Bench: SSD Raid vs V-Raptor vs WD-Green Raid

S

skypine27

Gawd
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Apr 18, 2008
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Just felt like throwing these benchs from my system out there.

2 x Corsair P128 SSD Raid0 vs 1 x 300 TB V-Raptor vs 3 x 2TB WD-"Green" Raid0



 
You just click on them

PS. Sorry about the webhost, might give you some strange cookies!
 
errr I think you might need to tweak some raid settings because all 3 of those are pretty low.

my own two Gskill Falcon 64GB's (Indilinx controller), RAID-0, ICH9R:
400MBs.jpg


believe it or not dispite the funky shape thats the shape that it keeps repeating. I havnt checked my partition allignment yet but presumablt thats not going to make a huge difference.
 
Wow, I wonder what differences we have between our SSD raids?

Mine is set up with 64K blocks (not going to change that, dont feel like reinstalling Windows)

Im running Windows 7 64 Bit.
I have the page file set to run also on the C: drive (my SSD Raid0), Windows Managed Size.
I have Write caching enabled, but the 2nd check box un-checked (ie Turn Off Write Cache Buffer Flush is NOT checked)

What do you have?
 
128k blocks,
win 7 RC 64bit,
page file is on on my raid array, 4GB big;

I think your problem is with write caching. After installing windows with the raid drivers I turned write cache off in windows storage manager and back on in IMSM, and my reads went from 150MB/s to... well what you see in the above pic.
 
Intel Matrix Storage Manager

User windows GUI/utility for your drives. (Assuming you have them attached to the Intel ports)
 
I so cant wait for the day that 256gb SSD's are in the 150 to 200 tops range.
 
Does this apply to those of us using intel SSD's not in a raid configuration? (just 1 drive here) still turn off write caching and enable it in another utility?
 
VulcaN, yes, but I doubt you'll notice any difference in speed with a single drive. Though, I could be wrong. :p
 
Ah looks like you were incorrect! I disabled write caching in windows, installed IMSM only to find out that for a single drive there is no option in IMSM to enable write caching! Only for raid volumes.

So I turned it back on in windows. I ran HD Tach when it was off and there was a dip in performance around the 60GB mark in the graph but other than that it was the same.
 
Try this one (if you are running win 7)

run the Windows Assment and pay attention the hard drive score.

With write caching turned off in Windows, but turned on in IMSM (and yes, like you said, IMSM is for Raid setups only), my Windows Score was lower than before.

I ended up turning OFF everything in IMSM and turning it back on in Windows, and after re-running HD-Tach, the benchmarks are the same as with using IMSM.

Summary, I dont think there is any benefit to IMSM:

HD-Tach
SSD Raid0
Write Caching ON (in windows)
Write Cache Flush Off (In windows)

ssdtest.jpg
 
VulcaN said:
Ah looks like you were incorrect! I disabled write caching in windows, installed IMSM only to find out that for a single drive there is no option in IMSM to enable write caching! Only for raid volumes.

So I turned it back on in windows. I ran HD Tach when it was off and there was a dip in performance around the 60GB mark in the graph but other than that it was the same.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction!
 
Anyone have an opinion on if there is much noticeable performance difference between 2 x Velociraptors in RAID0 and 2 x WD Caviar Black 640GB in RAID0? For gaming, photo editing, etc.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
errr I think you might need to tweak some raid settings because all 3 of those are pretty low.

my own two Gskill Falcon 64GB's (Indilinx controller), RAID-0, ICH9R:
Image snip...................

believe it or not dispite the funky shape thats the shape that it keeps repeating. I havnt checked my partition allignment yet but presumablt thats not going to make a huge difference.
Click to expand...

Wow, I just disabled write caching in Windows and then re-enabled it in the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. I went from about 475MB a second to this:

HDTachQuickBenchSSD01.gif


I'm using two Intel X25-M 80GB drives in RAID-0. (Generation 1 drives.)
 
Dan D:

I noticed the same thing the first time I did what you did.

BUT:

Now, disable write caching in IMSM, and then renable it in Windows and run the bench

You will be surprised...
 
skypine27 said:
Dan D:

I noticed the same thing the first time I did what you did.

BUT:

Now, disable write caching in IMSM, and then renable it in Windows and run the bench

You will be surprised...
Click to expand...

Will it drop or jump up in performance again?

On that note my system felt snappier than it was before I started messing with the cach settings.
 
Here's a close comparison.

WD 640Gb Black vs WD 74Gb Raptor vs Intel X25-M G2 80Gb

80gb-ssd.gif


Note: on WinXP SP3 in Enhanced IDE mode, not AHCI.

Motherboard: P5K-E
 
Last edited:
C-rizzle said:
Here's a close comparison.

WD 640Gb Black vs WD 74Gb Raptor vs Intel X25-M G2 80Gb

Image snip................

Note: on WinXP SP3 in Enhanced IDE mode, not AHCI.

Motherboard: P5K-E
Click to expand...

IDE vs. AHCI won't impact performance at all. I've tested that many times.
 
Yeah its IMSM's caching definately makes things a whole lot faster. Having gone from an old 500GB barricuda, to a single falcon SSD, to two falcon SSDs without IMSM's cachine turned on, and finally going to 2 falcon SSD's with caching turned on, in quick sucession, I can tell you this setup I've got now is substantially faster than the three previous.

My friends "pre-load" before they join any games. They'll launch left4dead, start their own hosted game (which moves resources into memory presumably), and then we'll look for a game that we can all play. My little C2D raid0 system, reading these resources for the first time off these two SSD's, is faster than all of these preloading people's.

Intrestingly enough, windows 7 boot time is, as Kyle and Dan's raid article suggest, slower than booting from a single SSD (even if you substract bios and raid-setup time out of the total boot time), and loading from desktop to the L4D title screen is just as fast on this system as it was on the old barricuda.
 
Thanks to this thread, I got my Intel 80GB G2 setup working at top performance. :D

SSDRaid.jpg


It was only doing 253MB/s before making the write caching change.
 
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