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Vertex 3 SSD KILLING battery life!?

D

DarkFlame

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 21, 2007
205
0
Anyone noticed? Anand said that its pulling about 2W at idle, while other drives pull as low as .8W. This may get fixed w/ a hardware revision but I'm pretty dissapointed as I figured an SSDs were suppossed to be great w/ batter consumption.

Thoughts?
 
Ya, that is information from the beta version of the drive. Storage Review just finished testing the shipping version and they reported much lower idle power at only 1.12 watts. Comparing this to a standard 2.5" notebook drive shows overall a lot less power consumption.

Momentus 5400.6 SATA 3Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive
Code: 
5V start max current	5.0w
Average idle power	1.40W
Average operating power	1.78W
Average seek power	1.54W

Vertex 3 \ OWC

Code: 
5V start max current	1.0w
Average idle power	1.12W
Average operating power	1.83-2.07W
Average seek power	n\a

When looking at these numbers its important to remember that this SSD will complete its operations much faster than a mechanical hard drive. So, it will spend less time operating and more time idling. So, overall power consumption will be lower. Its probably not enough to impact your battery one way or the other though.
 
I wonder if there is a way to translate this to real usage. As in, how many minutes off a full charge did adding my ssd cause?
 
One should be fair and post all of the momentus power states.
The lowest is actually closer to around 0.8W idle.
Almost all hdds are around 0.7-0.95 W in idle. 1.4W is only in active idle which is state where it is not actually doing something but for the sake of response time didn't immediately enter the lowest power state once it finished some work. It is not what most people would call idle.

And the OWC shows the power consumption you put in your post. Their is no proof yet that the vertex 3 got a new firmware upgrade that fixed its numbers too.

@DarkFlame
I would look for firmware upgrades. You can only test it before and after.
Either with a specific benchmark like battery eater/reader or if you just install istat and watch the power draw.
 
I really wanted to make a new thread but for now, will add to this. I am having similar issues with the vertex 3 on battery life. I am getting at least an hour difference in battery life with my other other OWC ssd. Plus what really was aggravating me was with the heat. When I watched a youtube video with the Vertex 3, using smcfan control, the temperature was going all the way up to 80 degrees Celsius. When I use the OWC, the temperature stays at a normal 38-42 degrees. I don't know why it is doing that. Anyone else having the same issues? It's too bad, I noticed the difference in speed between the two SSD's but I hate the extra heat.
 
nygfan80 said:
I really wanted to make a new thread but for now, will add to this. I am having similar issues with the vertex 3 on battery life. I am getting at least an hour difference in battery life with my other other OWC ssd. Plus what really was aggravating me was with the heat. When I watched a youtube video with the Vertex 3, using smcfan control, the temperature was going all the way up to 80 degrees Celsius. When I use the OWC, the temperature stays at a normal 38-42 degrees. I don't know why it is doing that. Anyone else having the same issues? It's too bad, I noticed the difference in speed between the two SSD's but I hate the extra heat.
Click to expand...

what temp are you referring to? SSD? CPU?
 
I know we're talking about a very small amount of watts here, but even the perception of the new Sandforce drives being more power hungry than the other SSDs kind of scared me off. For those of us that don't need enthusiast type performance, but want the speed and durability of a SSD for normal usage it doesn't make sense to take a hit on battery life with a Sandforce drive when there are other options available that don't seem to have the same perceived power consumption.
 
also a better comparison would be to use a 7200rpm drive instead of the 5400rpm drive. For those of us to whom performance matters, we are more likely to go with a 7.2k drive in most cases.
 
kobyh15 said:
I know we're talking about a very small amount of watts here, but even the perception of the new Sandforce drives being more power hungry than the other SSDs kind of scared me off. For those of us that don't need enthusiast type performance, but want the speed and durability of a SSD for normal usage it doesn't make sense to take a hit on battery life with a Sandforce drive when there are other options available that don't seem to have the same perceived power consumption.
Click to expand...

So it's pretty much the sandforce drives being more power hungry? That's quite aggravating since I am not really getting much of an upgrade on writing and reading speeds. You think they would be less power hungry.
 
nygfan80 said:
So it's pretty much the sandforce drives being more power hungry? That's quite aggravating since I am not really getting much of an upgrade on writing and reading speeds. You think they would be less power hungry.
Click to expand...

It's about how much power the chips and controller need, not the speed.
 
DarkFlame said:
Anyone noticed? Anand said that its pulling about 2W at idle, while other drives pull as low as .8W. This may get fixed w/ a hardware revision but I'm pretty dissapointed as I figured an SSDs were suppossed to be great w/ batter consumption.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I have 2 x Vertex 3 240GB in RAID 0 configuration in my 2.2 15" and my battery life is still about 5-5.5hrs.
 
SpitUK said:
Wow, GB per second hard drive speed :eek:
Click to expand...

Sadly not, got the crippled 3Gbps optical bay port. That'll teach me to be an early adopter. Going to buy a more recent build soon (and return, rinse repeat, until I get one with twin 6Gbps ports) and sell this one.
 
JasonH42 said:
Sadly not, got the crippled 3Gbps optical bay port. That'll teach me to be an early adopter. Going to buy a more recent build soon (and return, rinse repeat, until I get one with twin 6Gbps ports) and sell this one.
Click to expand...



Arn't they ALL 1 sata3 and 1 sata2?
 
Anand put a new article online that shows that the Vertex 3 idle power is afterall in line with the competition. 1W.
That is certainly not exceptional and worse than the older ssds or the really good idle power ssds but the Intel 510 is no better. Only the Curial m4 is better than its predecessor but the C300 was pretty bad so it is only as good as the old SF 1200.

Anand says there was a problem with the early sample they had but there is no word of it being a firmware bug or something. Either way those who think their vertex 3 might suck to much power should do a firmware upgrade.

Still with 1W it looks like they don't care enough for notebook users yet. That is better than a power hungry momentus XT but worse than most older SSDs and pretty much any 2,5" drive aside form the 10k.
A hdd has afaik 5 power states an SSD only 2 (idle/active) they should introduce some third (sleep). The wakup time of sleep can still be way faster than any idle hdd can move its head but they could get idle power down to 0.1W or something. Maybe SSD controller designers don't have the knowhow of the Intel CPU folk and this whole sleep wake up C1-6 state business is too difficult than its value for consumers.
 
dusk007 said:
Anand put a new article online that shows that the Vertex 3 idle power is afterall in line with the competition. 1W.
That is certainly not exceptional and worse than the older ssds or the really good idle power ssds but the Intel 510 is no better. Only the Curial m4 is better than its predecessor but the C300 was pretty bad so it is only as good as the old SF 1200.

Anand says there was a problem with the early sample they had but there is no word of it being a firmware bug or something. Either way those who think their vertex 3 might suck to much power should do a firmware upgrade.

Still with 1W it looks like they don't care enough for notebook users yet. That is better than a power hungry momentus XT but worse than most older SSDs and pretty much any 2,5" drive aside form the 10k.
A hdd has afaik 5 power states an SSD only 2 (idle/active) they should introduce some third (sleep). The wakup time of sleep can still be way faster than any idle hdd can move its head but they could get idle power down to 0.1W or something. Maybe SSD controller designers don't have the knowhow of the Intel CPU folk and this whole sleep wake up C1-6 state business is too difficult than its value for consumers.
Click to expand...

I don't think there is a firmware update as of now.
 
This sucks, I wish there was something I could do to increase battery life. Does spinning down the OEM drive (now in the optibay) really improve overall battery life? I'm going on a long trip and am trying to figure out ways to preserve the most battery life possible.
 
Does anyone know if the new firmware upgrades for the Vertex 3 decrease battery consumption and/or reduces CPU heat temps? I am wary to upgrade because my system has been running perfectly but this might make it worth it.
 
darkflame said:
does anyone know if the new firmware upgrades for the vertex 3 decrease battery consumption and/or reduces cpu heat temps? I am wary to upgrade because my system has been running perfectly but this might make it worth it.
Click to expand...

bump...
 
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