G.Skill Titan 128GB SSD
For the past several years, G.Skill has built a reputation for offering premium-grade products at economy-level pricing. Similar to their competition, G.Skill offers enthusiast products in several different markets. The brand name has been built on a solid history of quality system memory product lines, and not long ago they introduced the very impressive G.Skill FM-25S2S-64GB SATA-II MLC SSD.
Using a pair of JMicron JMF602B SSD controllers to organize two banks of Samsung K9HCG08U1M DRAM modules into a JMB390 controller, the new G.Skill Titan SSD offers an impressive capacity with internal RAID-0 performance to subdue stuttering. Benchmark Reviews tests the performance of the G.Skill Titan 128GB SATA SSD FM-25S2S-128GBT1 against over two dozen other products in this article, including its twin brother, the OCZ Apex.
Since first making a commercial public debut at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, Solid State Drives (SSD's) have been a topic of hot discussion among performance enthusiasts. These nonvolatile flash memory-based drives feature virtually no access time delay and promise a more reliable storage medium with greater performance while operating at a fraction of the power level. Moving into 2008, SSDs became a consumer reality for many performance-minded power users. Now that 2009 has revealed promising industry support for Solid State Drive technology, we should hope that mainstream acceptance moves faster than DDR3 SDRAM has.
Back in November 2007, after experiencing the SuperComputing Conference SC07, finding Solid State Drives on sale anywhere was a real challenge. One year later, and online stores are offering dozens of SSD models at reasonable prices. Solid State Drives are rapidly changing the computing landscape, and many enthusiasts are using SSD technology in their primary systems to help boost performance. Benchmark Reviews has tested nearly all of the products available to the retail market in this sector, and several do well while others fall flat. It used to be that performance was the largest hurdle for mass storage NAND Solid State Drives, followed by stability, and later price.
Solid State Drive products are no longer restricted to bleeding edge hardware enthusiasts or wealthy elitists. Heading into 2009, SSD storage devices were available online for nearly $2 per gigabyte of storage capacity while the most popular performance desktop hard drive hovered just above $1/GB. While most consumers are waiting for that day when SSD costs the same as HDD, they seem to be forgetting how Solid State Drives have already surpassed Hard Disk performance in every other regard. Our collection of SSD reviews is a good starting point for comparing the competition.
According to a Q1 2008 report by the semiconductor market research firm iSuppli, the SSD market will grow at an annualized average of 124 percent during the four-year period from 2008 until 2012. iSuppli now projects SSD sales to increase by an additional 35 percent in 2009 over what it projected last year, 51 percent more in 2010, and 89 percent more in 2011, and continue to show dramatic increases in subsequent years.
Disclaimer: SSD Benchmarks
Benchmark Reviews recently published an article which details Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into producing that article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of this technology were lost on one particular difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best.
It's critically important to understand that no software for the Microsoft Windows platform can accurately measure SSD performance in a comparable fashion. Synthetic benchmark tools such as HD Tach and ATTO Disk Benchmark are helpful indicators, but should not be considered the ultimate determining factor. That factor should be measured in actual user experience of real-world applications. Benchmark Reviews includes both bandwidth benchmarks and application speed tests to present a conclusive measurement of product performance.
About G.Skill International Enterprise
Established in 1989 by enthusiasts, is a leading memory manufacturer based in Taipei, Taiwan. The company's top priority is Quality and all of our products go through a series of the most rigorous tests and strict quality control processes. In addition to a committed, qualified IC testing house to examine its products, all G.Skill products are 100% tested to ensure the highest yield, reliability and quality.
Mission Statement
We are here to provide superior memory products and satisfactory services in order to keep pace with our customers' growing needs, and help our customers in adding value to their products. And we pledge we will continue to do so and enable both sides to obtain significant competitive advantages in the market segments.
For more information, please visit the G.Skill website.
G.Skill Titan SSD Features
G.Skill International Co. Ltd., a world leader in extreme performance memory with solid quality, unveils the G.SKILL Titan SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD) Series on 6 January 2009. With a NAND flash storage medium, the Titan offers the latest cutting edge technology in storage for enthusiasts demands. The Titan SATA II 2.5¡± SSD is available in 128GB and 256GB capacities providing a large size, incredible performance with zero latency, and a power-efficient solution for consumers.
G.SKILL 2.5" Solid State Drives are predominantly designed for mobile devices, and covered with strong metal alloy housing, G.SKILL SSDs protect valuable data from any accidents. Cutting edge NAND flash technology enables high capacities and efficient power consumption to boost battery life and minimise access time, while ensuring ultimate reliability, G.SKILL SSDs have 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF). With G.SKILL 2 years Warranty and ever ready technical back-up, the Titan SSD is the total solution for all computing enthusiasts.
FM-25S2S-128GBT1 Specifications
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Available in 128GB and 256GB capacities
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Read: up to 200 MB/sec
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Write: up to 160 MB/sec
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Seek: <.2ms
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Slim 2.5" Design
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99.88 x 69.63 x 9.3mm
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Lightweight 77g
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Operating Temp: 0C ~ +70C
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Storage Temp: -55C ~ +140C
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Low Power Consumption
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Shock Resistant 1500G
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Internal RAID 0 Support
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MTBF 1.5 million hours
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2 year warranty
First Look: G.Skill Titan SSD
The G.Skill Titan SSD introduces a new architecture to deliver the manufacturer-rated bandwidth speeds. On the outside, this 128GB SSD (model FM-25S2S-128GBT1) looks like all of the other Solid State Drive products G.Skill offers in their current product family. As of Q1 2009 that family includes the following products from top to bottom:
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G.Skill Titan Series SSD with new RAID-0 internal architecture featuring read performance up to 200 MBps and write bandwidth up to 160 MBps. High reliability is based on the internal 15bit BCH mode.
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G.Skill MLC Series mainstream consumer SSD featuring read performance up to 170 MBps and write bandwidth up to 100 MBps. High reliability is based on the internal BCH 15bit ECC.
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G.Skill SLC Series value SSD featuring read performance up to 100 MBps and write bandwidth up to 80 MBps. High reliability is based on the internal BCH 15bit ECC.
When it comes to the appearance of notebook drives, it must be understood that the product you're looking at will be hidden away from plain view once installed. Keeping in mind that this product is solid state, and therefore offers no amount of noticeable physical activity, it takes some special attention to presentation in order to help keep the consumer feeling comfortable with their premium purchase. Unlike the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) storage products, SSD's are practically impervious to impact damage and do not require special vibration dampening or shock-proof enclosures. G.Skill utilizes a metal enclosure for the Titan series, which fastens with four small counter-sunk screws on the underside.
Standard 2.5" drive bay mounting points are pre-drilled and threaded into the Titan SSD, which allows for quick upgrade or addition into any existing notebook or desktop system. The mounting positions matched up to the drive bracket on my laptop, and after only a few minutes of drive cloning I was quickly loading Windows XP from the Titan.
Unlike desktop computers which utilize a SATA cable system to connect drive to motherboard, nearly all notebooks allow the 2.5" drive to simply slide directly into a connection bay within the system. In addition to notebooks and desktop computer usage, this G.Skill Titan Solid State Drive can be utilized for mission-critical backups or high-abuse data systems. One unfortunate omission from the Titan series was the integrated High-Speed USB 2.0 Mini-B, which we were please to see featured on the 64 GB G.Skill MLC SSD.
Now that you're acquainted with the basic exterior features of the Titan SSD, it's time to peek inside the FM-25S2S-128GBT1 enclosure and inspect the internal components...
Titan SSD Internal Components
To the untrained eye, the G.Skill Titan SSD looks like every other Solid State Drive you've seen with the internal components exposed. Look a little closer, and you will see one subtle difference: two SSD controllers. Previous SSD products from G.Skill (and nearly everyone else on the market) have used a single internal SSD controller to maintain the wear-level algorithm and drive firmware. Using a pair of JMicron JMF602B SSD controllers to organize two banks of Samsung K9HCG08U1M DRAM modules into a JMB390 controller, the new G.Skill Titan Series SSD offers an impressive capacity with internal RAID-0 performance to subdue stuttering.
Intermittent and delayed response cycles (stuttering) from Solid State Drive products is not wide-spread, but it has become a big issue among the most affordable SSD products. Consumers first experienced the bitter taste of stuttering SSD performance with the OCZ Core Series (v1) SSD, although it has also been reported with the G.Skill MLC SSD and Patriot Warp v2. The phenomenon occurs when the drives buffer is filled faster than it can read or write data, and was prevalent among first-generation JMicron JMF602 SSD controllers.
By taking two separate collections of multi-layer cell (MLC) DRAM modules, the G.Skill Titan Series SSD can work like as if there was a pair of Solid State Drives inside.
The internal DRAM is comprised of Samsung K9HCG08U1M-PCB00 IC parts, which bare the branding mark K9HCG08U1M PCB0. These lead-free RoHS-compliant 48-pin ICs are multi-layer, with one IC directly atop another. Each IC has an operating voltage of 2.7-3.6V, with a 25ns speed rating. The K9HCG08U1M parts offer 64GB in 8x organization.
While the JMicron SSD controller is not particularly favored among enthusiasts, JMicron has gone to great lengths to ensure that new products help build a better reputation. The JMF60 and JMF602 chips have been the culprit behind stuttering performance in several products, but this third-generation JMF602B revision improves write latency performance while adding 16KB of on-die cache. JMicron is expected to reveal a successor to the JMF602B sometime in late 2009, which will feature a larger DRAM cache expected to completely solve stuttering and performance issues.
The G.Skill Titan SSD uses two of these SSD control chips, which combine efforts and connect into the JMB390 RAID controller.
Having a RAID-like architecture is nothing new to SSDs, but actually having a RAID controller chip is. The FM-25S2S-128GBT1 features the JMicron JMB390 RAID controller, and combines the pair of JMF602(B) SSD controllers into a RAID-0 striped array.
This new internal RAID-0 architecture boosts read performance up to 200 MBps and write bandwidth up to 160 MBps, while data reliability is maintained by the internal 15bit BCH mode.
The spare blocks allocated from the total capacity can be altered by drive firmware, and the larger the spare block reservation the less likely performance is affected by over-saturated system data during host-based writes. Although this generation G.Skill Titan SSD product maintains a basic reservation, future G.Skill SSDs are expected to offer an enhanced 64MB cache in addition to the spare block allocation.
In the next section Benchmark Reviews begins the performance testing on the G.Skill Titan Solid State Drive, and we determine just how well the FM-25S2S-128GBT1 compares to the best-performing competition.
Disclaimer: SSD Testing
Benchmark Reviews recently published an article which details Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into producing that article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of this technology were lost on one particular difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best.
It's critically important to understand that no software for the Microsoft Windows platform can accurately measure SSD performance in a comparable fashion. Synthetic benchmark tools such as HD Tach and ATTO Disk Benchmark are helpful indicators, but should not be considered the ultimate determining factor. That factor should be measured in actual user experience of real-world applications. Benchmark Reviews includes both bandwidth benchmarks and application speed tests to present a conclusive measurement of product performance.
SSD Testing Methodology
Solid State Drives have traveled a long winding course to finally get where they are today. Up to this point in technology, there have been several key differences separating Solid State Drives from magnetic rotational Hard Disk Drives. While the DRAM-based buffer size on desktop HDD's has recently reached 32 MB and is ever-increasing, there is still a hefty delay in the initial response time. This is one key area in which flash-based Solid State Drives continually dominates because they lack moving parts to "get up to speed".
However the benefits inherent to SSD's have traditionally fallen off once the throughput begins, even though data reads or writes are executed at a high constant rate whereas the HDD tapers off in performance. This makes the average transaction speed of a SSD comparable to the data burst rate mentioned in HDD tests, albeit usually lower than the HDD's speed.
Comparing a Solid State Disk to a standard Hard Disk Drives is always relative; even if you're comparing the fastest rotational spindle speeds. One is going to be many times faster in response (SSD's), while the other is usually going to have higher throughput bandwidth (HDD's). Additionally, there are certain factors which can effect the results of a test which we do our best to avoid.
Test System
Drive Hardware
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Crucial / Lexar 32GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD CT32GBFAB0
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Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 2.5" 40GB SATA 5,400 RPM HDD HTS541640J9SA00 (8MB Cache Buffer)
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Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 2.5" 60GB SATA 7,200 RPM HDD HTS721060G9SA00 (8MB Cache Buffer)
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Kingston 80GB SATA SSD SSDSA2MH080G1GC
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Samsung 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA
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Seagate 7200.11 500GB 3.5" ST3500320AS 7,200 RPM SATA-II Hard Disk Drive (32MB Cache Buffer)
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Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" WD740ADFD 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
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Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
Test Tools
System Speed Test
I doubt that when DOS was put to rest, Vladimir Afanasiev ever thought he would see his System Speed Test software used again in professional reviews. This program offers comprehensive system information, but it also has a powerful benchmarking tool for memory, processor, and disks. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface and physical transfer rates, seek and access times at the hardware level, and it does so without delay or interference from Operating System software or running processes. This is why Benchmark Reviews will continue to use this test: it polls its results directly from the hardware without the need for Windows!
To detect the Random Access Time, each device runs the full test routine a total of five times. The highest and lowest scores were ignored, and the remainder was averaged. This would be prove pointless however, because the access time benchmark for every single SSD recorded identical test results between runs.
Using the System Speed Test software, the top Random Access Time benchmarks place the Mtron Pro 7500 SSD at the very top of our results. With a lightning-fast 0.08 ms access time, every other SSD is forced to live in the shadow that the MSP-SATA7525 has just created. The other sub-0.1ms top performers include: MemoRight GT, Mtron Pro 7000, Mtron MOBI 3500, Intel 80GB X25-M, OCZ Vertex and Mtron MOBI 3000.
The mi-level Random Access Times fall between 0.14ms and 0.23ms, and include: OCZ SATA-II OCZSSD2-1S64G, Samsung MCCOE64G5MPP, Silicon Power SP032GBSSD750S25, OCZ Apex OCZSSD2-1APX120G, G.Skill FM-25S2S-64GB, Patriot Warp PE128GS25SSDR, G.Skill Titan, and the original OCZ OCZSSD64GB.
At the slower end of our SSD Response Time chart is the original SATA Silicon Power SP064GBSSD25SV10, OCZ Core Series, Crucial's CT32GBFAB0, and the Super Talent MasterDrive MX finishing out the list. In reality you couldn't begin to perceive these subtle differences, and MLC or SLC construction has a lot to do with Random Access Time. It is understandable then, that the newer SSD products do not maintain the lightning fast response time that much more expensive SLC products do. Still, the slowest SSD product (0.51ms) is 14x more responsive than the fastest desktop hard drive.
It's also worth keeping in mind that Hard Disk Drive alternatives are much slower to react. Even the very best of the desktop hard drive products, Western Digital's VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS, could produce 7.15ms at its best. The Western Digital Raptor took 8.53ms to respond, followed by 12.99ms for the Seagate 7200.11, and 15.39ms for the 7200 RPM Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 notebook drive. The worst performer was the standard 5400 RPM notebook drive (Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541640J9SA00), which recorded a painfully slow 17.41ms Random Access Time.
Drive Hardware
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Crucial / Lexar 32GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD CT32GBFAB0
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Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 2.5" 40GB SATA 5,400 RPM HDD HTS541640J9SA00 (8MB Cache Buffer)
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Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 2.5" 60GB SATA 7,200 RPM HDD HTS721060G9SA00 (8MB Cache Buffer)
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Kingston 80GB SATA SSD SSDSA2MH080G1GC
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Samsung 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA
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Seagate 7200.11 500GB 3.5" ST3500320AS 7,200 RPM SATA-II Hard Disk Drive (32MB Cache Buffer)
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Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" WD740ADFD 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
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Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
ATTO Disk Benchmark Results
EDITORS NOTE: ATTO Disk Benchmark is not designed to be used as bandwidth speed tool, as the final results are determined by user-set variables. Benchmark Reviews uses ATTO Disk Benchmark as a tool for illustrating basic IOPS load performance at various chunk load sizes. Please read the Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article to understand how the benchmarks used in this article should be interpreted.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark program is free, and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. There are some minor improvements made to the 2.34 version of the program, but the benchmark is still limited to non-linear samples up to 256MB. While the bandwidth results are no realistic for determining the maximum drive speeds, ATTO Disk Benchmark is still a good tool for illustrating the bandwidth at different file size chunks. Please consider the results displayed by this benchmark to be basic IOPS performance indicators.
Beginning with the integrated Intel ICH10R Southbridge chip connected to the G.Skill Titan, the ATTO Disk Benchmark tools performs file transfers ranging from 0.5 KB to 8192 KB. The 128 GB FM-25S2S-128GBT1 shows a 246 MBps read plateau from 128-4096 KB file chunks, while the 167 MBps write performance peaks at 1024 KB. Not surprisingly, these results practically mirror what we received from the OCZ Apex SSD when it was tested.
The G.Skill Titan SSD has the distinct advantage of having two internal SSD controllers to handle the RAID-0 stipe load. G.Skill uses ATTO to define maximum read and write bandwidth for the FM-25S2S-128GBT1 part, which is stated as 200 MBps read and 160 MBps write bandwidth. This seems in-line with the JMicron specification for this architecture, which place the target read speed at 233 MBps and write performance at 166 MBps.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark tool reported an impressive 246 MBps maximum read bandwidth in our tests, and 167 MBps maximum write, making it appear that G.Skill was actually conservative in their product specifications. Because of the MLC construction, and low on-die cache buffer, the G,Skill Titan is best suited for high-performance desktop/notebook platforms.
Drive Hardware
In our next section, we test linear read and write bandwidth performance of the G.Skill Titan and compare its speed against several other top storage products. Benchmark Reviews feels that linear tests are the best method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article.
EVEREST Disk Benchmark
Many enthusiasts are familiar with the EVEREST benchmark suite by Lavalys, but very few are aware of the Disk Benchmark tool available inside the program. The EVEREST Disk Benchmark (version 2.06.37) performs linear read and write bandwidth tests on each drive, and can be configured to use file chunk sizes up to 1MB (which speeds up testing and minimizes jitter in the waveform). Because of the full sector-by-sector nature of linear testing, Benchmark Reviews endorses this method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article.
The SSD products tested with EVEREST Disk Benchmark are connected to the Intel ICH10R SATA controller resident on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard. Using the 1MB block size, our linear read performance tests measured an average 167.7 MBps and forms a near-perfect line as it scans across all sectors. At some point in the waveform, maximum read performance peaked at 167.8 MBps, indicating how well the dual JMicron controllers can handle a sustained linear workload. Linear write-to tests were next...
Linear disk benchmarks are superior tools in my opinion, because they scan from the first physical sector to the last. A side effect of many linear write-performance test tools is that the data is erased as it writes to every sector on the drive. Normally this isn't an issue, but it has been shown that partition tables will occasionally play a role in overall performance. The custom BIOS in the G.Skill Titan seemed to have helped performance in our linear testing, as shown in the waveform chart below.
Although the chart makes the linear write performance appear unsteady, the results seen here are actually very good compared to other SSD products we've tested in the past. When we tested the OCZ Apex SSD with EVEREST, the write-to tests were horribly limited and showed extremely degraded performance. Oddly enough, the G.Skill Titan had not problems at all despite the identical construction and engineering. All that separates the two products is the firmware, which is custom tailored by each company.
The chart below shows the average linear read and write bandwidth for a cross-section of drives attached to the Intel ICH10 Southbridge. I personally consider this the single most important comparison of storage drive products, and although the results for the OCZ Apex appear bit crippled (because of firmware incompatibilities with EVEREST), all of the others are spot-on.
Linear bandwidth certainly benefits the Solid State Drive, since there's very little fluctuation in transfer speed. Hard Disk Drive products decline in performance as the spindle reaches the inner-most sectors on the magnetic platter.
Drive Hardware
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Crucial / Lexar 32GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD CT32GBFAB0
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Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 2.5" 40GB SATA 5,400 RPM HDD HTS541640J9SA00 (8MB Cache Buffer)
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Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 2.5" 60GB SATA 7,200 RPM HDD HTS721060G9SA00 (8MB Cache Buffer)
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Kingston 80GB SATA SSD SSDSA2MH080G1GC
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Samsung 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA
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Seagate 7200.11 500GB 3.5" ST3500320AS 7,200 RPM SATA-II Hard Disk Drive (32MB Cache Buffer)
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Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" WD740ADFD 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
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Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
In the next section, Benchmark Reviews tests the buffered transaction performance for the G.Skill Titan SSD using HD-Tach, and compare the results to dozens of other products.
HD Tach RW Benchmark Results
Although HD Tach (and also HD Tune or Crystal Disk Benchmark) are all excellent tools for measuring Hard Disk Drive products, they fail to offer the same precision with Solid State Drive products. These programs offer only an approximate estimate of bandwidth speed through their quick-result sample-testing mechanisms, as I have proven in the Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing article published not long ago. Nevertheless, HD Tach is still useful for offering an alternative perspective at performance, even if it isn't precisely correct when used with SSD architecture.
HD Tach is a software program for Microsoft Windows that tests the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of the attached storage device. For the record. every single product tested was brand new and never used. HD Tach allows write-bandwidth tests only if no partition is present. Additionally, each and every product was tested five times with the highest and lowest results removed before having the average result displayed here. The graphical user interface (GUI) of the Windows-based benchmark tool HD Tach is very convenient. and allows the test product to be compared against others collected on your system or those registered into the Simpli Software database.
In the tests below, Benchmark Reviews utilizes the HD TachRW tool to compare the fastest collection of desktop drives and competing SSD's we can get our hands on. Using the Intel ICH10R SATA controller on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P, HD Tach was used to benchmark the test SSD five times with the best results displayed below. It's important to note that HD Tach's Burst Speed result should be ignored for Solid State Drives due to the cache methods inherent to each memory controller architecture. There are times where this number will be extremely high, which is a result of the optimized cache used for SSD's.
The important numbers used for comparison are the sustained read and write bandwidth speeds, which indicate an approximate performance level of the product. Our featured test item, the G.Skill Titan 128GB SATA SSD FM-25S2S-128GBT1, performed at an average 179.6 MBps best sustained read speed and a best of 124.3 MBps sustained write bandwidth. Obviously these results fall below the others we've collected, and also illustrate how inappropriate HD-Tach can be for measuring SSD performance.
Compared against the stated specification of 200/160, our read results appear way below the conservative range G.Skill has set for the Titan SSD. Keep in mind that HD Tach is only capable of offering approximate estimates for SSD products, as evidenced by the three very different write-to performances we received in our recent OCZ Vertex article.
The chart below illustrates the collected averages for benchmark results using HD Tach RW on the Intel ICH10 SATA controller, with the read and write bandwidth results added together to determine rank placement. The first group is a collection of high-performance storage products. Positioned in first place is the OCZ Vertex, which offers the best performance we've measured on HD-Tach. Next is the RAID-0 performance offered by a set of Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drives, and followed by the ACARD ANS-9010 RAM-Disk. The OCZ Apex and G.Skill Titan are nearly tied for second place in terms of best SSD performance. In third place (for SSDs) is the Intel X25-M SSD, which offers great read speed but miserable write performance.
Nearly every other storage product trails distantly behind these leaders, which all recorded a combined HD Tach bandwidth to over 300 MBps for each. A single (non RAID-0) VelociRaptor and Seagate 7200.11 hard drive begin the next segment of upper midrange performers, offering nearly 200 MBps of combined bandwidth. Trailed by a closely-packed group consisting of the Patriot Warp v2 SSD, Silicon Power SP032GBSSD750S25, and G.Skill FM-25S2S-64GB, are SSDs generating between 168-172 MBps of combined average bandwidth.
The lower-midrange SSD products begin with the Western Digital Raptor, scoring a combined total bandwidth of 154 MBps delivering half the performance of the leaders. Yesterday's high-performance SSD is today's low-performance drive, and the Mtron MOBI 3500, OCZ OCZSSD2-1S32G SSD, Super Talent MasterDrive MX SSD and Mtron MOBI 3000 all comprise products with less combined performance than Hard Disk Drive alternatives (except in regard to response time).
Drive Hardware
Iometer IOPS Performance
EDITORS NOTE 06/01/2009: Benchmark Reviews added the Iometer results to this article after it was originally published, as a result of reader requests and suggestions.
Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. Iometer does for a computer's I/O subsystem what a dynamometer does for an engine: it measures performance under a controlled load. Iometer was originally developed by the Intel Corporation and formerly known as "Galileo". Intel has discontinued work on Iometer, and has gifted it to the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL).
Iometer is both a workload generator (that is, it performs I/O operations in order to stress the system) and a measurement tool (that is, it examines and records the performance of its I/O operations and their impact on the system). It can be configured to emulate the disk or network I/O load of any program or benchmark, or can be used to generate entirely synthetic I/O loads. It can generate and measure loads on single or multiple (networked) systems.
Benchmark Reviews has resisted publishing Iometer results because there are hundreds of different configuration variables available, making it impossible to reproduce our tests without having our Iometer configuration file. To measure random I/O response time as well as total I/O's per second, Iometer is set to use 4KB file size chunks over a 100% random sequential distribution. The tests are given a 50% read and 50% write distribution. Our charts show the Read and Write IOPS performance as well as I/O response time (measured in ms).
Iometer was configured to test for 120 seconds, and after five tests the average is displayed in our benchmark results. The first tests included random read and write IOPS performance, where a higher I/O is preferred. In this test the single layer cell OCZ Vertex EX rendered 3106/3091 I/O's and outperformed all other products. A set of RAID-0 Vertex (v1.10 firmware) 120GB MLC SSDs performed at 1517/1515, which is just slightly ahead of a single Vertex SSD which renders 1197 for read and write IOPS. The OCZ Summit MLC SSD completed 730/733 IO's. All other products performed far beneath this group, and are not suggested for high input/output applications.
The Mtron MOBI 3000 performed 107 read and write IOPS, while the Western Digital WD5001AALS rendered 86 and the Seagate 7200.11 completing 77. The newer Mtron MOBI 3500 rendered 58 IOPS, which was worse than the older 3000 model. The OCZ Apex strugged to complete 9 IOPS, and its identically-designed G.Skill Titan managed o nly 8 IOPS. Clearly, the twin RAID-0 JMicron controllers are built for speed and not input/output operations. Next came the average I/O response time tests...
The Iometer random IOPS average response time test results were nearly an inverse order of the IOPS performance results. It's no surprise that SLC drives perform I/O processes far better than their MLC versions, but that gap is slowly closing as controller technology improves the differences and enhances cache buffer space. In our Read/Write IOPS performance the SLC OCZ Vertex EX achieves a dramatic lead ahead of the other SSDs tested.
OCZ's Vertex EX offered the fastest read and write response time, measuring 0.26/0.06ms, and showing strength in write requests. The RAID-0 set of Vertex MLC SSD's scored 0.58/0.07ms, dramatically improving the write-to response time over a single Vertex SSD which offered 0.42/0.77ms. The OCZ Summit responded to read requests in 0.78ms while write requests were a bit quicker at 0.59ms. These times were collectively the best available, as each product measured hereafter performed much slower.
The Mtron MOBI 3000 offered a fast 0.42ms read response time, but suffered a slower 8.97ms write response. Both the WD5001AALS and Seagate 7200.11 hard drives performed around 11ms read and 1.2ms write. Mtron's newer MOBI 3500 offered great read response times at 0.19ms, but suffered poor write responses at 17.19ms. The worst was yet to come, as the G.Skill Titan and OCZ Apex offered decent 0.42ms read response times but absulutely unacceptable 127ms write times.
Drive Hardware
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Seagate 7200.11 500GB 3.5" ST3500320AS 7,200 RPM SATA-II Hard Disk Drive (32MB Cache Buffer)
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Western Digital Cavier 500GB WD5001AALS 7,200 RPM SATA_II Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
In our next section, the entire collection of SSD products Benchmark Reviews has tested will be timed for a Windows XP startup benchmark. Please continue to see how SSD's effect startup performance.
Windows XP Startup
After several SSD product reviews in which I recorded Windows XP startup time data, I have repeatedly omitted my results from the article for lack of enough comparison data. In all honesty, I cannot make this an interesting subject. Most of you reading this article have already watched the video of a Windows computer starting up in mere seconds when it used a Solid State Drive, so it wouldn't be very exciting to show it again. Instead, I have recorded the length of time it took for my Dell Inspiron 6400 notebook computer to startup with each drive. Here are the specifications on the notebook:
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Dell Inspiron 6400 Notebook
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Intel Core Duo T2300 @ 1.66 GHz
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2GB DDR2 667 MHz System Memory
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Windows XP Professional SP3 (identical image cloned to each drive)
This "test" is going to be useful to laptop computer users only, primarily because I did not test the desktop hard drives. The only hard drive included was the high-performance 7200 RPM Hitachi Travelstar 7K100, which recorded a 28-second* total load time from the moment I pressed the power button to the moment the Windows Login screen was displayed. The primary purpose of this test was to demonstrate that a Solid State Drive could in fact cut the Windows load time in half, but there are other factors to consider.
* Please note that the Dell Inspiron 6400 consumes almost 11 seconds on the BIOS pre-loading and POST (Power-On Self Test) routines prior to actually beginning to load Microsoft Windows XP, so it's not realistic to compare our results to another system. This benchmark is offered for comparison and entertainment purposes only.
Drive Hardware
Heat Output Results
Solid State Drives are not quite a household technology (yet), and because of this the marketing propaganda has become as high-pressure as any political campaign. Benchmark Reviews has tested SSD products from many manufacturers (to name a few: Crucial, G.Skill, Intel, MemoRight, Mtron, OCZ, Patriot, Samsung, Super Talent, and Silicon Power) and each has taken full advantage of the vast new technology improvements offered by their products. Some manufacturers have made claims that other websites have taken to the mat, and wrestled with a topic (such as power consumption), only to later be criticized for improperly testing the hardware. Well, we don't intend on repeating the mistakes of our mega-site affiliates, which is why we plan to approach new methodology in small bites.
There have been television shows made famous on the principal of dispelling rumors and myth. This section is not exactly meant to imitate that concept, although we do separate fact from fiction. The first myth we challenge is the claim that Solid State Drives produce no heat. Nearly every manufacturer selling Solid State products has at some point claimed their SSD products do not produce heat, which is believable on many levels because there are no moving parts. Well, chances are very good that you have already peeked at the illustration below, so I won't delay in explaining what we've found.
Using some spare Styrofoam panels, I constructed a small unit to shield two 2.5" notebook drives from the nearby power supply. Although not pictured, there was also an open-top wall section that surrounded this unit, further insulating it from thermal effects of any nearby environment. Since there was no data connection made, these tests are what I would consider to be 'idle'. The power leads were connected and power was delivered for twenty minutes before temperatures were taken with a non-contact IR thermometer at approximately six inches from surface. The rooms ambient temperature as measured directly at the test site was exactly 19.0°C at the time I recorded the results for the units pictured.
In the image above there are only two devices pictured of a four-cell test platform. On the left side is the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 60GB HTS721060G9SA00 7,200 RPM SATA 2.5" Hard Disk Drive, and on the right is one our Solid State Drive test subjects. The Hitachi 7K100 is one of the few 7200 RPM notebook hard drives available to OEM builders, and since these faster spinning disks use more power they also create more heat as a by-product. Although not pictured because of camera direction, my test rig setup compares up to four products at once. The results of other SSD test products are shown in the charts below.
Temperature Readings at 19.0°C
| Device Name |
Ambient |
Drive Temp |
| OCZ Apex Series SSD |
19.0°C |
31°C |
| G.Skill Titan Series SSD |
19.0°C |
31°C |
| Mtron Pro 7500 SSD |
19.0°C |
31°C |
| Mtron Pro 7000 SSD |
19.0°C |
29°C |
| Mtron Pro 3500 SSD |
19.0°C |
29°C |
| OCZ Core Series SSD |
19.0°C |
28°C |
| OCZ Vertex Series SSD |
19.0°C |
27°C |
| Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 HDD |
19.0°C |
27°C |
| Samsung MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA SSD |
19.0°C |
27°C |
| Silicon Power SP064GBSSD25SV10 SSD |
19.0°C |
27°C |
| Super Talent FTM60GK25H SSD |
19.0°C |
27°C |
| Mtron MOBI 3000 SSD |
19.0°C |
27°C |
| Silicon Power SP032GBSSD750S25 SSD |
19.0°C |
26°C |
| G.Skill MLC FM-25S2S-64GB SSD |
19.0°C |
26°C |
| Crucial CT32GBFAB0 SSD |
19.0°C |
25°C |
| Patriot Warp SSD |
19.0°C |
25°C |
| Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HDD |
19.0°C |
23°C |
| OCZ OCZSSD2 SSD |
19.0°C |
21°C |
The message here is simple: Although the heat produced by SSD's under load is usually the same as what the Hard Disk Drive generates at idle, Solid State Drives still produce heat. Don't let marketing hype fool you into believing that Solid State Drives are cold-operating devices just because there are no moving parts. Cooler, yes. Cold, no.
Drive Hardware
SSD Final Thoughts
New technology always has one major hurdle to face: the consumer. I have long maintained my opinion that DDR3 system memory is every bit an excellent replacement to the aging DDR2 standard, but the argument of high price and limited adoption by manufacturers has hushed my position. Of course, everything changes in time, and an economic recession actually helped DDR3 make its way mainstream. Faced with a similar situation, Solid State Drive technology has suffered the same difficult transition towards widespread use. Like most electronics, it wasn't a question of how much of a technology improvement was evident, it was price.
Then at some point, a certain well-respected hardware website published an article that claimed SSDs didn't consume less power after all. Although this report was later recanted on account of testing errors, the foundation was shaken for consumers and led me to wonder what kind of impact my news of higher heat output will cause the adoption process? After all, I like these products, and completely endorse the technology. But the bad publicity, even when it's disproven, still has a lasting affect thanks to the angst a premium price tag creates. This also has me wondering how my SSD Benchmark Testing revelation will affect the market. Of course, time was once again the changing factor, and the latest SSD products make these perspectives obsolete.
So back in May of 2008 when I reviewed the OCZ SATA-II 32GB SSD it seemed like $17 per gigabyte was a relatively good price for SSDs at the time. Consider for a moment that before then, SSD's such the elite-level 32 GB MemoRight GT cost on the level of $33 per gigabyte. Even products like the entry-level 32 GB Mtron MOBI 3000 were still selling for $14 per gigabyte, making the price of admission seem quite high for even the lower-level SKU's. So when OCZ announced a 64GB SSD that would sell for under $259 in July of 2008, I really wasn't sure if the news was believable. It didn't take long to realize these claims were all true, because shortly thereafter NewEgg began listing these SSDs exactly as predicted. This event in itself should have probably started the long-awaited dawn of widespread consumer acceptance for SSD products... but there was a problem.
As it turned out, the first generation (v1) OCZ Core Series SSD I touted in my review was prone to long-term data corruption and occasional delay stuttering. Making matters worse was that the mail-in rebate nullified consumer ability to return the defective product for a refund. Nothing hurts progress more than an angry customer, and this incident created plenty. Later on, OCZ would issue a second version (v2) of the CORE series, and even though most problems were ironed out with firmware updates, a lingering fear of product reliability associated with Solid State Drives remained.
Once again, everything tends to change over time, and Solid State Drive sale prices are much different now. When it comes to computer hardware, generally speaking the newer, faster, and better performing products traditionally cost more than their older predecessors... but this is not the case with SSD's. I recognize that SSD bandwidth speeds range from abysmal to phenomenal and everywhere in-between, but the prices don't seem to correspond to performance. SSD's are filling store shelves, and several Solid State Drive models now sell for as low as $2.07 per gigabyte, which is getting dangerously close to Western Digital's VelociRaptor at $0.76 per gigabyte of storage.
So why are some Solid State Drives so affordable while others sell at 2-7x the cost? That's a very good question that only a particular group of manufacturers can answer. My best estimation is that the OEM's (Original Equipment Manufacturers) like OCZ, Patriot, Super Talent, and G.Skill (to name a few) receive discounts when using a common design under license. The opposite is true for ODM's (Original Design Manufacturers) such as MemoRight, Mtron, and Silicon Power, which must shoulder the burden of R&D and production. DRAM Prices have dropped beyond anyone's expectations, which has certainly helped, and consumers should soon reap the advantages.
FM-25S2S-128GBT1 Conclusion
Benchmark Reviews begins each conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas we rate. The first is presentation, which takes product packaging into consideration to the extent that it provides adequate packing material and consumer information for an informed purchase. Since the American economy in the midst of an economic recession, many manufacturers are having to pull out some very creative ideas to help market their products. Add onto this the fact that SSD technology already carries a premium price tag, and you can understand why product presentation becomes important. G.Skill doesn't really dress-up the Titan's packaging with a stand-out appearance, and at the same time they offer sparse amounts of critical product information and specifications for the untrained consumer. It would be in G.Skill best interest to spend a little more time developing an enticing retail package, since the version I received had me laughing at the rough-English catch phrase "Where Speed Is!!! Extreme Speed Extreme Power". This reminded me of the advertising I suffered through while living in Tokyo.
Solid State Drives are a lot like spark plugs: you see them just long enough to install, and then they're forgotten. G.Skill keeps production costs down with a uniform black painted enclosure for the Titan SSD, and uses an adhesive label for product series and underside specifications. There isn't very much to expect from the appearance of Solid State Drives, because like their Hard Disk Drive counterpart they are meant to place function before fashion. To this end, I still wish manufacturers would begin using sealed plastic enclosures to prevent moisture or electrical shock damage.
Construction is probably the strongest feature credited to the entire SSD product line, and the G.Skill SSD is no exception. Solid State Drives are by nature immune to most abuses, but add to this a hard metal shell and you have to wonder what it would take to make this drive fail. If a G.Skill SSD product does fail during the 2-year warranty period, the end-user must complete an RMA form and wait for a returns authorization number before shipping the item back at their own expense. Unfortunately, there's no toll-free for support or customer service questions.
Based on the collection of benchmark tests we conducted, the G.Skill Titan SSD performs at the topmost portion of our linear bandwidth charts behind only one other product. The MLC Samsung flash modules paired to an internal RAID-0 array used on the Titan series helps yield a 0.21 ms response time. ATTO Disk Benchmark tool reported an impressive 246 MBps maximum read bandwidth in our tests, and 168 MBps maximum write. Overall, our tests indicate the the G.Skill specifications are accurate, and to our surprise the Titan performed perfectly in EVEREST linear write tests despite the failures we previously experienced with it's twin brother from OCZ.
As of July 2009, the G.Skill Titan series of SSDs is available at NewEgg and other popular online retailers. The 128GB (FM-25S2S-128GBT1) version we tested for this article is offered for $299, which is on-par with the OCZ Apex of the same capacity. A jumbo-sized 250GB Titan SSD (FM-25S2S-256GBT1) is also available for $599.99.
In conclusion, the G.Skill Titan MLC Solid State Drive offers an excellent balance of read and write bandwidth speed and an exceptional response time at a modest price. Second to only one other SSD product on the present market (and tied with it's identical clone), the G.Skill Titan offers phenomenal performance at a reasonable cost. Many would claim that MLC SSDs aren't worth the trouble, but for desktop and notebook users the Titan SSD series is perfectly suited for high-performance tasks. The dual JMF602B SSD controllers may not offer the large cache buffer we would like to see, but the internal JMicron JMB390 RAID-0 controller makes all the difference in this Solid State Drive. If you're looking for a high-capacity performance SSD product, then I recommend the 256GB G.Skill Titan SSD, as it delivers highest-order speed with near-instant response time... and all for an excellent value considering the performance it delivers.
Pros:
+ Impressive 246 MBps read and 168 write bandwidth in ATTO
+ Internal RAID-0 architecture brings value MLC near to premium SLC
+ Low power consumption may extend battery life
+ Lightweight compact storage solution
+ Resistant to extreme shock impact
+ Up to 250GB of SSD capacity
+ 2-Year G.Skill product warranty
+ Very low 0.21ms random access time
+ Nearly $2 per gigabyte of SSD storage (for 256GB version)
Cons:
- Metal case is heavier and less durable than plastic
- Lacks integrated USB 2.0 Mini-B data connection
- Small 16KB cache buffer per SSD controller
Ratings:
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Presentation: 8.25
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Appearance: 8.75
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Construction: 9.50
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Functionality: 9.75
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Value: 8.75
Final Score: 9.0 out of 10.
Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.
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