Shortly after posting my last benchmarks on the dual OCZ Vertex 120GB in Raid 0 setup, I received an e-mail to try the new Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) 9.6.0.1014 drivers, which were supposed to enable TRIM in raid. These new drivers were released, taken down, then re-released in March 2010. The big improvement was supposed to be TRIM is enabled for Raid 0, 1, 10, but not enabled for Raid 5. Unfortuneately, this seems not to be working so the best that can be done is the background garbage collection in firmware v1.5 for OCZ’s Indilinx based SSDs. Since I am only working with two 120GB drives at the moment, I decided to give them a shot. Just for reference, the original benchmarks were done with the standard, off the shelf, Windows 7 64-bit RTM drivers.
To save page load times the WEI scores stayed the same as before at 7.7.
The ATTO benchmark Numbers went through the roof from:
To (with the new Intel RST drivers):
The setups read speeds look significantly better, both in the lower end 4K to 128K range, but also the max speed. It is over 100MB/s higher! Also of note, the write speeds now cap at around 375MB/s for some reason. I did think this was a bit odd since 3.0GB/s / 8 (bits/byte) = 375MB/s. I have run a lot of ATTO benchmarks and it is slightly odd to see 375,434 repeated in four of the last five tests, especially at 375MB/s. It is probably just an anomoly since there is no reason that an ICH10R with two 3.0gbps links to two drives would be limited to 3.0gbps just on writes. Funny nonetheless. On to CrystalDiskMark old numbers:
Not bad but with the new Intel RST Drivers:
I am actually a bit mixed on this one. First off, the sequential reads are considerably higher… to the tune of over 200MB/s. That is a huge performance gain. The 512K numbers are now a bit disappointing as are the 4K read numbers. At the end of the day, although the numbers are much higher, I am not seeing a real world performance benefit from raid 0. I think having TRIM enabled in Raid 0 is a big benefit so I will make an update once there is a working, stable Intel RST release with TRIM enabled for raid 0, 1, and 10.
In case you were looking for them here is a link to the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) 9.6.0.1014 drivers.
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Mixed results with the new driver. I wonder what exactly they changed. I’m pretty sure in the next release TRIM is going to be supported.
No money so I haven’t bought an SSD yet, how much difference did it make switching from HDD to SSD, SSD to SSD raid 0, HDD to SSD raid 0?
HD -> SSD was a big difference (not so much from the 8x Savvio 15k.1 raid 5 array, but very much so on other systems). It isn’t like going from a 3 year old video card to a new one, or a Pentium M to a Core i7, but daily usage it is noticible to the point that I can’t go back.
SSD -> SSD Raid 0 no real world performance difference
HD -> SSD Raid 0 would be really huge. You are talking minimum 5x the performance of a 7200rpm disk so that would be very noticible.
I still am a firm believer in SSD(s) for Apps/ OS and spindle disks for media/ data.
yeah I think I’m going to end up buying some 64GB SSD or 2x 30GB SSD eventually. It’s still a high price to pay just to see the responsiveness of the OS to be a little quicker. I want sub $100 64GB SSDs damnit!
I saw almost identical results as you (no surprise, with identical hardware) so it’s nice to know I’m where I should be.
I keep going back and forth between Trim/GC vs No trim/GC with these. I’ve left mine in RAID 0 for now – certainly isn’t any worse – and I leave my PC idle during the day when I’m at work, and thus I wonder if GC will be enough or if I’ll really start to miss Trim support in a few weeks.
Living on the cutting edge sure is fun. I can’t imagine this is going to be a problem with SSD’s two or three years from now.
Bubba:
As long as you’re on FW 1.5 your drives will be just fine with GC alone. The GC is MUCH more aggressive in 1.5 than previous FW, and the wear leveling algorithm is even more improved, and both of those are independent of your choice of storage mode.
Regards,
tweak
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