Intel Postville (34nm) & Mac Pro

[NonBorn]

What do you think about the numbers of my Postville? Its after the firmware update today...

Post yours to discuss about them!

 

[UAofE]

I like my RAM disk better.

 

[VirtualRain]

It's nice to see Intel improved the sequential writes with the new firmware... too bad that benefit doesn't trickle down to the rest of the product line.

Here's my pair of 80GB G1 X25-M's in RAID0...

Results	438.45	
	System Info		
		Xbench Version		1.3
		System Version		10.5.7 (9J61)
		Physical RAM		6144 MB
		Model		MacPro4,1
		Drive Type		Intel SSD RAID0
	Disk Test	438.45	
		Sequential	286.82	
			Uncached Write	276.71	169.90 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	253.02	143.16 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	189.87	55.57 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	898.12	451.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	930.26	
			Uncached Write	1095.54	115.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	417.89	133.78 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	2346.21	16.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	1760.86	326.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]

There's a ton more results in this old thread... https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/726879/

 

[nanofrog]

It's nice to see Intel improved the sequential writes with the new firmware... too bad that benefit doesn't trickle down to the rest of the product line.

Here's my pair of 80GB G1 X25-M's in RAID0...

Results	438.45	
	System Info		
		Xbench Version		1.3
		System Version		10.5.7 (9J61)
		Physical RAM		6144 MB
		Model		MacPro4,1
		Drive Type		Intel SSD RAID0
	Disk Test	438.45	
		Sequential	286.82	
			Uncached Write	276.71	169.90 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	253.02	143.16 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	189.87	55.57 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	898.12	451.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	930.26	
			Uncached Write	1095.54	115.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	417.89	133.78 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	2346.21	16.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	1760.86	326.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]

There's a ton more results in this old thread... https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/726879/

Ouch. Not that it's horrible, but I'd expected a stripe set of a pair would do better than that, especially compared to a single drive.

Quite a difference in the firmware indeed, even if the newer drive is 2x the capacity of one of your G1's (total capacity is equivalent).

 

[Whiteyez]

Here is my Postville, after the firmware upgrade.

 

[MythicFrost]

Sorry if this is off topic but is there a firmware update for the Intel X25-M G2? I have one, what does it address? Thanks.

 

[Transporteur]

Sorry if this is off topic but is there a firmware update for the Intel X25-M G2? I have one, what does it address? Thanks.

Another question is how to upgrade the firmware?

 

[dr. shdw]

I've read the TRIM firmware may brick your SSD...

 

[gugucom]

Another question is how to upgrade the firmware?

I found this on the Intel site:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=17485&lang=eng

I havn't used it yet because mine are fairly new. I will have to check with the tool CD.

http://download.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/sata_ssd_firmware_update_tool_guidelines.pdf

This tells you how to download an ISO for a tool CD. The CD can be burned with disk utility. You need to boot the DOS CD and it will tell you the version of your firmware and offer to update if appropriate.

 

[VirtualRain]

Ouch. Not that it's horrible, but I'd expected a stripe set of a pair would do better than that, especially compared to a single drive.

Quite a difference in the firmware indeed, even if the newer drive is 2x the capacity of one of your G1's (total capacity is equivalent).

My stripe is consistent with 2x the rated performance of the G1 80GB drives which were rated for 220MB/s write and 70MB/s read.

The new G2 firmware increased writes (only on the 160GB drive) almost 50% from 70MB/s to 100MB/s but in day-to-day it's the reads you notice the most. Large writes are generally limited to installing software and even then, only if it's been downloaded to your SSD first otherwise the source media is undoubtedly the bottleneck.

While I would love to have a stripe of the new 160GB drives, that's still over $1K for performance I can probably only measure in benchmarks.

 

[nanofrog]

My stripe is consistent with 2x the rated performance of the G1 80GB drives which were rated for 220MB/s write and 70MB/s read.

The new G2 firmware increased writes (only on the 160GB drive) almost 50% from 70MB/s to 100MB/s but in day-to-day it's the reads you notice the most. Large writes are generally limited to installing software and even then, only if it's been downloaded to your SSD first otherwise the source media is undoubtedly the bottleneck.

While I would love to have a stripe of the new 160GB drives, that's still over $1K for performance I can probably only measure in benchmarks.

I like a narrower margin between read and write performance, and am still more acustomed to mechanical. But that's me. But I do agree for most usage, reads are much higher than writes, and SSD does really well in the area of read performance. Especially for a single drive. Nothing can touch the Intels in this regard.

They did a nice job with the 160 G2, and wasn't aware of it differing much with it's 80GB G2 counterpart (little brother). So I figured a stripe set of a pair of 160 G2's would fly, given the data produced by the single.

 

[spt]

My performance is lower than that of the OP. I also notices that results differ a lot when running xbench multiple times...


Results 258.30
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.1 (10B504)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,5
Drive Type INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC
Disk Test 258.30
Sequential 168.43
Uncached Write 144.65 88.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 138.79 78.53 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 139.17 40.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 408.93 205.53 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 553.86
Uncached Write 698.63 73.96 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 240.15 76.88 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1674.90 11.87 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 971.22 180.22 MB/sec [256K blocks]