Mtron 16GB Solid State Drive vs. WD Raptor 150. MY REVIEW

[ancalime]

I'd like to see some godly PCMark scores too. Post em up dom!

It is more the matter of "beating a dead horse" and simply accepting the fact is has been pointed out 50 million times and it doesnt need to be repeated yet again, i often dont see why people feel the need to repeat what has already been said as if them saying it makes it any more diff.

+1

 

[Foxie3a]

The opposite is actually correct. The ICH9 onboard was capped at 81 MB/s bandwidth where as the GIGA2 (non ICH) onboard controller was un-capped and allowed the single drive to achieve its nominal throughput of 111 MB/s.

Thanks for the props!

Yes, I understood correctly.... But when you got your Areca RAID card you were getting a lot more performance, right? I just scanned over the benches... I thought you had said even 111mb/s wasn't as much as you were hoping for, and it's not as much as the claimed 120mb/s... I was just saying the PCI bus is limited, and you were probably on it, and reaching its limits.

 

[SH0DAN]

Thats not the point,but whatever.I hope I am proven wrong,and the price falls into the area I mentioned within a year,instead of two or three.

 

[dominick32]

Yes, I understood correctly.... But when you got your Areca RAID card you were getting a lot more performance, right? I just scanned over the benches... I thought you had said even 111mb/s wasn't as much as you were hoping for, and it's not as much as the claimed 120mb/s... I was just saying the PCI bus is limited, and you were probably on it, and reaching its limits.

Oh totally mis-read your statement. You are correct. Here is all of the info in a nutshell.

Single Mtron 16GB Pro
Intel ICH9R - 81 MB/ sustained read
Gigabye GIGA2 Onboard - 111 MB/s sustained read
Areca 1220 Pure Hardware - 114 MB/s sustained read
Areca 1231ML Pure Hardware "Ultra High End" - 121.3 MB/s not to mention Raid 0 scaling in perfect mutliples.

 

[jivetrky]

BTW, did you get in a PCMark05 before you split up your array to ship them to the lucky owners?

 

[jmorgan]

He is not shipping till probably next year, he does not have all nine yet.

 

[jivetrky]

He is not shipping till probably next year, he does not have all nine yet.

ahhhhh right. silly me. Just came home from my first day of work after being off for 1.5 months for spinal surgery, so I'm tired and not thinking clearly

 

[ZenPC]

Great review! Im glad you found the limitation on the Areca1220 I was thinking about getting that card and that limit would of been a major let down.

Any idea how the RocketRaid3320 would hold up. It has the Intel IOP 80333 800mhz proc. It seems to me the biggest thing holding these drives back is that ontop of paying a major premium per gb you also have to shell out serious money for a raid card able to run them at the speed they are capable of. I would expect most people buying 2 of these anywhere in the near future will be plaining to add 2 - 6 more of them as the price drops over the next year or two, to increase both storage amount and speed so they will need either a high end card or a very good onboard solution with all the kinks worked out.

Rocketraid3320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115043

 

[dominick32]

Great review! Im glad you found the limitation on the Areca1220 I was thinking about getting that card and that limit would of been a major let down.

Any idea how the RocketRaid3320 would hold up. It has the Intel IOP 80333 800mhz proc. It seems to me the biggest thing holding these drives back is that ontop of paying a major premium per gb you also have to shell out serious money for a raid card able to run them at the speed they are capable of. I would expect most people buying 2 of these anywhere in the near future will be plaining to add 2 - 6 more of them as the price drops over the next year or two, to increase both storage amount and speed so they will need either a high end card or a very good onboard solution with all the kinks worked out.

Rocketraid3320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115043

Unfurtonately, the 500mhz Intel IOP333 is the same processor in the Areca 1220, so I am going to make a big assumption here and say that the Rocketraid is also going to be bottlenecked right around 400 to 500 MB/s.

If you are buying 3 drives or more, you will need to buy something in the high end controller line with an 800mhz Intel IOP341 processor. The 341 is currently the cream of the crop of those Areca controllers.

Regards,
Dom

 

[dominick32]

He is not shipping till probably next year, he does not have all nine yet.

ahhhhh right. silly me. Just came home from my first day of work after being off for 1.5 months for spinal surgery, so I'm tired and not thinking clearly

Thanks guys, yes. I am actually receving all 9 drives tonight. So, the SOLD 7 drives should be shipped around thursday this week making a few OCF members happy.

 

[Foxie3a]

Rocketraid3320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115043

That's PCI-E 8x, a TON more bandwidth that PCI(33Mhz/32Bit).

All that I've been saying is that even though ICH9's controller is bugged, and stops at 81mb/s, it's not supposed to do that, but it's not on the PCI bus, it has its own SATA bus.... But the controller you were using is on the PCI bus, and limited to 133mb/s tops. Even though it performs better, you might get even better performance going to another bus like PCI-E, or PCI-X which are both much faster. You might be able to get even more than you are now if you go to PCI-E or PCI-X.

 

[dominick32]

That's PCI-E 8x, a TON more bandwidth that PCI(33Mhz/32Bit).

All that I've been saying is that even though ICH9's controller is bugged, and stops at 81mb/s, it's not supposed to do that, but it's not on the PCI bus, it has its own SATA bus.... But the controller you were using is on the PCI bus, and limited to 133mb/s tops. Even though it performs better, you might get even better performance going to another bus like PCI-E, or PCI-X which are both much faster. You might be able to get even more than you are now if you go to PCI-E or PCI-X.

I think you have your information slightly wrong. If you re-read through this entire thread you will see that I am also on PCI Express 8X. Both the Areca 1220 that I used initially, and the Areca 1231ML that I currently own are PCI Express 8X cards and have a theoretical slot lane bandwidth of 4GB/s. That is not what we are talking about here. (as we currently do not have the SATA technology to even come close to encroaching 4 GB/s)

We are talking about a controllers processor (the IOP333 in this example) not having the processing power to handle the throughput of these drives in raid 0. Hope this helps. Both the Areca 1220 and the Rocketraid controllers have the IOP333 unit, and I have tested the unit to have a bandwidth problem right around 390 to 450 MB/s. If he wants to try out the Rocketraid card, by all means he can. But I am pretty sure his card will ultimately have the same fate as my old Areca 1220 counterpart. They do not have a cap on PCIe bandwidth, they have a cap on actual controller processor.

Dom

 

[SuperDave1685]

Dom...

I'm jealous... like seriously

Makes me wet my pants in anticipation for whats to come in SSD technology. I read all 100+ posts here, took me a while , but it was definitely a good, worthwhile read. Thank you for taking the time to thoroughly test such promising technology. I watched your video of Vista booting up, and I swear I replayed it like 10 times lol I haven't been able to find out a lot of information on the performance of the Fusion IO's though. How do you think these two devices compare?

 

[Evilsizer]

its gonna be a toss up SD... both still use NAND but one is PCIE slot and the other is SATA. hopfully when motherboards come with a alot more pcie slots that Fusion IO's will have there place. if the prices on both fall to be even with each other it will be a matter of preference. as then you could bypass the ICH with the fusion IO's, it also from current spec dave is actually faster in IO's then the ssd's.
Fusion IO has 800mb/s read,600mb/s write for just one card.

 

[dominick32]

Dom...

I'm jealous... like seriously

Makes me wet my pants in anticipation for whats to come in SSD technology. I read all 100+ posts here, took me a while , but it was definitely a good, worthwhile read. Thank you for taking the time to thoroughly test such promising technology. I watched your video of Vista booting up, and I swear I replayed it like 10 times lol I haven't been able to find out a lot of information on the performance of the Fusion IO's though. How do you think these two devices compare?

As Evil had already said, its really up to testing. We honestly do not have any REAL data on the Fusion IO yet, so until I get the card in my hands for January testing I wont be able to voice any opinion on this product.

Here is how it looks on paper:
800 MB/s read, 600 MB/s write .1ms PCI Express Card with 80 to 640 GB of storage. A single device server performance of 100,000 IOPS @ 4k.

A single mtron = 120 MB/s read, 90 MB/s write , .1ms , 16 to 64 GB of storage. A single device server performance of 13,750 IOPS @ 4k.

 

[SuperDave1685]

Gotta love competing technologies I can't seem to find the drive size of a Fusion IO though.... Does it work under Windows? I saw on their specsheet that it only supports Linux?

 

[dominick32]

Gotta love competing technologies I can't seem to find the drive size of a Fusion IO though.... Does it work under Windows? I saw on their specsheet that it only supports Linux?

Fusion is working on a Windows based product, but currently only has a working Linux device. I hope to test out the Windows based product in January. So far I know they are definitely launching a 80GB drive as well as a 640 GB drive.

 

[SuperDave1685]

Oh... well thanks Dom Any word on availability and pricing for the Fusion IO? My tax refund is coming in January Guess what I'm gonna get for my rig? LOL. Man I thought my 2 x 74Gb, 16Mb cache Raptors in RAID 0 were fast...

 

[dominick32]

Oh... well thanks Dom Any word on availability and pricing for the Fusion IO? My tax refund is coming in January Guess what I'm gonna get for my rig? LOL. Man I thought my 2 x 74Gb, 16Mb cache Raptors in RAID 0 were fast...

Fusion IO is going to charge upwards of $2400 for the 80GB version and $19,200 for the enterprise level 640GB counterpart. cough... lol Dont quote me on pricing, but the last I heard from Fusions CEO rick white he stated around $30 per gigabyte.

 

[Immortal_Hero]

Fusion IO is going to charge upwards of $2400 for the 80GB version and $19,200 for the enterprise level 640GB counterpart. cough... lol Dont quote me on pricing, but the last I heard from Fusions CEO rick white he stated around $30 per gigabyte.

Wow 20k for 640 MB. I'll have to pass no matter how fast it is!!!