Intel X25-V in RAID-0: Faster than X25-M G2 for $250?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 29, 2010 8:59 PM ESTFinal Words
While I can't say that I like the idea of giving up TRIM support, the performance you get out of a pair of X25-Vs in RAID 0 is impressive. You effectively get next-generation controller performance out of a tweaked version of a 2 year old SSD. The lack of TRIM does bother me, but I personally use an X25-M G2 under OS X without TRIM and the drive is resilient enough (most of the time) to not make me feel any performance degradation.
Given the price point and the well behaved nature of these drives, I'd say it's definitely worth your consideration. If you like the simplicity of a single drive setup or want to hang on to TRIM support (perhaps if you do know your workload is more random than normal), by all means go for a single G2 or one of the SandForce offerings. However, if you're fine dealing with a potentially more complex setup (if one of your X25-Vs dies, you lose all your data) and don't mind giving up TRIM, this is a great option. The X25-V RAID 0 route gives you all of the Intel SSD safety net while posting some very competitive numbers. At $250 it may be the best overall performance you get out of an SSD at this price point until Intel's 3rd generation drives ship in Q4.
It's high performance on a budget, not without its tradeoffs, but in this case they may be livable.
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galvelan - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
Looks forward to the info Annihilus.GullLars - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Damn, that's a lot of RE:'sAnyways, i thought i'd post it here so everyone could see:
The numbers he's refering to shows 16KB stripe as superior performance-wise.
Here's the PCmark vantage HDD scores of 3 x25-V's in RAID-0 by stripe size:
16KB: 74 164
32KB: 70 364
64KB: 63 710
128KB: 55 045
For those wondering, 16KB shows 540MB/s read and 131MB/s write in CrystalDiskMark 3.0 while 128KB shows 520MB/s read and 131MB/s write (1000MB lenght, 5 runs)
Also, here are the AS SSD total scores by stripe size for 3 x25-V's in RAID-0:
16KB: 809
32KB: 797
64KB: 795
128KB: 774
By doing PCmark vantage points multiplied by 2/3, i guess Anand used a 128KB stripe.
If he'd used a 16KB stripe, the numbers would likely be around 48-49 000
This is supported by benchmarking done by the user Anvil, who got 47 980 points in the Vantage HDD test with 2 x25-V's in RAID-0 off ICH10R with a 16KB stripe size. (IRST 9.6 driver, writeback cache disabled).
galvelan - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
Excellent info GullLars... Think others are just thinking that 128k is best for all SSD's.. But they obviously are not all the same.. Thanx alot!!mschira - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Hi I like to get two 160 25-M for RAID. Linux software RAID to be precise.Can I use TRIM then?
best
M.
yacoub - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
"earlier this month Intel launched its first value SSD: the X25-V."Last month.
The drive was definitely available in early February. Maybe you started writing this article in February? :)
buzznut - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
bought mine in January.Lithium - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Great test Mr. Anand.
Few weeks ago I purchased two Kingston 40GB drives to do just that, RAID-0.
Can you please explain which program you use for Secure Erase and in which enviroment, from DOS or Windows.
Next, when you create smaller 60GB partition, from DOS or from Win7 setup. Should I use quick format from Win7 setup...
All the best
Thanks
7Enigma - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Hi Anand,It it really as simple as copying a large file(s) to the free space of these SSD's in RAID to bring performance back to similar to a secure erase?
If so why doesn't Intel or some other 3rd party release a small program that simply uses My Computers' free space measurement, copy a file of the same size to the SSD and then delete it? Seems like it could be done very easily.
Thanks for the mini-review....makes me want to get another 80gig G2 to RAID with my current one!
mervincm - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I think this app does exactly that. You can even pick if it writes )'s or 1'smervincm - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Freespacecleaner AS-Clean