MTRON SSD 32GB: Wile E. Coyote or Road Runner?
by Gary Key on August 15, 2007 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Hardware Setup
We are utilizing an Intel Q6600 quad core CPU to ensure we are not CPU limited in our testing at this time. A 4GB memory configuration is now standard in our test beds due to current DDR2-800 pricing and upcoming game and application requirements. Our choice of budget level OCZ Reaper HPC PC2-6400 memory offers a very wide range of memory settings with timings of 4-4-3-10 used for our storage benchmark results.
We are utilizing an MSI 8800GTX video card to ensure our 1280x1024 resolutions are not completely GPU bound for our test results. Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolutions for this article at High Quality settings. All of our tests are run in an enclosed case with a dual optical/hard drive setup to reflect a moderately loaded system platform. Windows XP SP2 is fully updated and we load a clean drive image for each platform to keep driver conflicts to a minimum.
The test drive is formatted before each test run and five tests are completed on each drive in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark results. The high and low scores are removed with the remaining score representing our reported result. We utilize the latest Intel Matrix Storage and NVIDIA IDE drivers to ensure consistency in our playback results when utilizing NCQ or RAID settings. The Windows XP swap file is set to a static 2048MB and we clean the prefetch folder after each benchmark.
We will be providing test results with additional consumer oriented SSD units from Samsung and SanDisk in the near future that feature up to 67MB/sec read speeds and 45MB/sec write speeds along with a random read rate of 7000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer - more than 100 times faster than a hard disk drive. Super Talent will also be providing a new SSD drive designed to compete directly with the MTRON unit, and we have another industrial drive from Transcend that has shown great promise in our early tests.
These upcoming reviews will also include a Windows Vista desktop platform, Intel's Santa Rosa notebook platform, and a new test suite designed to take advantage of these new technologies once we figure out the current Intel controller issues. As such today's test results are more to show the current strengths of the MTRON drive against the one of the higher performing desktop drives, while our second look will concentrate on the notebook sector where this drive also excels.
| Standard Test Bed Test Application Results |
|
| Processor | Intel Q6600 - 2.4GHz Quad Core |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6, EVGA 680i SLI A1 |
| RAM | 4 x 1GB OCZ Reaper HPC PC2-6400 Settings: DDR2-800 @ 4-4-3-9 |
| OS Hard Drive | 1 x Western Digital WD1500 Raptor - 150GB |
| System Platform Drivers | Intel 8.3.0.1013 Intel Matrix RAID 7.6.0.1011 NVIDIA 9.53 |
| Video Card | 1 x MSI 8800GTX (Liquid Cooled) |
| Video Drivers | NVIDIA ForceWare 162.18 |
| Optical Drive | Plextor PX-760A, Plextor PX-B900A |
| Cooling | Tuniq 120 |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX620W |
| Case | Cooler Master CM Stacker 830 |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
We are utilizing an Intel Q6600 quad core CPU to ensure we are not CPU limited in our testing at this time. A 4GB memory configuration is now standard in our test beds due to current DDR2-800 pricing and upcoming game and application requirements. Our choice of budget level OCZ Reaper HPC PC2-6400 memory offers a very wide range of memory settings with timings of 4-4-3-10 used for our storage benchmark results.
We are utilizing an MSI 8800GTX video card to ensure our 1280x1024 resolutions are not completely GPU bound for our test results. Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolutions for this article at High Quality settings. All of our tests are run in an enclosed case with a dual optical/hard drive setup to reflect a moderately loaded system platform. Windows XP SP2 is fully updated and we load a clean drive image for each platform to keep driver conflicts to a minimum.
The test drive is formatted before each test run and five tests are completed on each drive in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark results. The high and low scores are removed with the remaining score representing our reported result. We utilize the latest Intel Matrix Storage and NVIDIA IDE drivers to ensure consistency in our playback results when utilizing NCQ or RAID settings. The Windows XP swap file is set to a static 2048MB and we clean the prefetch folder after each benchmark.
We will be providing test results with additional consumer oriented SSD units from Samsung and SanDisk in the near future that feature up to 67MB/sec read speeds and 45MB/sec write speeds along with a random read rate of 7000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer - more than 100 times faster than a hard disk drive. Super Talent will also be providing a new SSD drive designed to compete directly with the MTRON unit, and we have another industrial drive from Transcend that has shown great promise in our early tests.
These upcoming reviews will also include a Windows Vista desktop platform, Intel's Santa Rosa notebook platform, and a new test suite designed to take advantage of these new technologies once we figure out the current Intel controller issues. As such today's test results are more to show the current strengths of the MTRON drive against the one of the higher performing desktop drives, while our second look will concentrate on the notebook sector where this drive also excels.
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iwodo - Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - link
With 40% price decrease per year as well as improve in transfer speed. It will only take 2-3 years before the drive become affordable.But i keep on wondering. Let say I need 10GB for OS. 10GB for Application. I still have 12GB for Swap Space and other uses. 32GB for basic usage is actually more then enough if we dont store any Music or Video.
Personally i would like to see Normal Hard Drive gets much bigger Capacity ( 2 - 4 TB Per Hard Drive ) and move them out of the Main Box to external storage via eSATA. While the Main performance Hard drive will be a SSD based Hard Drive.
wordsworm - Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - link
Boo!johnsonx - Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - link
it's a hard drive test, what difference does it make what CPU brand they use?wordsworm - Thursday, August 16, 2007 - link
Did you read the article? It mentioned how much faster it works on the Nvidia chipset than the Intel chipset. What about an AMD chipset? What difference would that make? You don't think this would make a difference after reading the article?shabby - Saturday, August 18, 2007 - link
You're right, with the amd chipset it would probably be 50% slower... good thing anandtech didnt waste their time testing on amd ;)Bladen - Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - link
Has any reputable site ever done RAID 0 tests with a pair (or more) of SSD's?AnnihilatorX - Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - link
Well http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/08/13/flash_based...">Toms Hardware had done a review including RAID 0 on SanDisk's 32GB SSDjohnsonx - Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - link
yes, but he asked for a reputable sitejohnsonx - Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - link
bad johnsonx, bad!Axbattler - Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - link
I agree that it will remain a niche market product, but I reckon that the main reason will be cost per GB. I wonder if the average consumer's space requirement has exploded much past the requirement added by Vista: how many really rip audio/video to their HD?
Granted, I am a space hog, and I happen to rip at least my CDs to lossless - but I do not know many (outside enthusiast forums) who do that. From a performance enthusiast point of view, especially those who will afford the 'best', I reckon that SSD may overtake the Raptor as the choice for OS drive within the next three years. Those users could always grab one or more TB size HD for their multimedia needs. From a silent PC enthusiast point of view, going by this review, SSD is a non brainer - the more dedicated silencers are already using 2.5" drive in their desktop.