Comparison of SSD and HDD drives in real use. Solid state real: SSD drive test SSD speed

When a PC gamer wonders what are the most important tuning options, besides the mandatory purchase of a powerful graphics card and processor, we give him the following advice: replace your classic HDD to an SSD drive. Just buy not a SATA-SSD, but a flash drive that transfers data via PCI-Express and uses the NVMe protocol for this.

Such models achieve five times higher data transfer rates, and this technology practically does not know the upper limit. Currently, the market is more and more filled with such turbo drives (albeit still quite expensive), so the gamer is faced with the question of whether he is ready to invest a little more money in a significant increase in speed or give preference to the classic, relatively slow SSD.

A New Era of Turbo SSDs

To replace the HDD, you could not think about anything special - just buy a drive of the volume you need. Over time, things got a little more complicated, because SATA interface was originally designed to work with the AHCI protocol (Advanced Host Controller Protocol) and the corresponding driver for slow classical drives with spinning magnetic disks.
An unfortunate side effect: the SATA-600 interface allows a maximum data transfer rate of 600 MB/s.

If you look at ours, you can see that many models reach an average data transfer rate (when reading) already above 550 MB / s, and when writing on their "speedometer" you can often see 540 MB / s. Thus, it becomes obvious that the potential for growth in indicators this technology no longer has today.

In other words, the SATA interface can become the so-called "bottleneck" for flash drives, which are getting faster and faster. It's good that new SSDs get around this limitation speed, if you use PCIe connectors instead of red SATA cables - that is, use the type of connection that was traditionally used for graphics cards. A single PCIe 3.0 lane can theoretically transfer up to 1 GB/s.

Tiny NVMe-SSDs like the new Samsung PM971 are also suitable for ultrabooks or tablets - they are only two centimeters

In this test, four such lines were used to connect SSD drives. Thus, this gives a maximum of 4 GB / s - at least in theory. In practice, this indicator is not achieved: the latest Samsung 960 Pro demonstrated the highest data transfer rate to date with a result of 2702 MB / s when reading.

It's significantly faster than any of the SATA-SSDs, and the interface still hasn't reached its full potential: data transfer rates are currently limited by the type of flash memory used and by media controllers.

It might be interesting:

Two different types of connectors

Unlike SATA drives, when buying a turbo SSD, you should pay attention to the correct choice of its form factor. Fast data storage can be produced both in the form of expansion cards inserted into the PCIe slot, and in the form of memory strips that are installed in the so-called M.2 slots.

Thus, before purchasing the model you like, we recommend that you take a look at the motherboard and check if the interface of the appropriate type is presented there.

Many SSD manufacturers develop software that analyzes the health of NVMe-SSDs. Intel calls it Solid-State Drive Toolbox

This tip is especially true for older motherboards, since their M.2 slot can only output the SATA bus for data transfer. The one who collects for himself new computer, may not particularly bother with this issue: motherboards for new processors have M.2 connectors with a PCIe connection and support the new Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) data exchange protocol - this provokes a second turbo jump.

Unlike models for M.2, SSDs in the form of a PCIe card can also be interesting for upgrading older systems. However, you should definitely make sure that there is one more free PCIe slot on the motherboard in addition to the one occupied by the graphics card.

And one more small detail can be very important: of the six SSDs taken for this test, four have an expansion card form factor, but only three of them support the PCIe 3.0 standard. Kingston HyperX Predator is limited to only PCIe 2.0, which is only capable of passing 500 MB / s through the line.

While your read and write speeds of 1400MB/s and 1010MB/s respectively will be significantly better than SATA competitors here, they can't match the performance of the fastest SSDs. At the same time, media that supports PCIe 3.0 will work in a PCIe 2.0 slot, but their speed will be significantly reduced.

Overheated SSD drives become slower

Angelbird Wings PX1 PCIe card adapter with its own heatsink prevents Samsung 950 Pro from overheating

Currently, we can expect data transfer rates in excess of 2.5 GB/s from PCIe SSDs. OCZ's M.2 SSDs come standard with a PCIe adapter. According to the results of our measurement results, we see it as more than rational to leave the device in it. We measured the performance of these devices for M.2 and without an adapter, registering slightly worse values: for example, when reading, a speed of only 2382 MB / s was achieved, which is about 130 MB / s less than with an adapter.

Very short reaction time

High data transfer speeds are good for speeding up downloads, but the reason that Windows and games with an SSD drive in a computer run noticeably faster in a computer is hidden primarily in the low latency. During testing, we study it during I / O measurements (Input / Output), that is, counting the number of read or write operations performed per second when processing sequentially located memory blocks. This parameter, the so-called IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second), is the missing "ingredient" for a fast PC, which is often heavily loaded.

In this scoring discipline, the OCZ RD400 drive has the advantage with 43,974 IOPS when writing. In reading, on the contrary, the result of 18,428 IOPS is not even half of the previous one. Here, our leader of the rating, Samsung 960, can observe the same heterogeneity of characteristics: when writing, it reaches 42,175 IOPS, and when reading - only 29,233.

An enviable similarity of results is demonstrated by Zotac with its approximately 35,000 IOPS (both reading and writing). However, when comparing products, this parameter often has to be combined with others. At the same time, turbo SSDs should soon “break through” the psychologically important mark of 100,000 IOPS.

The Kingston HyperX Predator performed the worst, with around 23,000 read IOPS and 17,800 write IOPS in last place, by a wide margin. The main reason for this is outdated technology, since this SSD drive still transfers data using the AHCI protocol. The new NVMe access protocol, on the other hand, is optimized to work with SSDs.

The advantages of NVMe manifest themselves primarily in the parallelization of processes: the data transfer protocol allows you to work with queues of input / output requests (I / O queues) up to 65,536 commands in size. The AHCI protocol is limited to only one queue of 32 commands, which can cause data clutter under heavy load.

Top 10 NVMe SSDs Value for Money

Even the new ultra-fast drives are coming down in price, and the cheapest NVMe-enabled SSD can already be found at the price of SATA drives. And this is good news. We have selected for you the 10 best NVMe-enabled SSD flash drives in terms of price / quality ratio.

Greetings!
The speed and performance of the entire personal computer as a whole depends on the performance of the disk (HDD, SSD)! However, to my surprise, a large number of users do not attach due importance to this aspect. And this despite the fact that the speed of loading the operating system, launching programs, copying files and data from the disk and back, etc., directly depends on the storage medium. In other words, a fairly large number of typical operations on a PC are tied to the memory subsystem.

Now in computers and laptops, either traditional HDDs (hard disk drives) or the recent trend - SSDs (solid-state drives) are installed. Often, SSD drives are significantly faster than classic HDD drives in read / write speed. For example, Windows 10 starts up in 6..7 seconds, compared to 50 seconds from a regular HDD - as you can see, the difference is quite significant!

This material will be devoted to ways to test speed and performance. installed HDD or SSD drive.

Overview of CrystalDiskMark

Quite a popular utility for measuring and testing the speed of an HDD or SSD drive. It works great in Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, 10), is free and supports the Russian interface language. Official website of the program: http://crystalmark.info/

To test an HDD or SSD in CrystalDiskMark, you need to do the following:

1) Select write/read cycles. By default, this number is 5 , which is the best option.

2) After that, you need to select the size of the file to be recorded during the test. 1 GiB(1 Gigabyte) will be optimal.

3) And finally, you need to select the partition that will be used to test the disk. If you have several physical drives installed, then select the partition that is located on the drive you are interested in. In the example, there is only one installed hard disk and the partition is selected accordingly C:\.

4) Click the green button to start the test All. By the way, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the result of interest is what is in the line SeqQ32T1– linear read/write speed. You can start testing only the read/write linear speed by clicking the corresponding button.

Test results will be displayed in columns:

read– a parameter showing the speed of reading data from the tested disk.

Write- a similar parameter, but showing the speed of writing to the tested hard disk.

On the Kingston UV300 SSD tested in the example, the linear read speed was 546 MB / s - which is a very decent result. In general, for the best representatives of SSD drives, this parameter varies around 500 .. 580 MB / s, taking into account the connection to the SATA3 connector on the motherboard.

If the speed of your SSD drive is significantly less than that declared by the manufacturer, then it makes sense to check if it is connected to SATA3.

How to determine the version and mode of the SATA port

The developer of CrystalDiskMark prudently created another diagnostic utility– CrystalDiskInfo. Its task is to display S.M.A.R.T information about the state of the disk, its temperature regime and other parameters.

In general, a fairly convenient and visual utility that should be in service with users who care about monitoring the state of the disk (its health) in order to avoid data loss due to its possible breakdown.

After starting the utility, look at the information that is displayed in the line " Transfer mode»:

SATA/600- means that the disk is operating in SATA3 mode with a maximum throughput of 600 MB / s.

SATA/300- this parameter means that the disk is operating in SATA2 mode with a maximum throughput of 300 MB / s.

It may still shine SATA/150(150MB / s) - this is the first version of the SATA standard and it is considered very outdated and does not meet modern requirements for the throughput of connected media.

Whereas a classic HDD is enough SATA2(300MB / s), then the SSD must be connected to the port SATA3, otherwise he will not be able to reveal his full speed potential.

Overview of AS SSD Benchmark

I present to your attention another remarkable utility, the task of which is to test the speed of an HDD or SSD disk installed in a computer or laptop. With it, you can just as easily find out the speed characteristics of the connected disk.

The utility is free, does not need to be installed and works in the Windows environment. Official website of the program: http://www.alex-is.de/

Management is carried out in a similar way to the CrystalDiskMark program. Linear reading speed is displayed here in the graph Seq.

Overview of HD Tune

The HD Tune utility completes this review. The capabilities of this program are not limited to testing the read / write speed. Among other things, it also allows you to control the health of the hard drive, its technical specifications and even scan the disk surface for errors.

If we focus on the possibilities of speed testing, then the following can be noted here:

• the ability to separately set write or read testing
• convenient visual chart of write / read speed during testing
• ability to see peak speed and access time

The program runs in the Windows environment and presents handy tools for monitoring and testing connected media.

Official website of the program: http://www.hdtune.com/

Summary

The speed of the connected media directly affects overall performance work of a computer or laptop. Do not neglect the control of speed characteristics, because the overall comfort of working with a computer depends on it.

Now you know how to check the speed of the connected media, as well as the possible nuances of its connection, which ultimately determine the bandwidth of the connected HDD or SSD.

Good day.

The speed of the disk depends on the speed of the entire computer as a whole! Moreover, surprisingly, many users underestimate this moment ... But the speed of loading Windows, the speed of copying files to / from a disk, the speed of launching (loading) programs, etc. - all rests against speed of a disk.

Now in PCs (laptops) there are two types of disks: HDD (hard disk drive - familiar hard drives) and SSD (solid-state drive - newfangled solid state drive). Sometimes their speed differs significantly (for example, Windows 8 on my computer with an SSD starts in 7-8 seconds, versus 40 seconds with an HDD - the difference is enormous!).

And now about what utilities and how you can check the speed of the disk.

One of the best utilities to check and test the speed of disks (the utility supports both HDD and SSD disks). Works in all popular Windows OS: XP, 7, 8, 10 (32/64 bits). Supports the Russian language (although the utility is quite simple and easy to understand even without knowledge of English).

Rice. 1. The main window of the CrystalDiskMark program

To test your drive in CrystalDiskMark you need:

• select the number of write and read cycles (in Fig. 2 this number is 5, the best option);
• 1 GiB - file size for testing (best option);
• "C:\" - drive letter for testing;
• to start the test, simply click the "All" button. By the way, in most cases they are always guided by the string "SeqQ32T1" - i.e. sequential write / read - therefore, you can simply select a test specifically for this option (you need to press the button of the same name).

The first speed (column Read, from the English “read”) is the speed of reading information from the disk, the second column is writing to the disk. By the way, in Fig. 2, an SSD drive (Silicon Power Slim S70) was tested: a read speed of 242.5 Mb / s is not a good indicator. For modern SSDs, the optimal speed is considered to be at least ~ 400 Mb / s, provided that it is connected via SATA3 * (although 250 Mb / s is more than the speed of a conventional HDD and the increase in speed is visible to the naked eye).

* How to determine the SATA operating mode hard drive?

From the link above, in addition to CrystalDiskMark, you can also download another utility - CrystalDiskInfo. This utility will show you SMART drive, its temperature, etc. parameters (in general, an excellent utility for obtaining information about the device).

After starting it, pay attention to the line "Transmission mode" (see Fig. 3). If you see SATA/600 (up to 600 MB/s) in this line, then the drive is operating in SATA 3 mode (if SATA/300 is displayed in the line, i.e. the maximum throughput of 300 MB/s is SATA 2) .

AS SSD Benchmark

Author's website: http://www.alex-is.de/ (download link at the very bottom of the page)

Another very interesting utility. Allows you to easily and quickly test the hard disk of a computer (laptop): quickly find out the speed of reading and writing. Does not need to be installed, use as standard (as with the previous utility).

Until recently, when buying a new computer and choosing the drive to install, the user had the only choice - the HDD hard drive. And then we were only interested in two parameters: spindle speed (5400 or 7200 RPM), disk capacity and cache size.

Let's look at the pros and cons of both types of drives and make a visual comparison of HDD and SSD.

Principle of operation

A traditional drive, or as it is commonly called ROM (Read Only Memory), is necessary to store data even after a complete power outage. Unlike RAM (Random Access Memory) or RAM, data stored in memory is not erased when the computer is turned off.

A classic hard drive consists of several metal "pancakes" with a magnetic coating, and data is read and written using a special head that moves above the surface of the disk rotating at high speed.

At solid state drives completely different way of working. An SSD has no moving parts at all, and its “innards” look like a set of flash memory chips placed on a single board.

Such chips can be installed both on the system motherboard (for especially compact models of laptops and ultrabooks), on a PCI Express card for desktop computers, or on a special laptop slot. The chips used in SSDs are different from what we see in a flash drive. They are much more reliable, faster and more durable.

Disk history

Hard magnetic disks have a very long (of course, by the standards of the development of computer technology) history. In 1956 IBM company released a little-known computer IBM 350 RAMAC, which was equipped with a 3.75 MB storage device that was huge by those standards.

These cabinets could store as much as 7.5 MB of data

To build such a hard drive, 50 round metal plates had to be installed. The diameter of each was 61 centimeters. And all this gigantic construction could store… just one MP3-composition with a low bitrate of 128 Kb/s.

Up until 1969, this computer was used by the government and research institutes. Some 50 years ago, a hard drive of this size was quite suitable for mankind. But the standards changed dramatically in the early 80s.

5.25-inch (13.3 cm) floppy disks appeared on the market, and a little later, 3.5- and 2.5-inch (notebook) versions. Such floppy disks could store up to 1.44 MB of data, and a number of computers of that time were supplied without a built-in hard drive. Those. to start the operating system or program shell, you had to insert a floppy disk, then enter a few commands, and only then get to work.

In the entire history of the development of hard drives, several protocols have been changed: IDE (ATA, PATA), SCSI, which later transformed into the now well-known SATA, but they all performed the only function of a “connecting bridge” between the motherboard and the hard drive.

From 2.5 and 3.5-inch floppy disks with a capacity of one and a half thousand kilobytes, the computer industry has moved to hard disks of the same size, but with a thousand times more memory. Today, top 3.5-inch HDDs are up to 10 TB (10,240 GB); 2.5-inch - up to 4 TB.

The history of SSDs is much shorter. About the release of a device for storing memory, which would be devoid of moving parts, engineers thought back in the early 80s. The appearance in this era of the so-called bubble memory was met with very hostility and the idea proposed by the French physicist Pierre Weiss back in 1907 in computer industry did not take root.

The essence of bubble memory was to divide the magnetized permalloy into macroscopic regions that would have spontaneous magnetization. The unit of measure for such an accumulator was bubbles. But the most important thing is that there were no hardware moving elements in such a drive.

Bubble memory was forgotten very quickly, and was remembered only during the development of a new class of drives - SSD.

SSDs only appeared in laptops in the late 2000s. In 2007, the budget laptop OLPC XO-1 entered the market, equipped with 256 MB random access memory, an AMD Geode LX-700 processor with a frequency of 433 MHz and the main highlight - 1 GB NAND flash memory.

The OLPC XO-1 was the first laptop to use a solid state drive. And soon the legendary line of netbooks from Asus EEE A PC with a model 700 where the manufacturer installed a 2 GB SSD drive.

In both laptops, the memory was installed directly on the motherboard. But soon, manufacturers revised the principle of organizing drives and approved a 2.5-inch format connected via the SATA protocol.

The capacity of modern SSD drives can reach 16 TB. Most recently, Samsung introduced just such an SSD, however, in a server version and with a space price for the average layman.

Pros and cons of SSD and HDD

The tasks of drives of each class come down to one thing: to provide the user with a working operating system and allow him to store personal data. But both SSD and HDD have their own characteristics.

Price

SSDs are much more expensive than traditional HDDs. To determine the difference, a simple formula is used: the price of the drive is divided by its capacity. As a result, the cost of 1 GB of capacity in currency is obtained.

So, a standard 1 TB HDD costs an average of $50 (3300 rubles). The cost of one gigabyte is $50 / 1024 GB = $0.05, i.e. 5 cents (3.2 rubles). In the SSD world, everything is much more expensive. An SSD with a capacity of 1 TB will cost an average of $ 220, and the price for 1 GB according to our simple formula will be 22 cents (14.5 rubles), which is 4.4 times more expensive than an HDD.

The good news is that the cost of SSDs is rapidly declining: manufacturers are finding cheaper solutions for the production of drives and the price gap between HDDs and SSDs is narrowing.

Average and maximum capacity of SSD and HDD

Just a few years ago, between the maximum capacity of HDD and SSD, there was not only a numerical, but also a technological gap. It was impossible to find an SSD that could compete with HDD in terms of the amount of stored information, but today the market is ready to provide the user with such a solution. True, for impressive money.

The maximum capacity of SSDs offered for the consumer market is 4TB. Similar option at the beginning of July 2016. And for 4 TB of space you will have to pay $1499.

The base HDD capacity for laptops and computers released in the second half of 2016 ranges from 500 GB to 1 TB. Models similar in power and characteristics, but with an installed SSD drive, are content with only 128 GB.

SSD and HDD speed

Yes, it is for this indicator that the user overpays when he prefers SSD storage. Its speed is many times higher than that of HDD. The system is able to boot in just a few seconds, it takes much less time to launch heavy applications and games, and copying large amounts of data from a multi-hour process turns into a 5-10 minute one.

The only “but” is that data from an SSD drive is deleted as quickly as it is copied. Therefore, when working with an SSD, you may simply not have time to press the cancel button if one day you suddenly delete important files.

Fragmentation

Favorite "delicacy" of any HDD hard drive - large files: MKV movies, large archives and BlueRay disc images. But as soon as you load the hard drive with a hundred or two small files, photos or MP3 compositions, the read head and metal pancakes become confused, as a result of which the recording speed drops significantly.

After filling up the HDD, repeatedly deleting/copying files, the hard disk starts to work more slowly. This is due to the fact that parts of the file are scattered over the entire surface of the magnetic disk, and when you double-click on a file, the reading head is forced to look for these fragments from different sectors. This is how time is wasted. This phenomenon is called fragmentation, and as a preventive measure to speed up the HDD, a software and hardware process is provided defragmentation or ordering such blocks/parts of files into a single chain.

The principle of operation of the SSD is fundamentally different from the HDD, and any data can be written to any sector of memory with further instant reading. That is why for storage SSD defrag need not.

Reliability and service life

Remember the main advantage of SSD drives? That's right, no moving parts. That is why you can use a laptop with an SSD in transport, off-road or in conditions inevitably associated with external vibrations. This will not affect the stability of the system and the drive itself. The data stored on the SSD will not be affected even if the laptop falls.

HDDs are exactly the opposite. The read head is located only a few micrometers from the magnetized discs, and therefore any vibration can lead to the appearance of "bad sectors" - areas that become unusable. Regular pushes and careless handling of a computer that runs on an HDD will lead to the fact that sooner or later such a hard drive will simply, in computer jargon, “crumble” or stop working.

Despite all the advantages of SSDs, they also have a very significant drawback - a limited use cycle. It directly depends on the number of memory blocks rewriting cycles. In other words, if you copy/delete/recopy gigabytes of information every day, you will very soon cause the clinical death of your SSD.

Modern SSD drives are equipped with a special controller that takes care of evenly distributing data across all SSD blocks. So it was possible to significantly increase the maximum operating time up to 3000 - 5000 cycles.

How durable is an SSD? Just take a look at this picture:

And then compare with warranty period operation, which is promised by the manufacturer of your particular SSD. 8 - 13 years for storage, believe me, not so bad. And do not forget about the progress that leads to a constant increase in the capacity of SSDs at an ever-decreasing cost. I think in a few years your 128 GB SSD will be a museum piece.

Form factor

The battle of drive sizes has always been caused by the type of devices in which they are installed. So, for a desktop computer, the installation of both a 3.5-inch and a 2.5-inch drive is absolutely uncritical, but for portable devices, like laptops, players and tablets, you need a more compact version.

The 1.8-inch format was considered the smallest serial version of the HDD. This is the disc used in the discontinued iPod Classic.

And no matter how hard the engineers tried, they failed to build a miniature HDD-hard drive with a capacity of more than 320 GB. It is impossible to break the laws of physics.

In the world of SSD, everything is much more promising. The generally accepted 2.5-inch format has become such not because of any physical limitations that technologies face, but only because of compatibility. In the new generation of ultrabooks, the 2.5 '' format is gradually being abandoned, making the drives more and more compact, and the cases of the devices themselves thinner.

Noise

The rotation of disks even in the most advanced HDD hard drive is inseparably linked with the occurrence of noise. Reading and writing data sets the disk head in motion, which rushes around the entire surface of the device at insane speed, which also causes a characteristic crackle.

SSD drives are absolutely silent, and all processes occurring inside the chips take place without any accompanying sound.

Outcome

Summing up the comparison of HDD and SSD, I want to clearly define the main advantages of each type of drive.

Advantages of HDD: capacious, inexpensive, accessible.

HDD Disadvantages: slow, afraid of mechanical influences, noisy.

Advantages of SSD: absolutely silent, wear-resistant, very fast, have no fragmentation.

Disadvantages of SSD: expensive, theoretically have a limited service life.

It is no exaggeration to say that one of the most effective methods upgrading an old laptop or computer remains to install an SSD drive instead of an HDD. Even with the latest version of SATA, you can achieve a threefold increase in performance.

Answering the question of who needs this or that drive, I will give several arguments in favor of each type.

There are hundreds of solid state drives on the market, and often their characteristics are so similar that it is almost impossible to determine the superiority of one or another device by them. The price also differs little - the second sure indicator of the quality and capabilities of the device. At the same time, even among seemingly identical SSDs based on the same controller and equipped with the same amount of flash memory, there are instances that differ from competitors quite strongly.

The vast majority of mid-range and high-end SSDs on the market are based on controllers Sand force second generation. We have repeatedly considered their features and the principle of operation, so we will not stop further. For now, we only note that the controller is not yet the main factor determining the speed of the drive.

The second platform competing with Sandforce in this segment is Marvell 88SS9174, which underlies the Crucial M4 and Intel 510 drives. SSDs from these two manufacturers, however, cannot be called “twin brothers” - despite the same controllers, they differ markedly due to different firmware and the use of different NAND memory.

Finally, the third player is an OCZ-owned controller developer Indilinx, on the Everest platform of which the third generation of Octane series SSDs from this manufacturer is based. Unfortunately, they are not presented in our testing, because. their availability on the market is quite limited.

The most interesting question in our review is what is the difference between drives based on Sandforce SF-2281 with each other, so consider the possible options.

On SSD performance, except controller and its firmware, also have an impact memory type used in them, and the nature of its connection to the platform. To date, Sandforce-based drives contain Toggle-type memory (the fastest and most expensive, found in OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS, Kingston HyperX SSD and some other top models), asynchronous NAND of the ONFI 1.x standard (almost all mainstream models), as well as the same "dark horse" - synchronous memory of the ONFI 2.2 standard. Its peculiarity is that ONFI 2.2 allows data to be transferred twice in one cycle, similar to DDR technology in RAM, as a result, the theoretical bandwidth of a single NAND chip is not 50 MB / s, but 133 MB / s. True, if in DRAM the bandwidth doubling always occurs, then in the case of NAND, there are factors when the increase will be inconsistent (the busyness of the controller channel or chip with service operations, for example). Nevertheless, in most cases, such memory chips provide a noticeable increase in performance, especially for write operations. Interestingly, according to the characteristics declared by the manufacturers, it is almost impossible to determine which chips are installed on a particular SSD - they are compiled according to the results of synthetic tests with the most compressible data, where the controller actually does all the work and does not allow the potential of synchronous memory to be revealed.

Finally, the last important factor affecting the performance of an SSD is connecting NAND chips to the controller. Sandforce SF-2281 has 8 channels, each of which can be connected to up to 4 NAND crystals (clarify that a crystal and a NAND chip are different things, high-density chips can have two or four crystals). The controller is able, firstly, to access all eight channels both simultaneously and separately, and secondly, it can work with each of the connected crystals on a separate channel individually. In practice, this functionality is most clearly manifested in the form of the so-called 4-way interleaving - four-fold interleaving of access. If all 8 channels are used, and each of them has 4 NAND dies, Sandforce SF-2281 works with them much more efficiently due to selective access to individual dies. For example, an SSD is quite full and is used for a long time, which means that it has to devote quite a lot of time to background cleaning of cells and balancing their wear. If there is only one crystal on the controller channel, and at the moment of accessing it for data, it will be busy with service operations, the channel will simply be blocked, and the controller will wait for the completion of these operations. As a result, SSD performance will noticeably decrease - this is one of the main reasons for the significant drop in performance of Sandforce drives after significant filling and long operation. At the same time, if the controller is able to interleave access to crystals within the channel, it will not wait for the busy crystal to become free, but simply turn to a free one without losing performance. We emphasize that 4-way interleaving does not make the SF-2281 from 8-channel to 32-channel (it will still be impossible to access all the crystals at the same time), but only ensures the constant availability of all eight channels for recording.

Note that quadruple interleaving works best in SSD models with a capacity of 240 GB or more - they are equipped with 16 NAND chips, each of which has 2 crystals - as a result, the very optimal configuration of 32 crystals per controller is obtained. The 120 GB model uses single-chip chips, and only 2 dies per channel of the SF-2281, which prevents interleaving from working at maximum efficiency.

Test participants

ADATA SSD S511 120GB (AS511S3-120GM)

The first participant in this test combines selected components: the SF-2281 controller and ONFI 2.2 high-speed synchronous memory. Unfortunately, the manufacturer provided us with only a 120 GB model, so we will not be able to illustrate the difference in speed provided by 4-way interleaving, all other things being equal. However, this does not greatly reduce the attractiveness of the ADATA drive - in addition to using a powerful controller and high-speed flash memory, it boasts a rather attractive price.

Intel SSD 320 300 GB (SSDSA2BW300G3)

This solid state drive is the successor of the actual ancestor of all SSDs for the desktop market and belongs to the initial segment. It is based on the Intel controller that dominated in the past (before even the first generation of Sandforce appeared), on which Intel X25-M G2 drives were previously based. Judging by the declared characteristics (read speed - 270 MB / s, write - 205 MB / s), Intel 320 will not be able to compete with competitors based on Sandforce. However, its positioning on computers with SATA-II interface and high capacity, of course, have their appeal for a certain category of consumers. The Intel 320 is equipped with 25nm NAND ONFI 1.1 asynchronous memory.

Intel SSD 520 240 GB (SSDSC2CW240A3)

Unlike its younger brother, Intel 520 is designed without compromise: it is based on Sandforce SF-2281 and ONFI 2.2 synchronous memory. We also note that Intel was seriously concerned about the reliability and stability of this series: it was released to the market much later than expected, since Sandforce took an unexpectedly long time to fix the firmware bugs that caused the BSOD. The Intel 520 does not use Sandforce's proprietary RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) technology, which allows a single NAND die to be allocated for the purpose of correcting data read errors in a manner similar to RAID for hard drives. Instead, Intel allocated this die as an additional 8 GB capacity for cell wear-leveling and background "garbage cleaning". This should, in particular, reduce the effect of clogging the SSD as it is used and reduce the performance drop.

To monitor and maintain its SSDs, Intel offers special utility SSD Toolbox. It allows you to check the status of the SSD using SMART, perform a quick or full scan of the drive, optimize the OS for working with the SSD (configure the SuperFetch and Prefetch services, disable defragmentation, etc.).

In addition, SSD Toolbox has two functions that are very popular among users of solid state drives: under the name SSD Optimizer, a TRIM command is forced to be sent to the drive, which initiates the cleaning of cells that are no longer used, but occupied by data, and the Secure Erase command is also available, which provides complete erasing of the SSD and returning it to original performance.

SSD Toolbox also allows you to keep track of firmware updates for drives and, if new versions appear, download and install them.

Kingston HyperX SSD 240GB (SH100S3/240G)

Supercar among solid state drives. This model combines not only the powerful Sandforce SF-2281 controller and synchronous 25nm NAND memory, but also ultra-performing firmware that provides up to 95,000 IOPS in random read mode in 4 KB blocks (for comparison, competitors most often claim about 80,000 IOPS) . Like the Intel 520, this SSD will be able to take full advantage of the quad striping we talked about above. In the delivery set, the buyer will find not only an SSD, but also a mounting frame for installation in a 3.5 ” bay of the case and even a screwdriver for these purposes.

Verbatim SATA-III SSD 240 GB (3SSD240)

This manufacturer is well known for its external drives, however, it is not represented in the SSD market. The model we are reviewing is again based on the Sandforce SF-2281, but Verbatim used slow ONFI 1.1 asynchronous memory in this device. On the one hand, in heavy testing modes and with active use, this SSD will inevitably yield to competitors with synchronous NAND, on the other hand, Verbatim compensates for this with a noticeably reduced price (~ $270).

Test Methodology

Before measuring the indicators, all drives were flashed with the latest firmware at the time of testing, and restored to their original state using Secure Erase. The set of test applications includes:

— AS SSD- a synthetic test that measures the number of requests processed by SSDs of different sizes and with different queue depths, and calculates throughput;

— Crystal DiskMark- an analogue of AS SSD, using slightly different algorithms, as a result of which the indicators in these utilities often differ;

— Anvil's Storage Utilities– a comprehensive test package that measures the performance of the drive in different usage profiles and displays the results both in the form of speed indicators and in the form of a final score;

— IOMeter Workstation– a test profile of the IOMeter utility, which simulates the operation of a heavily loaded workstation;

— Futuremark PCMark Vantage and PC Mark 7- test packages that emulate the operation of the drive in the most typical home and gaming computer applications.

In addition to evaluating the performance of the new SSDs, we've done additional testing to determine how the devices will perform under extended usage and high usage. To do this, performance in AS SSD was measured in several scenarios:

- clean SSD after performing Secure Erase (ideal situation);

- immediately after double filling with incompressible data and deleting files (the most "heavy" situation);

- after a 30-minute "sludge" in order to have time to work with the built-in garbage collection and TRIM algorithms;

- after forcing the TRIM command (using the ForceTrim utility and Intel SSD Toolbox in the case of Intel drives) and a pause of 10 minutes.

Test stand configuration

Test results

Crystal DiskMark

The first place is expectedly occupied by Kingston HyperX. Firmware with a disabled speed limit gives him the opportunity to slightly get ahead of his rivals even in measuring linear speeds.

Pay attention to the ADATA S511's poor linear write performance: this is a direct result of the drive's half size, as it does not run quad interleaved writes. Of course, Intel 320 is an outsider - an outdated controller does not allow it to fight Sandforce 2-based devices.

AS SSD

In this test, the situation is repeated, although the Verbatim SATA-III SSD was able to reach the first line of the diagram due to the minimal advance in read speed. Most likely, the firmware algorithms are to blame for this: Sandforce-based SSDs are quite actively engaged in background maintenance of flash memory cells, often at the wrong time. There is no other way to explain the spread of 10-15 MB / s that we received throughout the entire testing in different applications with several passes in a row.

Of interest, we note that the asynchronous memory in the Verbatim drive, although inferior in speed to linear writing, however, in terms of the number of processed write requests per second, it is quite at the level of its more "armed" counterparts. The twice as less capacious ADATA S511 does not save even synchronous memory - a clear illustration of the fact that the theoretical doubling of the throughput of NAND chips does not give a real doubling of performance.

It is also worth paying attention to the fact that the Intel 320 is ahead in terms of latency. This is explained very simply: firstly, the Sandforce SF-2281 constantly analyzes the data transmitted to it for compressibility, which takes time, and secondly, the Intel 320 has a cache that is not provided by the Sandforce platform. However, the difference of 1 millisecond is still negligible.

Anvil's Disk Utilities

This test package allows you to take measurements by sending data to disks with different degrees of compressibility. In this way, we emulate the ideal and worst-case conditions for Sandforce, as well as two close-to-reality cases - simulating a database and running applications.

Let's clarify right away that the graph is sorted by the result shown in the 46% compression mode, which simulates the operation of applications. That is why, quite unexpectedly, the Verbatim SATA-III SSD comes forward, which, although not by much, is ahead of the favorites from Intel and Kingston. This pair, in turn, is waging a very active struggle: if we discard the variant with fully compressible data (0-Fill), which is not encountered in life, then the difference between Kingston HyperX and Intel 520 turns out to be minimal. Note the interesting results of ADATA S511: this SSD is still behind the top three, but not by a third, as in synthetic tests. The Intel 320 closes the top five, as always, demonstrating to us that the nature of the data written to the SSD is absolutely indifferent to its basis.

IOMeter Workstation

All SSDs based on Sandforce SF-2281 are characterized by excellent performance scaling as the depth of the request queue increases - the controller can easily cope not only with their processing, but also with queue reordering and lazy writing.

However, the graphs clearly show how the three 240 GB models that can take advantage of 4-way interleaving break away from the ADATA S511 in queues 16 instructions deep and higher. Interestingly, the use of asynchronous memory in Verbatim SATA-III SSD does not prevent him from fighting Kingston HyperX and Intel 520 on an equal footing. The Intel 320 still closes the gap, holding a performance of 7-8 thousand IOPS at any queue depth, which, of course, is not much for modern SSDs, but still almost two orders of magnitude more than the main part of traditional hard drives available on the market.

PC Mark Vantage

We turn to "close to life" tests, and immediately we get an unexpected result. Verbatim SATA-III SSD is noticeably ahead of both Kingston HyperX and Intel 520. PCMark Vantage gives quite a lot of points to media that provide high read speed (in particular, in several threads) and low latency, therefore, in general, the indicator is quite understandable. It is also worth noting that asynchronous NAND (like Toggle) does not use the additional clock pulse that synchronous requires and therefore has a slightly better cell access time. The difference is negligible, but, quite possibly, it still makes itself felt on a large number of requests.

It is worth paying attention to the ADATA S511 results: the write speed has a rather weak effect on the overall score in PCMark Vantage, so this SSD shows itself at the level of favorites.

Again, the Verbatim SATA-III SSD is at the top, although the difference between all three Sandforce 2-based 240GB drives is within the measurement error. V new version PCMark ADATA S511 is still inferior to more capacious models - the write speed has a greater influence on the final results in this package.

Degree of degradation and efficiency of purification algorithms

As you can see, after the SSD is full twice, the write speed on them drops by about a third. If after that you give the disk a “break” for 30 minutes to activate the internal algorithm for collecting “garbage” and cleaning cells, which is provided by the firmware itself, the performance improves slightly, but there are no radical changes. Note that in the case of Kingston HyperX, the speed even dropped - perhaps it simply did not have enough half an hour, and the second test caught it just at the moment of cleaning. By the way, this probably happened to the Intel 320 in the read speed test, there is no other way to explain the drop in speed after the drive is full - apparently, he immediately began to clean the cells after deleting the data.

Finally, let's look at the efficiency of executing the TRIM command. As you can see, it brings significant results only on the Intel 520. Interestingly, this increase was obtained using the ForceTrim utility - running this command through the Intel SSD Toolbox did not lead to any improvement in the results.

Curiously, the Verbatim SSD, as well as the ADATA S511, did not suffer from cell filling at all: both in their original form after Secure Erase and after double filling, they show almost the same speed at the maximum level. Perhaps this can only be explained by the fact that their cells are cleaned very aggressively: as soon as the file is deleted, the firmware immediately resets the cells that stored it. On the one hand, this is good - the speed will degrade less as the SSD "clogs", and on the other hand, this should lead to increased wear of the cells - the controller cleans them not when they are needed, but at the first free moment. However, the reliability of modern NAND chips is still at the level of 3-5 thousand cell rewriting operations, so you should not be afraid of the sudden failure of an SSD.

Results

The purpose of this testing was to show that seemingly identical SSDs on the same platform can turn out to be quite different in performance. Unfortunately, the idea failed: Kingston HyperX and Intel 520, equipped with ONFI 2.2 synchronous memory, could not win a convincing victory over Verbatim SATA III SSD, built on cheaper asynchronous NAND. However, this should not be taken as a reproach towards these two drives: they are very fast, and under certain conditions they are really noticeably ahead of the opponent. In addition, on the side of Kingston is a spectacular appearance and a good package, while Intel has a convenient software for servicing SSDs in its arsenal. Whether it is worth the overpayment for these models is up to the consumer to decide.

Concerning ADATA S511, then this drive was frankly out of luck with its rivals: if we had a 240 GB model, most likely we would have 4 winners. But, unfortunately, the 120-gigabyte version is not able to compete with more capacious devices.

And finally Intel 320. This SSD performs exactly as advertised: delivering speeds on par with the SATA II performance limit, well ahead of HDDs, high capacity, and affordable price. In general, a good candidate for upgrading an aging PC or (quite ideally) laptop.