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

[Evilsizer]

haha dom, even at 1k its about pushing hardware.. i mean i understand but what if you gain another 5mb/s on those drives doing that... even for a short period i think it would be worth tring to see what happens.

those new numbers are just nuts dom!! quit making me want to buy a raid card!! money burning a hole in my pocket and i dont know what to spend it on... the computer or the truck or new car...crossfire st-6

 

[eye of the hawk]

Wowza...

 

[Hazaro]

...

Where are the other 5 drives...

Your graphs need more bars in them.

Also:

 

[Evilsizer]

...

Where are the other 5 drives...

on the boat coming from korea, dom said he would have them sometime in january.

 

[Hazaro]

on the boat coming from korea, dom said he would have them sometime in january.

Ahh, I was hoping they were being shipped atm.

 

[bing]

That Raptor's score looks like crap aren't they ? LOL

Great rig you got there Dom !

 

[JustChill]

So Evil and Dom what do you think about putting these on a Nvidia raid setup? Would that just be a waste of time? I know it will put up good numbers, but im talking campared to some of the numbers Dom has shown here.
Also Im a little confused on those speed. So the more drives you have the faster the array works? EX. 5 drives are faster than 2 simply due to the number of drives or where there two diff. raid controllers there?

 

[Evilsizer]

So Evil and Dom what do you think about putting these on a Nvidia raid setup? Would that just be a waste of time? I know it will put up good numbers, but im talking campared to some of the numbers Dom has shown here.
Also Im a little confused on those speed. So the more drives you have the faster the array works? EX. 5 drives are faster than 2 simply due to the number of drives or where there two diff. raid controllers there?

it wouldnt be a waste per say unless you want a lot of them. the NV board's dont have the cap the the intel SB's do based on dom's tests.

yes the more drives you add the higher the STR and BR. as mtron said the drive are suppose to scale when in raid 0. say you bought the raid card that dom has , 12 port sata. you stick with raid 0 with these, say you have 10 drives. if we go on numbers then that the bandwidth of the drives adds up. 10 x 120mb/s = 1.2gGB/s in STR and burst as well. raid 0 is striping so the more drives in the raid array the faster/higher the bandwidth/transfer rate.

dom did his first testing on the Intel ICH8R but since it was capping the drives at 84mb/s. that was marginally slower then mtron's spec of 120mb/s, sorry im using read speeds here, should have said that before.. after seeing that then dom went with a add in raid card, after the 3rd or 4th drive was added the burst speed read was capped. this time not by the motherboard but by the raid on board IO cpu. now dom has a new one where he doesnt have to worry about that cap now.. dom's tests are have been done on 3 different raid setups then not different raid level'. not sure if dom plans to test any other raid level past 0.

 

[dominick32]

Found out total maximum of 9 drives is coming to me. So, hopefully we will be able to scale to 1 GB/s throughput!!

 

[Evilsizer]

doesnt this mean you now have 14 ssd's to test? that should put you at 1.4GB/s read,no? are you talking about write?

 

[dominick32]

doesnt this mean you now have 14 ssd's to test? that should put you at 1.4GB/s read,no? are you talking about write?

No, I think you misunderstood my statement and/or I typed it up wrong. I meant "I will have a total of 9 drives". I am not going to be receiving the promised 10 drives, because they are still making me pay manufacturer cost + distributor evaluation markup.

So, after my review all of these drives will be in other peoples hands like your own!

 

[AtomicMonkey]

Those are some impressive numbers there Dom, really wish I had something like that to play around with. I hate you. But you know what sux big time? When those things finally do come down enough to be used by regular Joe Shmoes like myself, this kind of performance will be considered normal and most of us will never get a chance to say "Holy s****! that is ungodly fast.". That being said, I'm getting all wet thinking that the day these things are "available" are getting nearer. 1G thru, that's just insane.

 

[jivetrky]

Dom,

Have you been using this system for any "normal" use. Just curious how it feels with real world types of use. Do you majorly notice the increased speeds in normal use situations?

 

[dominick32]

Those are some impressive numbers there Dom, really wish I had something like that to play around with. I hate you. But you know what sux big time? When those things finally do come down enough to be used by regular Joe Shmoes like myself, this kind of performance will be considered normal and most of us will never get a chance to say "Holy s****! that is ungodly fast.". That being said, I'm getting all wet thinking that the day these things are "available" are getting nearer. 1G thru, that's just insane.

Isnt this the same with all new technological advances?
Wow... this is ungodly fast... until something newer and better comes along. I know the deal. But, we still have a lot of forward progression with solid state. I believe 2008 will be a year of HUGE advances in storage technology.

 

[dominick32]

Dom,

Have you been using this system for any "normal" use. Just curious how it feels with real world types of use. Do you majorly notice the increased speeds in normal use situations?

Of course, I have been using the 5 drive setup from everything from gaming to typing this response to you right now on OCF. The computer is instantaneous. The best way to put it = The internet is the only time I wait when using my computer now. The internet is honestly the only bottleneck and its scary. I have a 30 Mb/s connection also.

 

[Evilsizer]

Of course, I have been using the 5 drive setup from everything from gaming to typing this response to you right now on OCF. The computer is instantaneous. The best way to put it = The internet is the only time I wait when using my computer now. The internet is honestly the only bottleneck and its scary. I have a 30 Mb/s connection also.

OMG thats sad when you have that connection and have to wait for the internet...

 

[SH0DAN]

Nice to look at,but it falls flat when the price is taken into consideration.Makes my Raptor X look downright cheap !

Speaking of Raptors,Gary Key mentioned he has heard about faster and bigger Raptors in WD's labs...

 

[SH0DAN]

By the time these drives mature and become more mainstream in pricing I hope to see some of the manufacturers come up with 'on-drive RAID.' Each drive could be an array of multiple RAM chips and they can get RAID-like performance but with a single physical drive by using multiple memory channels. Think dual-channel system memory but with as many channels as they want to add. It would be recognized by the OS as a single drive so there would be no RAID driver funniness or array management needed.

I dont understand why companies like WD or Seagate dont just make a drive with a ton more cache on them,kinda of a hybrid maybe as someone said.I 'd
happily pay 500 or 600 for a Raptor 150 with 128 or 256Mb or more of fast cache.And of course the algorithms to take proper advantage of the extra ram.

Imagine that and then raiding drives!

Its already insanely pricy as it is,but yeah,would be incredible.

Just want to let you guys know how sick these solid state drives are in Raid 0.

#1 PC Mark Vantage score in the world. I need to post up my scores on the ORB once I buy a basic activation key.

But my tentative score tonight: 12,300

Still way too pricy @ 649$ USD for 32Gb.Now if I could get the kind of great performance you show,with one drive,with a size of say 64Gb for about ~ 500 to 600$,I would grab one or two,right now.

 

[Evilsizer]

Nice to look at,but it falls flat when the price is taken into consideration.Makes my Raptor X look downright cheap !

Speaking of Raptors,Gary Key mentioned he has heard about faster and bigger Raptors in WD's labs...

mechincal drives can only go so far... my thought would be a hybrid like on seagates lappy drives.
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/marketing/ds_momentus_5400_psd.pdf

hmm for someone reason i thought i read it was NAND on the drive, not flash memory...

*edit*
i just saw these on neostore... i swear there were not there ealrier today... at those prices now i say BUY!!
http://www.neostore.com/detail.asp?ProductID=1184 <-- 16GIG PRO-6000 2.5in = $399
http://www.neostore.com/detail.asp?ProductID=1186 <-- 16GIG PRO-6000 3.5in = $399
http://www.neostore.com/detail.asp?ProductID=1185 <-- 32GIG PRO-6000 2.5in = $649
the PRO-6000's are the same speed as the mobi's but should stack in raid 0 like the PRO-7000's that dom is testing...

 

[SH0DAN]

mechincal drives can only go so far... my thought would be a hybrid like on seagates lappy drives.
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/marketing/ds_momentus_5400_psd.pdf

hmm for someone reason i thought i read it was NAND on the drive, not flash memory...

True,but at the same time I dont see mtron,or others like it,selling 64Gb drives for under 1000 USD for two or three years at least.And
64Gb is still a little too small for my liking.150Gb is just right.