Best SSDs For The Money: August 2012 (Archive)

Page 6 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
It'd be nice if Tom's would purge these comments a bit more often. 7 pages, and only 3 or 4 comments from March. The rest are from 1-5 months old.
 
I've noticed that the 240 GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe (MKNSSDCR240GB-DX) has now made several TH "Best SSD for the Money" charts, but it doesn't actually show up in any of the TH SSD performance charts. Are there any plans to run it or any of the other Mushkin Deluxe models through some benchmarks and get them added to the TH SSD performance charts in the near future?
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]OCZ Vertex/Agility 4 is just as reliable as Crucial M4 with current firmware, so a no OCZ rule doesn't seem fair. Going by individual line rather than company is a better way of going about this.[/citation]


Crucial's history of reliability is MUCH longer than anybody else's especially OCZ not to mention the reports of poor customer support. If/when OCZ has some time under their belt I may consider their products but I doubt it as long as Crucial keeps offering quality products. Actually, I wish WD would get into the game.
 


It's basically a Vertex 3 MAXIOPS. That's why it's not in the charts; Tom's says this often. Many SandForce SSDs all perform identically if they have the same specs and the Mushkin Delux line has the exact same specs (same controller and same NAND) as the Vertex 3 MAXIOPS line.
 


History is irrelevant if they can't keep with the times. Crucial has been struggling with some firmware issues such as a compatibility problem with UEFI BIOS motherboards whereas OCZ took a huge leap into reliability with Vertex 4/Agility 4 and Vector. OCZ also took a huge leap in customer service with those drives. In fact, OCZ, unlike Crucial, has been rapidly fixing firmware issues when found. I still haven't heard word of if Crucial fixed their issue and it's been at least a few months now.

Furthermore, since OCZ got such reliability by using a Marvell controller just like Crucial has been doing, I'd argue that their Vertex 4 line has all the history that it needs in reliability and their huge improvement in customer service means that dwelling on the past is foolish. OCZ is great right now and there's no reason to deny them that just because that had a jumpier start than Crucial which wasn't even entirely their fault what with all of SandFoce's problems.

I don't see anything bad about WD getting into this. I too have thought that I'd like to see if they'd bring something nice to the table.
 

They don't have the Vertex 3 MAXIOPS in any charts either...
 
just bought this on 3-10

http://www.microcenter.com/product/406438/Ultra_Plus_SDSSDHP-256G-G2_256GB_SATA_60Gb-s_Internal_Solid_State_Drive_(SSD)#tab-specs
SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB 2.5" $169.99
Interface SATA 6.0Gb/s
Random Write 4K Up to 39,000 IOPS
Random Read 4K Up to 86,000 IOPS
Read Speed Up to 530MBps
Write Speed Up to 445MBps
Color Black
Electrical Specifications
Power Usage - Read/Write 0.12 Watts
Power Usage - Idle 0.08 Watts
Environmental Specifications
MTBF 2,000,000 Hours
Max Vibration Resistance 4.9 gRMS, 7800Hz
Vibration Resistance - Operating 5g RMS, 10-200MHZ
Vibration Resistance - Non-Operating 4.9 gRMS, 7800Hz
 
The problem with the analysis is that there is no way to quantify just how fast the performance declines for any of these SSD. I bought an Agility 3 64g 18 months ago for just w7, chrome, drivers and mcafee. Very pleased with initial performance, but in 18 months of usage the Passmark numbers dropped 30% and my system was noticeably slower. Just replaced it with a San Disk Extreme 120g which is 25% faster than the best number for Agility 3 and over 50% faster than the last.

For the future, I'm looking at initial SSD performance/pricing much closer, realizing that I'll just replace it when the performance numbers start to decline significantly. There is a ridiculous 27%/$40 price difference between Samsung Pro and San Disk Extreme at Microcenter at 120/128g which makes the Pro a very poor choice.
 
[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Mushkin Enhanced Chronos has an awful lot one-star reviews on Newegg.Just sayin'...[/citation]
I have two of them, one is installed in a Mac mini and the other is in a PC. Both drives have been working perfectly since day one.
 


They're both 2nd gen SandForce SSDs with Toggle mode NAND flash memory. If you look in the hierarchy chart at the end of the article, they're in tier 1 for 240GB models and tier 3 for 120GB models.
 
You state that the 240GB Intel 335 is cheaper than the 240GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe. Just based on a quick check of Newegg and Amazon, the Intel 335 is actually significantly more expensive. Did the prices change significantly in the past 24 hours?
 
[citation][nom]Gurg[/nom]The problem with the analysis is that there is no way to quantify just how fast the performance declines for any of these SSD. I bought an Agility 3 64g 18 months ago for just w7, chrome, drivers and mcafee. Very pleased with initial performance, but in 18 months of usage the Passmark numbers dropped 30% and my system was noticeably slower. Just replaced it with a San Disk Extreme 120g which is 25% faster than the best number for Agility 3 and over 50% faster than the last. For the future, I'm looking at initial SSD performance/pricing much closer, realizing that I'll just replace it when the performance numbers start to decline significantly.[/citation]Performance shouldn't decline significantly for any drive over time like that. Between garbage collection and TRIM, performance should stay relatively constant, as long as you're not overfilling the drive.
 


The Samsung 840 Pro isn't a purely consumer SSD, hence the expense. It's higher end in both performance and professional features, similar to OCZ Vector. A better comparison would be looking at the more affordable top non-SandForce SSDs such as Samsung 830, OCZ Vertex 4, Plextor M5S, Corsair Neutron, etc. At least one of them is usually priced excellently at each capacity point at any given time.
 


Kingston drives are all SandForce drives. Compare generation/NAND type to positions in the hierarchy chart and you find out where they go. It would be more helpful if Tom's had a list of the drives that fall under each SandForce category next to the hierarchy chart, but to be fair, this info is readily available through quick Google searches.

More specifically for Kingston's current consumer SATA 6Gb/s offerings:
HyperX is 2nd gen SandForce with synchronous MLC NAND.
HyperX 3K is the same as HyperX except it has NAND that has inferior endurance AFAIK.
SSDNow V+200 is 2nd gen SandForce with asynchronous MLC NAND.
SSDNow V300 is 2ng gen SandForce with toggle mode MLC NAND.
 
Im wondering about buying OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 SSD 240GB. Is this a good SSD ? ive heared some complaints about OCZ not beeing what it used to be ?
 
[citation][nom]Onus[/nom]Reliability is my primary concern, so my quick and dirty rule for SSDs is "No Sandfarce, and no OCZ."I use a Crucial m4 mSATA (238GB formatted) as my system drive in my primary rig, and it is certainly fast enough, even though the mSATA slot is "only" 3Gb/s.My other rig uses a 256GB Samsung 830 on a 6Gb/s port. I can not tell any performance difference based on the drive; the two rigs are too different to compare them directly.[/citation]
well i havent had any issues with my Vertex3 since the last firmware update, wether my M4 in my HTPC is the shittiest experience I've ever had with a hard drive ever... those guys sell BSOD for a living i can tell you...
 
This month's $190 "reliable storage" choice seems like a waste to me at best, and a disservice to readers at worst.

I wouldn't choose a SSD to store irreplaceable data at all, since storage in a single location is not backup and not reliable regardless of the medium. I can have real reliability for a fraction of the cost either with DVD/Bluray or HDDs (let's see, I can store 2-3TB in duplicate with HDDs for the same cost as 1 256GB-SSD).

Now, if you want to argue that a reliable SSD means hassle free operation (not having to reinstall an OS because of a drive failure), then you'd have an argument, but that isn't what you are arguing here.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]... A better comparison would be looking at the more affordable top non-SandForce SSDs such as Samsung 830, OCZ Vertex 4, Plextor M5S, Corsair Neutron, etc. ...[/citation]

The Samsung 830 is gone from seller sites here. Seems to me like a deliberate push to get
it out of the way so the 840 series can sell instead. Normally, product pages for items no longer
available hang around on web sites for ages (DABS, Scan, Aria, etc.), but not with the 830, the
pages are no more.

Having said that, I've been testing a Samsung 840 Basic 250GB and I'm impressed! Bought one
for my brother's P55 PC; it runs rather well. Yes, the sequential write speed is not that great but
in all other respects it's rather good (so much so, I bought one for my P67 2700K setup). I've also
been testing a Vector 128GB; again, quite good, just slightly slower than the 840 250GB (though
way better for seq. write of course), but for real applications/tasks there's little difference. The
840 250GB was 110 UKP total (new). An 840 Pro would be nice of course, but I doubt the extra
cost would be noticeable in terms of perceived performance boost.

If anyone's interested, I've been testing how various SSDs perform when connected to SATA2
ports, ie. what upgrade path is available for those with older mbds. Certainly worthwhile even
without SATA3, eg. a fast 1TB SATA gave an After Effects CS6 startup time of 32.5s, whereas
an 840 250GB does it in 6s (Vector 128GB was 7s, same as a Vertex3 MAX IOPS 120GB and
a Vertex2E 120GB).

Oh, for those with SATA2 who wants some extra sequential oomph, 3x MAX IOPS 120GB in
Intel chipset hw RAID0 with AS SSD gave 725MB/sec seq. read, 470MB/sec seq. write, overall
score of 1616 (four drives in RAID10 gave 1343). This is with a P55 mbd, Intel 11.6.0.1030
RAID drivers, i3 550 @ 4.7. I'm doing the same tests with native Intel SATA3 later.

And for the curious, the worst performance was with an nForce 790i Ultra SATA2 port, seriously
awful, worse than the notorious Marvell 1x SATA3 PCIe card (the nForce chipset really doesn't
like SSDs that are normally native SATA3). Not yet tested AMD boards, that's for later.

Ian.

 

I'd be interested to see how those Vert 3/RAID combinations compare running on the SATA-3 bus.

 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom