Supertalent SSD masterdrive MX/DX

[Brian@EWIZ]

these are benchmarks of the new supertalent masterdrive DX series 60GB and masterdrive MX series 120GB VS seagate momentus 250GB 5400rpm. done on a ASUS M50SVB1 notebook.

These drives are called SLC for single layer cell and MLC for multi level cell. DX=slc and MX=mlc

NEAT VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LyVLfCtJaA

HD TUNE: (Read speed only)
Stock(seagate)
http://media5.dropshots.com/photos/466637/20080408/154202.jpg

Supertalent SSD 32GB old version
http://media5.dropshots.com/photos/466637/20080409/092333.jpg

Supertalent SSD 60GB rated at 120/70MB/s This SSD repeatedly surpassed the advertised Transfer rate by 21.4MB/s.
http://media5.dropshots.com/photos/466637/20080519/111626.jpg

Supertalent SSD 120GB rated at 120/40MB/s This SSD repeatedly surpassed the advertised Transfer rate by 21.9MB/s, this is the fastest harddisk performance I’ve seen in a notebook to date.
http://media3.dropshots.com/photos/466637/20080519/111627.jpg

Average read rate that i benched 92 and 130

3dmark scores06
3752-Stock
3730-stock w/ Supertalent SSD 120GB
3724-Stock w/ Supertalent SSD 32GB
3723-stock w/ Supertalent SSD 60GB

pcmark05
6657-Stock w/ Supertalent SSD 60GB
6649-Stock w/ Supertalent SSD 120GB
5364-Stock w/ Supertalent SSD 32GB
5256-Stock

i can post pics of benchmark if requested. or just go to the link

pics of the item and additional review on the notebook can be found here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=245793

http://media5.dropshots.com/photos/466637/20080407/130958.jpg
http://media3.dropshots.com/photos/466637/20080407/095409.jpg
http://media5.dropshots.com/photos/466637/20080424/164006.jpg
http://media3.dropshots.com/photos/466637/20080424/164328.jpg
http://media3.dropshots.com/photos/466637/20080407/095634.jpg

[dicecca112]

discount for OC members :)

[thideras]

Oh wow...I'd love to get one of these for my laptop O.o

[nd4spdbh2]

discount for OC members :)

lol that would be nice..

also i think there is a rule that one can not advertise or link back to products on ones own site. dont quote me on that though.

[dicecca112]

lol that would be nice..

also i think there is a rule that one can not advertise or link back to products on ones own site. dont quote me on that though.

I plan on buying it either way, but a little Ecoupon would be nice. I was gonna buy the OCZ, but this thing blows that out of the water, and competes with the Mtrons. I just need to save a little

[Brian@EWIZ]

link deleted, i got permission from a mod to do a promo code for you guys. its in the works probably in 2 weeks.

[dicecca112]

link deleted, i got permission from a mod to do a promo code for you guys. its in the works probably in 2 weeks.

You can expect my order once I get the code, thanks you

[Brian@EWIZ]

expect a coupon in our catalog for the time being

[nd4spdbh2]

link deleted, i got permission from a mod to do a promo code for you guys. its in the works probably in 2 weeks.

nice dude, ocf promo code for ewiz me likie!

[Evilsizer]

you know i always wondered when a EWIZ rep would join the OCF. glad to hear about the coupon!!

[imposter]

Thanks for joining man :)

Impressive bench marks. I will be getting one when ever i buy a laptop for college.

[Evilsizer]

I plan on buying it either way, but a little Ecoupon would be nice. I was gonna buy the OCZ, but this thing blows that out of the water, and competes with the Mtrons. I just need to save a little

how so?
OCZ 32gig 100MB/s read,80MB/S write
OCZ 64gig 100MB/s read,80MB/S write
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636+50001550&name=OCZ+Technology%2c+Inc.
vs
ST 30gig 120read,40write
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609302
ST 60gig 120read,40write
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609303
ST 120gig 120read,40 write
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609304

not what i could call better then OCZ. while the read is faster, its still a fast write speed you need as well. i would gladly take 100/80 over 120/40... still to early in the SSD game to be getting picky. esp since speeds for read/write keep getting faster about every 3months or so.

[thideras]

WOW 120gig for only 650? Prices are dropping fast! :D

[Brian@EWIZ]

the pricing on the 120gig ssd is half the price and max 140mb/s read. is what i got from the benchmark.. havent tested a ocz yet. also these SSD-MLC version are mainly for gaming use where you need fast read speeds. if you need fast write, id rather get a raptor. IMO

[thideras]

the pricing on the 120gig ssd is half the price and max 140mb/s read. is what i got from the benchmark.. havent tested a ocz yet. also these SSD-MLC version are mainly for gaming use where you need fast read speeds. if you need fast write, id rather get a raptor. IMOYou mean it will be half of 640 or that 640 is half of what it should be? :eh?:

[Evilsizer]

Thiddy,
yea man tell me about it.... even now im thinking of getting one for my main OS drive, while the 320seagate is for stoarage.

Brain,
yea thats true on the raptor, you do have me a bit confused now. are you saying the 120gig is a MLC drive with a 120mb read? as for gaming though any SSD would be nice, because of the low latency. i though would prefere a nice mix of both read and write with such a low access time. you will have to excuse me i cant see pics at work as the yare blocked. i will be able to see them in a just a bit,heading home.

[Brian@EWIZ]

650 is half of what it used to be and comparing it to a ocz its almost half the price for double the memory and faster for the 120GIG. SSD used to be in the $1k-$3k range these Supertalent ones are the cheapest and fastest ive seen around so far.. waiting for mtron and possibly samsung to come out with something competitive.

[thideras]

640 is half of what it used to be and comparing it to a ocz its almost half the price for double the memory and faster. SSD used to be in the $1k-$3k range these Supertalent ones are the cheapest and fastest ive seen around so far.. waiting for mtron and possibly samsung to come out with something competitive.I'm liking this so far :)

Can't believe SSD's have already bypassed my laptop in speed, performance and size:screwy:

All that is left is price :beer:

[Brian@EWIZ]

the SLC is 120/70 read write.. the MLC is 120/40read write. this is what supertalent rated it at. but when i benched it, it was rated at 140 read max for both slc and mlc. this translates to really really really fast compared to anything ive read or tested on. MLC is the cheaper choice to go. for gamers you mainly want read speed. and low access time. and suprisingly the avg read rate on the MLC was way faster than the SLC for some odd reason and faster than supertalents max rated speeds.

[MadMan007]

2 years til mainstream SSD, hoping for 2 in RAID0 for blazing transfer rates and access times :D What size will mechanical drives be by that time? :o

[dicecca112]

how so?
OCZ 32gig 100MB/s read,80MB/S write
OCZ 64gig 100MB/s read,80MB/S write
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636+50001550&name=OCZ+Technology%2c+Inc.
vs
ST 30gig 120read,40write
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609302
ST 60gig 120read,40write
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609303
ST 120gig 120read,40 write
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609304

not what i could call better then OCZ. while the read is faster, its still a fast write speed you need as well. i would gladly take 100/80 over 120/40... still to early in the SSD game to be getting picky. esp since speeds for read/write keep getting faster about every 3months or so.

Check the reviews for the OCZ, they don't bench up to the specs

[Brian@EWIZ]

shake test

[Shiggity]

mmmm price competition

[dicecca112]

brian when are you guys gonna have the 120s in stock? I don't see them on the site yet. Newegg is says 5/26 for them

[Brian@EWIZ]

this week

[MadMan007]

You need to make eWiz buy you the 'pro' software licenses that can do reads and writes. Some application tests would really bring the review to the next level too.

[Brian@EWIZ]

yea im pushing them to get it for me.

[dicecca112]

just got the 120/40 60mb version, its awesome, and I gotta say well worth the price I payed. My benchmarks are almost exact as the ones Brian posted here. It was nice for once to see reviews and real world number sync up.

[Brian@EWIZ]

what setup did you do the benchmark at? im wondering why others have gotten low numbers. good to see that im not the only one with high numbers =] could be possibly to a old computer setup. possibly sata1? mine was done on a very new and fast notebook with sata2

[dicecca112]

Same with me, its running in a Dell 1520.

[Evilsizer]

Brain,
anychance for some raid 0 testing? on say a ICH9R setup?

[Brian@EWIZ]

brian*

i dont have time right now to do that testing because i would 1 have to test it on my personal rig or build a rig here to test it. and that requires me to open up a few more SSD. but if i get the chance to do it and the budget, then i will surely do it.

[Evilsizer]

ok cool, thanks! sorry got the "ia" backwards...

[chawks2]

Will post findings on my ICH9R by the end of this week, just a single drive.

[chawks2]

I must have a lemon, or ST is trying to sneak 60G performance in a 120G package. Boo. Or does it not play well with the ICH9R chipset?

I am reading this properly, correct?:screwy:

http://www.chawks2.com/images/Puter/ST.SSD.120G.jpg

[Evilsizer]

i wonder if that is the same problem that Dom ran into a while back with his Mtron review. something to do with the drivers and limiting bandwidth on SSD's. your burst should be much higher then that....

[chawks2]

Benchmark Reviews is aware that all Intel ICH9 and ICH9R chipsets which come on the 3 and 4 series motherboards exhibit a bandwidth limit defect on SSD's of approximately 80MBps when not operating in AHCI mode (BIOS configuration).

Bummer. Will test with the AHCI driver. UGH. :bang head

[Brian@EWIZ]

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=326

i havent tested it personally so i cant tell you first hand.
all MX drives are rated at 120/40 all DX are rated at 120/70

[Evilsizer]

yea dom got around the issue by using a addon raid card. though he was testing alot of those ssd's. im just wondering if we can use these OCZ's in raid and see the same gains like dom did.

[chawks2]

Tried AHCI mode and there was no change in performance. I will be opening a dialog with Super*Talent.


:temper:

[Evilsizer]

chawks,
did you do a full reformat and install the ahci drivers at low leve windows install? if not i think this is the issue. dom did the same thing and performance was up, just make sure you have the newest AHCI drivers from intel.

[eva2000]

I must have a lemon, or ST is trying to sneak 60G performance in a 120G package. Boo. Or does it not play well with the ICH9R chipset?

I am reading this properly, correct?:screwy:

http://www.chawks2.com/images/Puter/ST.SSD.120G.jpg[/img] which board is that on ??

brian*

i dont have time right now to do that testing because i would 1 have to test it on my personal rig or build a rig here to test it. and that requires me to open up a few more SSD. but if i get the chance to do it and the budget, then i will surely do it.

Waves at Brian yes it's me from notebookreview forums - still deciding on which model and quantities of these to get :D

[Brian@EWIZ]

should test it on a non raid setup. just to make sure your ssd numbers are normal first. then do your raid.

[Evilsizer]

Brian,
any word on the promocode for OCF?

[Brian@EWIZ]

pmed you

[Evilsizer]

thankyou sir! :thup:

[chawks2]

which board is that on ??

Maximus "Rampage" Formula, ICH9R chipset.

chawks,
did you do a full reformat and install the ahci drivers at low leve windows install? ...just make sure you have the newest AHCI drivers from intel.

Will do both. I emailed Super Talent support and they claim my results are within spec. I strongly disagree with them, so we'll see if they read my email this time around.

[chawks2]

make sure you have the newest AHCI drivers from intel.

Awaiting a followup response from ST.

Upgraded AHCI drivers dated 5/7/2008, same performance level.

Will try and rebuild the Windows installation with these AHCI drivers. :rolleyes:

[chawks2]

Tried ICH9R on Maximus Formula & P5K64 WS. Both displayed the exact same performance, whether you upgraded the driver OR did a reinstall from scratch. Can anyone say, refund?

[Evilsizer]

old thread maybe worth reading..
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=530580

another thought if your tring to test raid-0 use the onboard "jmicron controller" as it doesnt have the MB/s limit the ICHxR has.

[chawks2]

The thought crossed my mind for about 2s, then I heard, REFUND. :D I'll come back to SSD, just not the right time.

[Evilsizer]

WUSS!!!! :P just messin, i wouldnt give up so easy Chawks.

i got one coming to me for my Atom build, o man this is gonna be a fun weekend! plus my Bday is june 9th, hopfully i can get that day and the 10th off for work. would be perfect!

[Brolloks]

Would love to get a pair of 60's or a 120 :rolleyes:

[chawks2]

Good luck with the Atom PC, plz post results MUCHO interested. :thup:

[Evilsizer]

Would love to get a pair of 60's or a 120 :rolleyes:
o man a raid-0 setup on the jmicron or HW raid card would be perfect for 2 60's!
Good luck with the Atom PC, plz post results MUCHO interested. :thup:
o you bet i will be, keep your eye's and fingers ready!! put the plastic cover over the keyboard first though. you might kill it! :P

[Brolloks]

o man a raid-0 setup on the jmicron or HW raid card would be perfect for 2 60's!



My thoughts exactly...now why the heck did I go start reading this thread:bang head You know what this mean right?

[Evilsizer]

My thoughts exactly...now why the heck did I go start reading this thread:bang head You know what this mean right?

higher benching scores!?!?

[chawks2]

>:NOT SO FAST:<

I was successfully able to get this drive to work on the JMicron controller of a ASUS P5K64WS, BUT I really had a hard time with this drive. I rebuilt the drive ~8X (x64 Vista/XPSP2). I had corruption with the file system 2 of those 8 times. 3 separate occasions, the drive halted during installation. One of those 2 x 8X was on the JMicron, the other behavior was all on the ICH9R.


Here is the JMicron controller:

http://www.chawks2.com/images/Puter/SSD.JMicron.jpg

[Evilsizer]

hmm, now your starting to make me wonder just a bit. i wonder if there might be something wrong with the firmware on the drive. i will be able to report sometime next week, as my drive should be shipping out tomorrow or the day after.

[chawks2]

The above SS was a mistake, I just realized I had the BIOS on RAID and not AHCI for the JMicron port. Unfortunately, once you invoke RAID, ports 5-6 are on the Intel controller, this is consistent with the SS above.

I have tried to build this drive approximately 5X so far with x64 Vista on the JMicron with no success. Sometimes I get through the entire installation, put in my user information, reboot and it comes up with, "you need to use your repair disk". Sometimes I get, "invalid media device", "chkdsk has discovered errors", "unable to boot from device - 0xc00067b" (will write down exact error code).

I will keep trying to build the drive on Port 6 instead of port 5. Will update asap. I truly believe this drive is a lemon. Can not imagine there being this many problems with rebuilding an SSD drive.

:argue:

EDIT

Suddenly, I'm getting the follow message in x64 Vista, "The computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk.
Ensure the disk's controller is enabled in the BIOS"

This happened after my 7th attempt and continues to throw the same error message. Will attempt to write zeros to the drive AGAIN.

EDIT #2
Drive is dead.

[Stilletto]

This just sounds like too much trouble to me. From what I have seen so far, I'll stick with the VRaptor:beer:

[Evilsizer]

wow chawks just saw your edit that really blows man, sorry to hear that..

[chawks2]

New drive arrives on Wed. Will post my thoughts on the next one. ;)

[Evilsizer]

New drive arrives on Wed. Will post my thoughts on the next one. ;)

rma or what?

[Buckeye]

Just gonna throw this out there as I am not sure if you have tried this, maybe I missed it in the posts before.

Have you tried to update your MB BIOS to the latest ?

On my EVGA 790i Ultra MB I had all kinds of problems getting my ARC-1231 and the 8x 32GB MTRON PRO's to work. Everything from the 8th SSD not being seen by the ARC or Hot Spare issues. I finally updated my BIOS to the latest and used Vista Ultimate 64 and bingo everything worked fine.

This was just a thought :)

[chawks2]

rma or what?

Replacement from the Eggshell.

[Cas2]

Apart from the problems some of you are having, how do you like these ST drives?

I got a Raptor back when the 36's first came out, and I remember being truly impressed. After getting used to the Raptor I got annoyed working on computers with slow 7200 rpm drives. Is this the same kind of "snappy" feeling upgrade over Raptors or is there a catch?

I use my computer mainly for programming and productivity, so what I find most interesting about these drives is the low latency, not so much the raw transfer rates. From the benchmarks I've seen the Super Talent drives come in around 0.3-0.5 ms. The new OCZ and the Mtrons are <0.1, is this a noticeable difference?

I guess what I'm really asking is whether or not getting 2x30 GB in RAID 0 will provide a significantly more "snappy" system than with Raptors? If some of you with hands on experience with the ST drives could try to describe the everyday situations in which the ssd/hdd difference becomes clear, I would really appreciate it ..

[Evilsizer]

yes the SSD's will be much quicker then the raptors for loading up windows and games. i think the major downfall atm with ssd's is taking I/O's like a web/server load. if that is the case then raptors would better with web/server type load.

[MadMan007]

SSDs are way better at server I/O transaction rate too since that's based upon access time.

Cas2 - A general rule of thumb is that RAID will help STR which is for large file transfers, for general snappiness access time is what matters and that applies to all programs but especially for general productivity versus working with large files such as media files. With SSDs you almost might as well get two and RAID0 them since SSD pricing scales pretty much linearly with capacity.

As for chawks problems it's probably due to ICH9R problems as has been hinted. I wonder if ICH10R fixes that, it would definitely be a reason to choose a P45 board if the other reasons such as two graphics card use doesn't matter. At the same time I know some Asus boards had issues with certain regular drives in RAID, BIOS updates may have fixed it but later board revisions did too.

[chawks2]

2nd drive exhibits similar problems on the JMicron controller. Refund time. Anyone get these drives working with ICH9 chipset, without the Intel "bs" throttling?

[Evilsizer]

Brian,
you still with us? i tried to email you a bit ago but it came back as failed...

[Cas2]

I will be installing 2 of the 30 gig drives in raid 0 this weekend. From what I read ICH9R should work fine with the latest drivers. I will post my findings sometime during the weekend ...

[chawks2]

ICH9 does not work fine w/ the latest drivers. Save yourself time and purchase a RAID card if you want to use these drives.

[Cas2]

I know you're having problems, but I also read about other people who run SSD's just fine off their ICH9R motherboards with the lastest drivers, so I might as well try it out. I will post my findings once I've tried it out ...

[chawks2]

The drive will work. I used the latest drivers, I read the same reviews about some ppl getting it to work. The problem is your drives will be throttled and will be unable to pass a certain barrier. The other ppl you speak of are on crack.

Looking forward to your results, but unfortunately I am extremely skeptical. Here is an email from SSD themselves:



The 110MB/sec read speed you’re getting is typical for the FTM20GK25H. We rate it at 120MB/sec sequential read (max), so there’s nothing unusual about your performance. Performance will vary depending on your hardware (CPU, mobo, chipset), and depending on what benchmark program you use. Note that 110MB/sec is still faster than just about any hard drive you’ll find.

Joe James

Super Talent

[Cas2]

If I can it get it to, say, 200 read / 70 write in raid 0 I will be perfectly happy. I seems like the issue could be bios/motherboard specific, so I might as well give it a try ...

I've seen a lot of posts like this one and can't see any particular reason why so many people would be lying:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=83&threadid=2163248&enterthread=y

[Cas2]

Ok ... So I got these babies tested and got them up and running in RAID 0 with an image of my old XP installation.

Nothing turned out too surprising when comparing to Chawks benchmarks. My single disk benchmarks were slightly below those of Chawk, so we're pretty much looking at perfect raid scaling.

I run them off an Asus p5b deluxe, which I thought was ICH9, but only is ICH8. I tried running a single drive off the onboard JMicron controller in IDE and AHCI mode, but the result were absolutely identical to a single drive on the Intel controller in RAID mode.

I always liked real-life benchmarks, so I timed a couple of everyday tasks running off the same XP image on these babies and 2x36 Raptors(Defragged offcourse). I didn't exactly time it, but booting my rather old windows installation doesn't seem much faster.

Searching the entire disk for *.exe : Speedup 4.7 x
Loading different Crysis savepoints : Speedup >2.2 x
Opening my mail client with a huge mail box : Speedup 3.2 x
Searching for e-mail : Speedup 1.9 x

[chawks2]

..Asus p5b deluxe, which I thought was ICH9, but only is ICH8.

There are no problems, which I am aware of with the ICH8. :D:thup:

Glad to hear of your success!

[steadvex]

yes the SSD's will be much quicker then the raptors for loading up windows and games. i think the major downfall atm with ssd's is taking I/O's like a web/server load. if that is the case then raptors would better with web/server type load.

I find a CF card with IDE adapter is much 'snappier' than a regular HD..i'd guess these definatly have the snappy feel!

[Evilsizer]

well the CF is basicly a SSD in this instance, since they have no moving parts access time is really fast.