Ashura
01-22-09, 08:17 PM
G.Skill's new Titan MLC SSD, which seems to be the same as OCZ's upcoming Apex MLC SSD, has been released with some impressive reviews.
Frankly we’ve been amazed by the G.Skill Titan’s performance through-out our testing. We’d fully expected another SSD in the mould of the single drive controller based drives we looked at last year, showing signs of promise with solid read performance but crippled with poor write speeds.
Instead we’ve been treated to a drive that’s stunningly in almost every circumstance thanks to an innovative solution that solves many of the problems caused by the slower JMicron drive controller.
Write and Copy performance have improved dramatically thanks to the Titan’s use of dual drive controller chips, banishing the problem of drive stuttering we saw on single chip SSDs in write and copy test and delivering performance that’s on par with Intel’s premium X25 drives in almost every circumstance. However, unlike the X25-M, and even worse the X25-E, the Titan isn’t as limited by the small amount of drive space those drives offer, packing in a healthy 256GB, more than enough for a typical operating system boot drive.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/01/20/g-skill-titan-256gb-ssd-review/7
The G.Skill Titan 256 GB SSD consistently performed well. It didn't top all the charts in testing but it performed well all around. Other drives were jumping all around in the charts while the Titan churned out consistently good numbers. Consistent operation across a variety of conditions is a big plus for a drive. We didn't see any transfer numbers that the Titan would have to be ashamed of. Quite the contrary. It pushed numbers that any single drive would love to be able to push.
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1465&pageID=6165
Getting back to the performance, as it really is difficult to ignore even for a second just how fast the G.Skill Titan SATA II 2.5” 128GB SSD really is. When running benchmarks such as PCmark Vantage and HD Tach that only look at read performance, the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD really out-classed the G.Skill Titan, though please keep in mind that this Intel SSD does cost an insane $500 US.
While the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD was incredibly fast when looking at the read performance, its write performance did leave a lot to be desired, particularly when compared to the Titan. Personally, if I had my choice of these two drives there is just no way I would be turning down the G.Skill Titan SATA II 2.5” 128GB SSD, the additional storage capacity and superior write performance just makes it so much better.
Edit: More than a few of you have been concerned with the lack of cache featured on the G.Skill Titan SSD’s. In the past MLC drives that have not been supported by a memory buffer have suffered from a ‘shuddering’ problem which causes the system to constantly hang once the small buffer within the controller is full.
The JMicron 602B controller has been the main culprit, the very controller that is used by the Titan SSD’s. This controller only features a tiny 16KB cache where as the Intel MLC controller scores a much bigger 256KB cache. This shuddering problem is most evident when reading and writing data at the same time.
Extracting a large amount of compressed files while trying to surf the net would be a real-world example of this scenario. However the G.Skill Titan features two JMicron 602B controllers which work in a RAID0 like configuration, and this seems to have solved the shuddering problem, at least as far as we can tell.
For roughly a week now I have been running Windows Vista 64-bit on the G.Skill Titan 128GB SSD, and if I am honest, it is incredible. Previously I was using the Intel X25-M, which was also very good. However there is a noticeable improvement when using the G.Skill Titan 128GB SSD. There is certainly no delay at all, and I have never seen a Core i7 965 Extreme Edition system move with such incredible pace - almost everything is instant!
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=804&p=7
This sounds like the SSD I've been waiting for. I'm currently using a OCZ Core V1 60gb with the SteadyState fix, but as I've mentioned here before the long reboot times and the limited space required for SteadyState have been more than a little annoying. I was planning on getting OCZ's Vertex 60gb whenever it came out, but considering the Titan already has superb performance and at $50 more (based on newegg's price on the 128gb Titan and zipzoomfly's price on the 60gb Vertex) about twice as much space, I've decided to bite the bullet and purchase the 128gb Titan.
(for anyone interested, expect to see a cheap OCZ Core V1 drive in classifieds soon ;))
Frankly we’ve been amazed by the G.Skill Titan’s performance through-out our testing. We’d fully expected another SSD in the mould of the single drive controller based drives we looked at last year, showing signs of promise with solid read performance but crippled with poor write speeds.
Instead we’ve been treated to a drive that’s stunningly in almost every circumstance thanks to an innovative solution that solves many of the problems caused by the slower JMicron drive controller.
Write and Copy performance have improved dramatically thanks to the Titan’s use of dual drive controller chips, banishing the problem of drive stuttering we saw on single chip SSDs in write and copy test and delivering performance that’s on par with Intel’s premium X25 drives in almost every circumstance. However, unlike the X25-M, and even worse the X25-E, the Titan isn’t as limited by the small amount of drive space those drives offer, packing in a healthy 256GB, more than enough for a typical operating system boot drive.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/01/20/g-skill-titan-256gb-ssd-review/7
The G.Skill Titan 256 GB SSD consistently performed well. It didn't top all the charts in testing but it performed well all around. Other drives were jumping all around in the charts while the Titan churned out consistently good numbers. Consistent operation across a variety of conditions is a big plus for a drive. We didn't see any transfer numbers that the Titan would have to be ashamed of. Quite the contrary. It pushed numbers that any single drive would love to be able to push.
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1465&pageID=6165
Getting back to the performance, as it really is difficult to ignore even for a second just how fast the G.Skill Titan SATA II 2.5” 128GB SSD really is. When running benchmarks such as PCmark Vantage and HD Tach that only look at read performance, the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD really out-classed the G.Skill Titan, though please keep in mind that this Intel SSD does cost an insane $500 US.
While the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD was incredibly fast when looking at the read performance, its write performance did leave a lot to be desired, particularly when compared to the Titan. Personally, if I had my choice of these two drives there is just no way I would be turning down the G.Skill Titan SATA II 2.5” 128GB SSD, the additional storage capacity and superior write performance just makes it so much better.
Edit: More than a few of you have been concerned with the lack of cache featured on the G.Skill Titan SSD’s. In the past MLC drives that have not been supported by a memory buffer have suffered from a ‘shuddering’ problem which causes the system to constantly hang once the small buffer within the controller is full.
The JMicron 602B controller has been the main culprit, the very controller that is used by the Titan SSD’s. This controller only features a tiny 16KB cache where as the Intel MLC controller scores a much bigger 256KB cache. This shuddering problem is most evident when reading and writing data at the same time.
Extracting a large amount of compressed files while trying to surf the net would be a real-world example of this scenario. However the G.Skill Titan features two JMicron 602B controllers which work in a RAID0 like configuration, and this seems to have solved the shuddering problem, at least as far as we can tell.
For roughly a week now I have been running Windows Vista 64-bit on the G.Skill Titan 128GB SSD, and if I am honest, it is incredible. Previously I was using the Intel X25-M, which was also very good. However there is a noticeable improvement when using the G.Skill Titan 128GB SSD. There is certainly no delay at all, and I have never seen a Core i7 965 Extreme Edition system move with such incredible pace - almost everything is instant!
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=804&p=7
This sounds like the SSD I've been waiting for. I'm currently using a OCZ Core V1 60gb with the SteadyState fix, but as I've mentioned here before the long reboot times and the limited space required for SteadyState have been more than a little annoying. I was planning on getting OCZ's Vertex 60gb whenever it came out, but considering the Titan already has superb performance and at $50 more (based on newegg's price on the 128gb Titan and zipzoomfly's price on the 60gb Vertex) about twice as much space, I've decided to bite the bullet and purchase the 128gb Titan.
(for anyone interested, expect to see a cheap OCZ Core V1 drive in classifieds soon ;))