still seems lightning fast. Note that I work for Intel, but I try not to let that affect my objectivity and there's a few other X25-M owners on here at AT that are saying the same thing - that benchmark performance goes down, but the drive doesn't seem any slower in every day use. If there's anything that I really don't like about my X25-M it's that 80GB is too small. I can barely fit Vista and a couple of games onto it before I'm pushing up against 80GB. This is a function of the fact that Vista is a disk-hog, but also how big games have gotten. Having to decide if I would rather have Left4Dead or Fear2 versus Warhammer Online and then shuffling everything around when I get a new game is the only really major issue that I have with the drive. I think anything over about 150-200GB and I wouldn't have any problems... but 80GB feels "small". (and, yes, whenever I say that 80GB is too small, I remember my IBM PC XT with it's spacious full-height 20MB hard disk that cost well over $1000 in 1980-dollars).


* not speaking for Intel Corp.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Thank you.
I just took the plunge and got an intel. Very nice so far.

Some users have reported a degradation in performance though for normal usage (I think the example was copying a big file).


BTW - What is up with the intel increasing in price? It's now $20 more than when I bought it last week. I thought the Vertex would decrease prices for the intel SSDs.
 
Originally posted by: coolVariable
BTW - What is up with the intel increasing in price? It's now $20 more than when I bought it last week. I thought the Vertex would decrease prices for the intel SSDs.
Click to expand...

Clearing out inventory ahead of the release of a 2nd gen iteration? Stock is getting low so price moves up a little.
 
Originally posted by: Idontcare
Originally posted by: coolVariable
BTW - What is up with the intel increasing in price? It's now $20 more than when I bought it last week. I thought the Vertex would decrease prices for the intel SSDs.
Click to expand...

Clearing out inventory ahead of the release of a 2nd gen iteration? Stock is getting low so price moves up a little.
Click to expand...

Is the price increase just on newegg or in general? If the former, it could be newegg's automatic pricing mechanism if there's increased demand.
 
Originally posted by: magreen
Originally posted by: Idontcare
Originally posted by: coolVariable
BTW - What is up with the intel increasing in price? It's now $20 more than when I bought it last week. I thought the Vertex would decrease prices for the intel SSDs.
Click to expand...

Clearing out inventory ahead of the release of a 2nd gen iteration? Stock is getting low so price moves up a little.
Click to expand...

Is the price increase just on newegg or in general? If the former, it could be newegg's automatic pricing mechanism if there's increased demand.
Click to expand...

No. The price increase is on Amazon and Newegg (and probably others).

I would be surprised if they are low on inventory.
Intel's 2nd gen drive is not due until Q3/Q4 2009.
 
Originally posted by: faxon
tbh i would say getting 1 Vraptor is definitely worth the go. just pick up one of the new model 300GB ones (the ones with the hotswap ready drive coolers), put an OS on it, and enjoy! i got myself a 150GB one for christmas (didnt have enough for 300) and this thing is a fucking beast! i play a lot of everquest2, so i do a ton of disk loading even while im in game, and when i had to wait up to 5 minutes for some stuff to appear on my old comp because my hard drive was super slow and my system drive (where the page file was) was even slower, and 2GB of ram was just meh, having this drive helped a ton. i have since moved to a faster rig tho, and its currently plowing away as my OS drive. i think im going to get a second tho, im big on data bandwidth lol
Click to expand...

you should have saved 200$ and upgraded your ram instead
 
Great topic... you better believe if I had one of those shiny new socket1366 mobo's with the built in SAS controller, I'd be all over those 15k drives... "just because I can" 🙂

I still like SSDs for laptops, mostly because of the vibration/shock/dropped computer factor I prefer to have as few moving parts as possible, and additional storage can always go on external HDD / VPN etc.

 
I'm in sort of the same situation as you Gargen and trying to make the right decision.

I've been given 2 x25-m 80gb, 1 x25-m 160gb, 1 velociraptor, 2 savvio 15k 36gb sas drives, and and 2 adaptec 5805 controllers. I have to build two machines from them. Now I have to figure out what the best configuration is. My MB is the evga x58 (sata but not sas). My primary concern is my gaming machine, the other machine I don't care about at all. I shouldn't put all three ssd's in one machine, the other user might feel slighted.

Option 1: raid-0 the two 80gb ssd using onboard sata raid
160gb is plenty of space for my game machine, no need to use any other drives.

Option 2: raid-0 the two 80gb ssd using adaptec raid
Would it matter? I don't know. The extra heat from the adaptec would mean a louder PC and it would feed the heat into my video card.

Option 3: straight use the 160gb ssd
This can't be faster than raid-0 could it?

Option 4: raid-0 the savvio's (adaptec required) for OS and VR for games
Would using the VR for a game drive defeat the point of even doing the savvio's in raid-0?

Option 5: raid-0 the savvio's and raid-0 the 80gb ssd's
Which set would be better for OS and which for games?

The combinations are so numerous that my mind is just mush trying to make sense of it all.

OS will be windows7 (been using it for months and it works great) but I doubt that matters. I do _not_ surf the internet on this machine, firefox isn't even installed and IE never opened and I'm behind a cisco firewall of some sort so I don't even use an AV program. The odds of being infected aren't worth the system degradation of dealing with AV and wiping this system at any moment doesn't matter. All I'd lose is some steam and wow addons.

Is there any other relevant info about my setup?
 
I did some testing today doing real world things I normally do but I don't have any hard numbers.

I tested option 1 and option 4 primarily. There's simply no question that the SSD's are miles ahead of the SAS drives.

My testing:

I loaded up windows on the 160gb drive. Then I cloned from there to the two raid arrays. The 80gb SSD's took 7 minutes while the 36gb SAS's took 10 minutes. Then I launched some games, wow, lfd, fallout3 and the SSD's felt faster by all accounts. Then I created a bat file to launch about 2 dozen applications as fast as possible (everything office, everything CS4, etc) and the SSD's just blazed through while the SAS's just ground away. I also tossed the bat in the startup to see what would happen. The SSD's slowed done some trying to handle windows loading and all the apps but not compared to the "bathroom break" time of the SAS drives.

Now the real question. Would the SSD array be faster using the adaptec controller? Maybe I'll get around to testing that tomorrow.
 
I tested onboard raid VS 5805 raid and I can't tell the difference. It reminds me of 120hz refresh rates VS 150hz. There's just a point in time, at least right now, when things happen so fast that faster can't be determined by humans.

I'm going with onboard raid to eliminate the extra heat that the adaptec card puts off.
 
If I were you I would in a single computer:

OS drive = raid 0 80GB

Though raid arrays can increase boot times, you'll see better bandwidth throughput.
 
OP:

From the anand article, it seems even at max theoretical degradation (ie. all pages written to) the Intel is still miles and miles faster than any mechanical HDD.

 
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