Fastest SSD ? (writes)

[JulianBoolean]

I'm planning 3 ssds striped for Photoshop scratch. Who makes the fastest SSD? I know read and write times can vary somewhat... I'm obviously looking for faster writes in my particular configuration. Was planning on the 40gb owc ssds because I like the price point, but getting a plethora of conflicting info about the current speed champ upon further investigation.

Thanks!

[Einz]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3949/oczs-fastest-ssd-the-ibis-and-hsdl-interface-reviewed/6

[Krevnik]

The IBIS is fast because it is two SSD drives striped together, and uses SAS connections which you'd need special hardware for.

For a single 2.5" drive, the RealSSD line Crucial has beats out Sandforce, but only if you have a 6Gbps SATA connection (again requiring special hardware in a Mac Pro which only has SATA II). Sandforce beats out the RealSSD chipset in a more common 3Gbps SATA II environment by a noticeable margin.

If you are trying to build, say 120GB of scratch, I'd go the route you are thinking. 3 Sandforce drives in a RAID 0 will beat out even the IBIS pretty handily (which is 2 Sandforce drives in a RAID 0). However, exactly how these are all wired up to your system will be important. Can you give us a better idea what type of system you are planning on shoving this all into?

[Honumaui]

better run them off a controller though and not the ICH :)

my 3 in raid 0 on the controller and the ICH got dif times by a good amount

[Hellhammer]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227517

Up to 1.4GB/s (1400MB/s) reads and writes. Sustained write is up to 950MB/s. OCZ states that OS X support is coming soon. Get 3 of them and RAID them, You should be fine with 4.2GB/s reads and writes :p

[alphaod]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227517

Up to 1.4GB/s (1400MB/s) reads and writes. Sustained write is up to 950MB/s. OCZ states that OS X support is coming soon. Get 3 of them and RAID them, You should be fine with 4.2GB/s reads and writes :p

DAMN! :eek:

That's one fine lookin' piece of hardware right there!

[VirtualRain]

Here's a fairly comprehensive list of SSD's tested recently by Anand...

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/oczagility213opfw_050310013508/22721.png

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/oczagility213opfw_050310013508/22723.png

I don't think you can go wrong with a Sandforce based drive like the OCZ or OWC.

[JulianBoolean]

.... However, exactly how these are all wired up to your system will be important. Can you give us a better idea what type of system you are planning on shoving this all into?

Hi Krevnik, Thanks for taking an interest, much appreciated :) Due to some rock star advice from nanofrog, and real world photoshop testing provided by honomaui, I'm planning the following upgrades.

Mac Pro Hex Core 3.33ghz
use : pro retouching, illustration, 3d

• 32GB
1333MHz DDR3 EEC SDRAM ,,, $1,192

• Areca 1880x raid card ,,,$780

Optical 1
• the shipped with dvd tray

Optical 2
• empty

Internal 1
• boot & apps
• 1x the factory 1TB HD apple drive

Internal 2, 3, 4
• raid 0 photoshop scratch
• 3x 40GB owc extreme pro ssd ,,, $330
• 3x icy dock ,,, $60

PCIe slot 1
• empty

PCIe slot 2
• empty

8 Bay External
• working jobs, raid 6
• sans digital 8 bay port multiplier tower ,,, $390
• newertech pm esata card ,,, $80.00
• 8x western digital re3 hard drives ,,, $1040

4 Bay External
• 8TB back up
• sans digital, 4 bay pm tower ,,, $130
• 7TB, jbod, for time machine
• 1TB partition for bootable clone
• 4x 2TB western digital green ,,, $520

Hope this might help determine if there is a faster SSD than the 40GB owc in this particular configuration.

[JulianBoolean]

Here's a fairly comprehensive list of SSD's tested recently by Anand...

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/oczagility213opfw_050310013508/22721.png

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/oczagility213opfw_050310013508/22723.png

I don't think you can go wrong with a Sandforce based drive like the OCZ or OWC.

Awesome info, thanks!

Q: It looks like the owc ssd on the list is the raid edition, because it's 50GB? The cheaper 40GB (non re version) would be the same or similar speed?

[Hellhammer]

Hope this might help determine if there is a faster SSD than the 40GB owc in this particular configuration.

OWC (or other SF based SSD) is pretty much the fastest you can get as SATA 3Gb/s is your biggest bottleneck.

[JulianBoolean]

better run them off a controller though and not the ICH :)

my 3 in raid 0 on the controller and the ICH got dif times by a good amount

Thanks!

I'm also wondering about the DX4 thing a ma jiggy. I didn't know about that product at the time you and I and nano were working out my configuration, so it never factored in or out of the equation. I has me really thinking about dropping 3 or 4 SSDs onto one of the empty PCIe slots.
http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2799

If I put my 4x raid 0 scratch on a pcie slot, that frees up the four internal sata bays for my working files.
Q: By doing this.. I'd also get past the ~660 MB/s throttle on the ICH?

If I could get one of those 4 SSDs hanging on the DX4 to boot, then I could also stuff an additional HD in the empty optical bay. That would leave room internally for 5 drives in raid 6, not quite as fast as 8 drives in raid 6 (externally) but still very workable.

Thoughts?

[Honumaui]

yeah I was curious about the DX4 thingy also :)

but decided I would saturate out my ICH so I have a SSD boot and 2 SSD in raid 0 for my cache/scratch ? theory being I am never going to be taxing my boot at the same time as my cache/scratch

but plan on moving them off in the very near future to a external 2 card 2 port sata setup
my thought was to use that newertech external card with the PM and use two of them !
I know the card is limited to 500 MB/s ? and that slots 3/4 share bandwidth but the bandwidth will be greater than the single card !
I know I wont exceed the single card but might as well spread them out ? cause I need two PM ports anyway ?

so if I had one SATA off the card in slot 3 and the other off the card in slot 4

the extra PM ports would go to my JBOD and 5 bay raid 5 box
does that make sense ?

slot 3 card 2 port:
1 port - SSD
2 port - 5 Bay case for time machine

slot 4 card 2 port:
1 port - SSD
2 port - 5 bay JBOD BU

OR seriously looking at this
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2me4-e/
and just use one slot ?

for hooking up the SSD ? figure out either inside or a cheap external SATA case hard to say :) but thats not a big deal

you could always think of something like
slot 3 card 2 port:
1 port - SSD
2 port - SSD

slot 4 card 2 port:
1 port - SSD
2 port - 4 bay JBOD BU

then raid those SSD up ?

I would say look at the 5 bay JBOD case I have both 4 bay and 5 bay sans cases and the 5 bay has a larger fan and is much more quiet !
unless they changed the 4 bay case to a 120 fan recently ? but think its a 80 ?

me I would still go for the 8 bay external keep that main storage faster and larger I am not a fan of having less than 8 discs on raid 6

also my reasons for not wanting my scratch on the same controller as my areca is just to keep it that much more dedicated to my storage and writing my stuff ? I know it can handle it but if I can offload it might as well :)


anyway not sure if I posted or you saw these other numbers but figure good to put them in this thread :)
but this shows you really cant run 3 on the ICH without some major issues ? not sure why it throttled so bad but my thought is my boot is a SSD and its taking enough extra that its sharing that last bit somehow ? maybe nano has explinations ? I am not as much the tech as he is but more a configuration person and PS LR guy :)

3 SSD on my Areca
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=253211&stc=1&d=1285344328

3 on the ICH
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=253212&stc=1&d=1285344328

two on the ICH
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=253213&stc=1&d=1285344328