OCZ Vertex SSDs- Initial Results

Scored a pair of 30GB OCZ Vertex solid state drives today.
Installed Win 7 x64 in RAID 0.
Using the OCZ forum recommended tweaks for SSD performance (very straightforward), here are the initial test results-

As expected, the disk score in the Windows Experience was pretty high...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/SSD1.png

Both the CPU and Memory scores will go higher as well, the performance was declocked in BIOS to facilitate a stable install of the OS and has yet to be sped up again.

Here's HD Tach...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/SSD2.png

And finally, PC Pitstop (just for grins)...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/SSD3.png

All that is well and good but the real question is, can I feel a difference.
The answer is "Hell, yeah!".

Shit happens fast.

I'll spend some more time tweaking things (and installing the rest of my apps) but it's safe to say that these drives are the best bang for your buck performance upgrade you can get (assuming you already have a semi-decent CPU/RAM/vid card).

BTW, the Windows 7 install- from newly installed drives to desktop- took 21 minutes.
It was internet capable out of the box, I installed the sound,video, Intel Matrix Storage drivers manually from a folder I'd created before the process began.
I used a "corporate" version of Ultimate that I'd "acquired" yesterday and it was automatically activated and displays the Genuine Advantage logo on the Performance page.
Updates were painless.

Not bad.

What controller are you running the array off?

The reason I'm asking is that while I hit the same PI in windows 7, I think my mobo-integrated raid controller might be slowing my drives down, somewhat.

I'd re-check with HD Tach, but it doesn't like my win 7 HP.

I'm using the onboard Intel ICH10R controller, with the Intel Storage Manager in Windows.
Run HD Tach in XP compatibility mode.

Hey clock I couldn't find the OCZ tweaks could you please post a link. I get my 60 GB SSD's tomorrow, can't wait!

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=49779 - ? also http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=50376.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by clocker

I'm using the onboard Intel ICH10R controller, with the Intel Storage Manager in Windows.
Run HD Tach in XP compatibility mode.

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Prolly a sign I should go to bed.

My results are still off, though, I definitely need to look into this.

EDit: Yeah, my write speeds are capped by something, the reads are about on target. Just ran it through ATTO as well.
EDit: Hah, enabling write back cache bumped them up a little, but am still mystified, though.

Are your cables SATAII rated? Maybe that's it?

Using the ones that came with the rIIe, so I'd be surprised if they weren't, but I'll try other ones.

Thanks for the tip.

Also i as of yet know fuck all about SSD's but is there any kind of jumper like on a SATA HDD that caps it to 150 gb/s ?

There is a pinout header but mine had nothing on them.
Maybe I'll look at the destructions.

Oh wait, who am I kidding?

Edit: FUCKING COMCAST!

If you'd never gotten those vertexes, I'd have gone on, happy with my 7.6 PI, and my sweet boot times :fist:

Now I'm probably gonna tinker with this for weeks.

Ordered new cables, anyhow.

Something for comparison, anyhow, corsair x32s in raid 0, the quick bench:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...lax/hdtach.jpg

Before re-enabling the write back cache, it was hitting the heady heights of a 380MB/s burst, and an average write of 154MB/s

Why and when I'd turned that off (can't have been long ago, or else it was only noticeable in hd tach), I dunno. I guess I was experimenting with something.

The moral of the story is: don't do that.

Not solved the write speed issues though.


EDit:

Quote:

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There is a pinout header but mine had nothing on them.
Maybe I'll look at the destructions.

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Almost completely certain that header is for when you want to flash the firmware.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by clocker

There is a pinout header but mine had nothing on them.
Maybe I'll look at the destructions.

Oh wait, who am I kidding?

Edit: FUCKING COMCAST!

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:huh:

I was jealous so I posted my crappy results :(

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB

http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/3972/capturegm.jpg

BASTARDS!!!

Well, I've done something to my setup that has borked the results.
Dunno what.
Average read has dropped to the mid 300 range and burst to the mid 2k's...about a 30% decrease.

I've also been unable to detect what firmware version my drives came with since they're shielded by the RAID controller.
I read in the OCZ forums that that Vertexs started shipping with the 1.4 firmware in October but it's possible that Microcenter has been sitting on their stock for longer than that, so it's conceivable mine are an earlier version.

Given my degraded performance and mystery firmware, I think I'm going to reinstall the OS with the drives just set up normally and see what's going on.
This time I'll also apply the recommended "tweaks" one at a time instead of all at once and try to isolate what's screwing things up.

I'm also going to set it up with the OS on one drive (the 30GB drive size is no problem for me) and put my browser caches and page file on the other.
I think that the biggest advantage (for my usage at least) of the SSD is the access time, and RAIDing them really does nothing to improve the already insignificant access time of a single drive.

D's chart shows exactly why I used to RAID...a mechanical drive's performance slows as you get to the inner sections of the spinning disk and by using the Intel RAID you could cherry pick the fast sectors for the partition and maintain a pretty consistent speed.
Since SSDs obviously don't suffer from this defect (phenomenon?), it could be that RAID isn't the performance enhancer it used to be.
We'll see.

Have a look at the matrix storage settings. Maybe the write back cache I saw disabled was something the drivers do on their own?

Also, I noticed a discrepancy between the long and short test in HD-tach. Not as big a difference as you'd have to have for that to be the reason here, but still, if you ran the short instead of the long, you'd notice a difference in average read, I think. My run of the long test shows an average read about the same as yours, in your first post in this thread.

I tried the tool posted in one of the links I posted, btw, it does most of the tweaks at once. It didn't do much. What I don't have is a block size of 64k or whatever they recommended.

And I've noticed the matrix software is easy to sink, maybe you need a reinstall of that.

/halping

My array is doing better since I started tinkering. I think I speeded up my boot time with like a second, even, but the write speed is still capped at around 150MB/s.

You may well be right about raid 0 not doing much for us, though, but I like striping stuff :( I'd like to think it helps with handling smaller files as well, my controller is supposed to do worse at that.

Oh, and ATTO's good for testing.



EDit: Also, if you ran a hell of a lot of funky benchmark tools, maybe you suffered performance degradation from writing to all blocks or something? Unlikely, that, but still.

Well, I'm not sure.

I did however luck out, both my drives are the 1.4 firmware.

When I installed the Vertexes (Vertexi?) I simply unplugged the two drives that made up the previous array and left them in situ.
I removed the Vertex drives and plugged the other two back in and the old array was up and running.
I then plugged one Vertex in at a time, converted it to a non-RAID disk, reentered Windows and initialized it and was able to see the hardware ID details, which confirmed the 1.4 BIOS of the drive(s).
I then used the recommended Sanitary Erase tool and wiped them both.

Supposedly, I'm now good to go for a clean install.

ckrit: I checked all my Intel settings and everything else I could think of and found nothing which explained the performance hit.
That tool you refer to just changes all the settings I'd already done manually, so I'm not sure how useful it is.

So, it's now time to take the plunge and reinstall Win 7...on a single drive this time.
See ya'll in a bit.

Stupid question, maybe, but do you break the array if shifting which connector each drive is connected to around?

I'm always very careful about connecting them exactly the same way if disconnecting them, but do I still need to be, or do these modern-ish controllers go by serial number or something?

Mine's an intel controller too, probably the next generation down from yours, or the same. ICH10R.

We have the same controller.
Doesn't matter how you reconnect them, the pertinent data is on the drive so as long as they're on the same controller as before, the array will rebuild itself.

I'm back in Windows, folks.
Here's what the drive does right out of the box- absolutely nothing done, did this right after Windows hit the desktop for the first time...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...er/Vertex1.png

Now, let's do some shit and see what happens...

Is this a single drive? Is this formatted? This seems almost slower than my single 640 gig :huh:

The burst looks awry, the average speed beats your wd black badly. Could be a bit higher though, but that was with no tweaking or anything.

The low burst is prolly cos the matrix controller driver/software aren't installed yet.

I think OCZ recommends to use the ms drivers for ahci, if you didn't go with raid mode. But you'll have seen that, clocker.

oooo I missed that. I assumed the red br was average. my bad NM

My drives are sitting in my hallway ATM my wife says I have to wait until the 25th DAMNIT!!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ckrit

I think OCZ recommends to use the ms drivers for ahci, if you didn't go with raid mode. But you'll have seen that, clocker.

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Well, kinda...but too late.
I didn't install in AHCI mode and now it can't be enabled without bluescreening in BIOS.
I can't install the Intel software cause it tells me there's no relevant hardware.

So, I can either wipe the drive and reinstall in AHCI or go back to RAID.

I'm thinking RAID would be the best use of the space.

What would AHCI mode get me, anyway?

I still don't know wtf AHCI does? I mess with it sometimes when I do a fresh install but I can't tell a deiiefence maybe it's me :idunno:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by clocker

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ckrit

I think OCZ recommends to use the ms drivers for ahci, if you didn't go with raid mode. But you'll have seen that, clocker.

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Well, kinda...but too late.
I didn't install in AHCI mode and now it can't be enabled without bluescreening in BIOS.
I can't install the Intel software cause it tells me there's no relevant hardware.

So, I can either wipe the drive and reinstall in AHCI or go back to RAID.

I'm thinking RAID would be the best use of the space.

What would AHCI mode get me, anyway?

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Infoz. (Balls, the instructions are for XP, not Win 7 :dabs:)

That guy compares it to IDE mode, though.

I've always seen it as raid mode without the raid.

After checking around a bit, though, raid mode enables ahci, but adds a vendor-specific instruction set on top of that (and enables raid-functionality, obviously), or somesuch. That'd be why AHCI alone, which is more of an open standard, works best with MS-drivers, whereas raid mode requires intel drivers I expect.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Detale

I still don't know wtf AHCI does? I mess with it sometimes when I do a fresh install but I can't tell a deiiefence maybe it's me :idunno:

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by ckrit

That guy compares it to IDE mode, though.

I've always seen it as raid mode without the raid.

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Well, some quick Googling says it enables hot swapping and native command queing.
Right then.

I still don't know what to do.
I used to love screwing with my OS but now, after a year (almost) of ignoring it, I just want this over with.

I recently opened up my case and discovered the easily imaginable dust bunny convention, so I've been planning on tearing down and doing some maintenance anyway.
I'd really like to use these cool fittings that D. gifted me and since that would require breaking the waterloop, I figured I'd go all out and change blocks and tubing as well.
I also need to come up with a cool way to install the SSDs and maybe even add another drive (Microcenter has a sale on Seagate 1.5TB drives for $118).

After all this futzing with the hardware I'd like to just reinstall Windows and be done.
Yeah, right.

Yeah I read the google thing, thanks man.

There should really be a name for the feeling of dred when you just want it to be done with. Excited when preparing for it and then discontented immediately after finishing.

I have a few ideas on how to mount the SSD's using 1/8" X 1/2" aluminum, or even a 90, but I'm sure your's will be way fancier so I'm glad that you are going to go first like.

I was particular to these mounts for a while

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/767...s012741012.jpghttp://img34.imageshack.us/img34/233...tical01264.jpg

Each bracket can hold up to 3 drives and they're only $15 so I still may go for em I dunno.

I can't picture how that bracket works...

I'm just gonna go with velcro for mounting my ssds in the raven. I thought that was a capital idea. I've been checking if they heat up any for a while now, and haven't noticed a thing.

It's gonna look all ghetto compared to yours :emo:

But then again, I generally don't do much modding if I can get away without it, so I'm not playing in the same league to begin with.

Right now, I'm waiting for new sound proofing, which got lost in transit somewhere. The people I ordered it from are going to send me another set, or maybe it's already been sent, and they'll charge the bunch who lost it in the first place.

I hate lost packages!

@clocker loike this man

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/1...tical02871.jpg

Then those other brackets in the first pic would allow you to "stack" them, at least I think so. This is the "vertical". The other is the "horizontal" I think I could manufacture something ver similar out of aluminum though.


EDIT: I got it now ike this

http://www.undesignsbrackets.com/products/gallery/

Hoi Clock I saw this just now. You prob got the same Email but micro center will be having the "after Xmas sale" and the OCZ 30 gig drives will be $99
Saturday, 12/26 8 to 10; Sunday 12/27 10 to 7
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/875/oczx.jpg
If you feel the urge like.

Bastards.

Shit I may even pick up 2 if I have time to drive to New Jersey about an hour or so away.

So then you'd have four?
Damn.

Still can't figure out what's killing my burst speed (which is about 1/2 of Snee's).
I hate this.

Cables? I think I have some left over SATAIII cables left over if you want em. I have to look and see how many I have I think there were 2 for me with 2 left over. I had ordered the straight versions but I needed the 90 degree to work in the 800D case.

Cables?
I doubt it.

There wasn't any spec change for cables- or ports, for that matter- between SATA 1 and 2.

I'm sure my Chinese lead and dog fur SATA cables are just fine.

I had read recently that cables can go bad and these cables are SATA3 I thought it would help. Also I thought your cables were chain mail?

I can't see it being cables because I used the same ones on a three disk array (250GB Seagate mechanicals) and the burst was fine.
I think it's a setting I'm missing/doing wrong.

However, if I can find some new "SATA III Certified" cables in short enough lengths, I may get them just to clean up the wiring mess.

"Wiring mess" another compelling argument against case windows...

I enjoy neatening cables and I think it's linked to the side window thing.

The cables are SATA 3.0 Round Cable - 18" If you're interested their yours dude.

Thanks, but no.
Those are much longer than what I have already.
Was just looking at a site that has cables in 5" and 9" lengths, which should do nicely.
They aren't tricky round ones like yours though...that's a nice touch.

They are really nice, I have to say. They should all be round. Especially when they are sleeved, not that they even need it. In my case I had to make them match though ;)

Big pimpin.

After promoting that holder there i think I'm actually goint to go the velcro route. I'll be installling tomorrow. Any install tips? Do I format the drive or no. things like that.