| Silicon Power 64GB SATA Solid State Drive |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Storage | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Monday, 07 July 2008 | |
Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSDSilicon Power has big dreams, but this a cruel world we live in and being the new name in competitive North American computer industry usually doesn't help dreams come true. Making matters more difficult - even beyond the obvious start-up hurdles - is the latest product focus of Silicon Power: Solid State Drive (SSD) technology. But all of this isn't to say that I don't think they can do it, because there have been many a new name made by fresh companies introducing product with a dramatic improvement over the old. But will Silicon Power enjoy this luxury? Benchmark Reviews tests the Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD model SP064GBSSD25SV10 against nearly a dozen other Solid State Drives to see how well their SSD performs. 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. With virtually no access time delay, these nonvolatile flash memory-based drives were quick to promise a more reliable storage device with greater performance while operating at a fraction of the power level. Moving further into 2008 they have become a reality for many performance-minded power users. I suppose it's been a slow ramp-up for consumers to accept Solid State Drive technology, similar to the struggle DDR3 SDRAM has seen. Later on at the end of April 2008, Silicon Power launched their SATA-I and ATA line of SSD products.
But it wasn't supposed to be this way, and I personally blame Microsoft for a large portion of this delay. Almost two years ago, and still months prior to the retail release, Windows Vista was supposed to require Hybrid Hard Drives if you wanted the new Operating System on a notebook. However, once Microsoft caved in to manufacturer pressure the development quickly slowed to a halt. Perhaps Benchmark Reviews likes to ride the edge of technology just a little too close, since we've tested more DDR3 and SSD's than almost everyone else on the web. The bleeding edge is where most enthusiasts like to live, but seldom enjoy the price tag. Because I am in a position where cutting edge technology are within my reach (if only for a few weeks of testing), my experience is valuable to the small niche of consumers that might actually want these premier products.
Benchmark Reviews has been hard at work trying to ride the wave of innovation into the next big technology. It only took a few years of development, but Solid State Drives can now offer superior speed over Hard Disk Drives; but they are still extremely expensive. 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.
Silicon Power SATA SSD Features
SP064GBSSD25SV10 Specifications
About the company: Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc.Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc. (SP) was founded by a group of specialists with more than 20 years' experience in the international trading, global marketing, technical know-how of flash data storage products, is the world's leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, DRAMS, and card readers. We are also the first among our competitors worldwide to offer Lifetime Warranty service both for the Flash Memory Card series and for USB Flash Drive products.
At the heart of Silicon Power, exists a strong atmosphere of "Sharing, Caring, and of being Trustworthy." These are our finest commitments at the core. Recognized and supported in over 90 countries, Silicon Power provides fast, international lifetime service and superior products. Silicon Power R makes a remarkable and successful achievement in the global community. The company is headquartered in Taipei and has established branches worldwide including the Netherlands and Japan. Silicon Power SSD Closer LookFor a little over a year now Benchmark Reviews has anxiously awaited the fabled Solid State Drive that could replace our current list of preferred Hard Disk Drives. Making this wait seem even longer was the fact that HDD manufacturers were constantly improving there product and adding new enhancements to the technology. First there was perpendicular storage technology, then came fluid bearings, and finally there was the increase in cache buffer DRAM to speed-up the burst data transfer. Performance has always been the hurdle that SSD's have had a tough time clearing, with read and write bandwidth creating the largest obstacles. Response time and reduced power consumption has long become the key arguments for owning an SSD, but without the bandwidth throughput to measure up against HDD's they became an expensive niche item. That time has passed. A few months ago we tested the lightning-fast MemoRight GT SSD, which finally put the Western Digital Raptor in its place... to the tune of almost $2000. In that round, the Solid State Drive won the speed and bandwidth victory, but it had a long way to go befor surpassing the value of a Hard Disk Drive. This is a new chapter in the history of the Solid State Drives struggle to replace the Hard Disk Drive. Power consumption is still astonishing low, even when compared to the newest series of efficient HDD's available. So now all that remains on the list of items holding back the widespread use is... cost.
Red on black certainly demand your attention, and it's no surprise that Silicon Power has joined the two colors to add a level of interest to their SSD product line. Keeping in mind that these products are solid state, and therefore offer no amount of noticiable physical activity, it takes some special attention to presentation to help the consumer feel comfortable with their premium purchase. Like everything else with a price tag, perception is reality. So it was a little surprising when I discovered how well the Silicon Power SSD came packaged with an unnecessary amount of protection. Back at the start of 2008 I witnessed a Crucial/Lexar demonstration of a SSD fastened to a paint-mixer and being shaken while a video game was being played be a CES convention-goer. Unlike the Hard Disk Drive (HDD), SSD's are practically impervious to impact damage and do not require extra-special packing precautions.
Nevertheless, Silicon Power has safely nested the SP064GBSSD25SV10 in a foam enclosure with the care a flight data recorder might receive - and perhaps that is the reason for all of the extra attention. Solid State Drives are very popular items in military and aerospace technology, primarily because of their ability to withstand shock in excess of 1500 G's. The Silicon Power SSD offers the same rugged longevity, which amounts to safer data even after the worst disasters. Standard 2.5" drive bay mounting points are pre-drilled and threaded in the SP064GBSSD25SV10, which allows for quick upgrade or addition to any existing notebook or desktop system. The mounting positions matched up to the drive bracket on my Dell Inspiron laptop, and without any trouble at all I was quickly loading the operating system on this 60GB SATA SSD Solid State Drive.
The underside of the Silicon Power SSD reveals standard SATA power and data interface connections. 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 Silicon Power SATA Solid State Drive can be utilized for mission-critical backups or high-abuse data systems. The Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD (SKU: SP064GBSSD25SV10) is encased in an metal half shell, which fastens from the underside with counter-sunk screws. In the next section I take a close look at what's on the inside of the SSD. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I invite you to read the rest of the story as we continue on...
SP064GBSSD25SV10 InternalsAs a professional system builder of higher-end computer systems, I have learned some very important lessons in regards to system performance over the past eight years. While gamers constantly leap for higher frame rates out of their video card, there is something more important than a faster processor, memory, or even front side bus. The real backbone to overall system speed and performance is the primary boot drive. In today's world, that usually means the hard disk drive for nearly all computers. After hundreds of performance computers built and sold, I have seen a 10,000 RPM drive make a 2GHz CPU seemingly perform twice as fast, whereas a 5,400 RPM drive makes that same CPU run like it was only half as fast.
Looking over the Silicon Power SP064GBSSD25SV10 I spot a total of sixteen Samsung K9WBG08U1M-PCB0 DRAM IC's. Each of these SLC-NAND-Flash-ICs consume 2.7V ~ 3.6V and operate in Dual nCE & Dual R/nB mode.
Samsung specs the density at 32 GB on a SLC 4 Die Stack. Not much is presently released on these modules, so speed and latency are unknown.
Solid State Drives are not for everyone. Similar to the evolution towards DDR3 system memory, a gradual replacement of the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) by the Solid State Drive (SDD) is going to move very slow. The cost of purchase for SSD's is the primary cause, since most drives cost more than an purchase price of an entire computer system. But what if the price was within reach? What if the data throughput was comparable? This is where Benchmark Reviews comes in to answer the tough questions, as we test the Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD SP064GBSSD25SV10. SSD Testing MethodologySolid State Drives have traveled a winding course to 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 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. 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. Test System
Disk Hardware
Benchmark Reviews is aware that all Intel ICH9 and ICH9R chipsetswhich come on the 3 and 4 series motherboards exhibit a bandwidth limit defect on SSD's of approximately 80MBps when not operating in ACHI mode (BIOS configuration). Since the Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 motherboard we used for testing also comes equipped with a JMicron JMB363 SATA controller for two additional SATA-II ports, all tests were conducted on this drive controller. Test Tools
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. Nevertheless there will be some tests which will not be completely representative of the individual product tested, but a combination of the product and supporting system hardware. An excellent example of such a test is the write-to bandwidth benchmarks, which rely on other system components to force data onto the drive along with the bus bandwidth to support it. This dependency on system hardware is why you will see Benchmark Reviews place an emphasis on read bandwidth over write tests. System Speed Test BenchmarksIt's show time! All claims to performance are either made real or proven false in our testing, and although SSD's clearly offer some advantages it sometimes takes seeing a product compared to the performance of others to prove the point. During our re-testing process, I decided to take action and get System Speed Test v4.78 back in our test rotation. This software is solid, and the results are more accurate than any others available. I doubt that when DOS died, 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! To detect the Random Access Time of each device, we ran full test routines on all products a total of five times. In nearly every benchmark the result was extremely close to the collection, thus our charts represent the average of all readings. Very obvious in our results was the distinct difference in potential notebook access time at the start of our chart, compared to the current notebook access time on the far right.
Bandwidth is a whole other consideration once you record the results. In our tests, both the Western Digital Raptor and Seagate7200.11 Hard Disk Drives showed strength as only a few SSD's could match or beat the buffered read performance. Close on the Raptors' tail was the OCZ OCZSSD2-1S32Gwhich is based off of the the Samsung MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA. The Seagate 7200.11 HDD was nearly matched in buffered read bandwidth by the Super Talent FTM60GK25H and Silicon Power SP064GBSSD25SV10. The remainder of SSD's finish off our results, ending with the original OCZ SSD.
Looked at a different way, and ignoring the dominant buffered read speed results trend set by the Hard Disk Drives, the top SSD's actually did well to hold ground against the Raptor and 7200.11, which are at the very top-end of HDD performance. The 32MB buffer in the 7200.11 makes a 7200 RPM HDD difficult to keep pace with, and the 10,000 RPM spindle speed offer enough of an advantage to keep the Raptor on top.
Disk Hardware Tested:
Although Benchmark Reviews completely endorses the test results of System Speed Test for our benchmarking, it's always good to have other sources. We decided to then test the Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD SP064GBSSD25SV10 using the HD Tach RW and ATTO Disk Benchmark tool in the following sections. Please continue to see if our results were a fluke or not. HD Tach RW Benchmark ResultsIn the tests below, Benchmark Reviews utilizes the HD TachRW tool to compare the Silicon Power 64GB SATA Solid State Drive against the fastest collection of desktop drives and competing SSD's we can get our hands on. 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 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. HD Tach recorded a 60.6 MBps burst speed, which for Solid State Drives should be ignored due to the memory controller architecture. There are times where this number will be extremely high, such as the 260+ MBps we recorded while testing the OCZ SATA-II 32GB 2.5" SSD OCZSSD2-1S32G. The important numbers are the average read and write bandwidth speeds, which indicate the true performance level of the product. Our featured test item, the Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD, performed at 59.3 MBps sustained read bandwidth and 48.5 MBps sustained write bandwidth.
The chart below illustrates the collected benchmark results for HD Tach RW, with the read and write bandwidth results added together to determine placement. Without question, the MemoRight GT MR25.2-064S SSD enjoys a large lead over the entire field of storage products, with an impressive 117.9 MBps read and 122.8 MBps write bandwidth speed. The OCZ SATA-II SSD trails a decent distance behind with 94.3 MBps read and 85.9 MBps write, followed by the Seagate 7200.11 HDD with 88.8 and 78.8 MBps respectively. Mtron's Pro 7000 and Samsung's SATA-II SSD are trailed by the Crucial SATA-II SSD and Mtron MOBI 3000, which both feature great read speed paired with pathetic write bandwidth.
At the bottom half of our chart is the Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" WD740ADFD 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive. Sustained speeds seem to taper out after the initial burst for this drive, which by no means is a slouch - but just not as high-bandwidth as the others in our test group. The Super Talent MasterDrive MX SATA-II SSD seems to also suffer from a very poor write bandwidth matched against very good read performance. Finally, the Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD SP064GBSSD25SV10 offers the second worst performance out of an SSD we've ever seen, only to be under-performed by OCZ's original SSD product which arrived to market almost a year ago. Disk Hardware Tested:
In the next section, ATTO Disk Benchmark compares our range of drives and offers a different perspective from a unique test tool. ATTO Disk Benchmark ResultsThe 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 several different user-specified intervals and reports read and write speeds. The drives seek and access times are not statistics made available in this application, which makes this a considerably basic tool, although the adjustable test settings allow for a large range of differing results. Manufacturers seems to like this tool because it offers them the ability to reduce the test length load size to produce high benchmark results. Conversely, Benchmark Reviews uses this tool with the largest (32 MB) test chuck used to produce our test results. Bandwidth results are indicated as the transfer rate in the image below, showing the performance curve for the Silicon Power SATA SSD from 512 Bytes up to 1 MB test chunks. Silicon Power does not specify any bandwidth expectations for their SP064GBSSD25SV10 SSD, but nevertheless it performs very near to the 60 MBps maximum rate throughout the read bandwidth test results. From 64.0 KB to 1 MB the read and write transfer bandwidth is virtually identical, with the 64 Kb file size appearing to be the file size plateau. The same is true for the write bandwidth, which sustains a 46 MBps bandwidth throughout the 64 KB to 1 MB test chunk range.
Since ATTO Disk Benchmark offers test settings for each transfer file size from .5 KB to 1 MB, we used the largest (1 MB) statistic to build the chart located below. In this chart, I have organized the products using the sum of their read and write bandwidth speeds to determine position rank. Once again, the MemoRight GT SSDdemonstrates that an optimized SATA-I controller can outperform SATA-II controllers. The Seagate 7200.11 hard drive gets the closest in terms of performance, followed by the OCZ 64GB SATA SSD, Mtron Pro 7000 16GB SSD, and Samsung SSD. The mid-range of performance is filled by the Mtron MOBI 3000 SSD and Western Digital Raptor, which aren't really all that far off from the products positioned above them. On the other hand, the low-end of performance is a noticeable distance away. The Crucial / Lexar CT32GBFAB0 SATA-II SSD takes a major dip in write-bandwidth performance, which is mirrored by the Super Talent MasterDrive MX SSD and Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD. I'm not entirely clear on the technology each of these lower-end SSD's contain, but considering that two of them are SATA-II and match the performance of our slowest SATA-I SSD's I would contend that a design improvement is in order.
Originally I hadn't planned on including the ATTO Disk Benchmark results in this article. While the software is decent enough to mention, it was merely included because almost all SSD manufacturers test with it... and for very good reason I have learned. After several tests had been completed, I began to see why they decided on this particular software for benchmarks. What I like least about ATTO Disk Benchmark is how you can manipulate the settings to produce extremely wide range results from the same product. As an example, if you reduce the total test length size from 32 MB (used in our testing configuration) to one of the smaller sizes the benchmark results are more than 30% different (as in higher bandwidth). This reason alone is enough for manufacturers to tweak their own test configurations for self-benefit. Nevertheless, in regard to our ATTO tests the entire range of SSD products is very well represented with our configuration. It should be noted that with cache buffers growing larger and larger, perhaps there's a reasonable middle ground that will provide the best of both worlds. I suspect that hybrid drives could play an important role in this argument very soon. Disk Hardware Tested:
In our next section, we address the collection of test results and give our conclusion on the Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD SP064GBSSD25SV10. Silicon Power SSD Final ThoughtsFor the past year, or at least since Reno Hosted the SuperComputing Conference SC07, I have been on the prowl to test every SSD I could get my hands onto. It seemed that every time I requested a sample, I was given the run-around. Some manufacturers like to issue press release statements announcing their latest SSD product and specification ratings, and then give the excuse that they are in development even after a full six months after product announcement (shame on you, Transcend). It's nice to see that some companies still deliver what they promise... and can do so on the same day they release a statement. Silicon Power may not have released the fastest product on the market, but this SSD was available in retail form the day it was announced at the end of April. As a product analyst, I often get to have my hands on product that I would otherwise never spend my own money to purchase. Certainly without argument, Solid State Drives might fall into this category. There are many products which I feel are so new that it's better to let them ripen on the vine, so to say. This is one of them unfortunately. However early adopters never follow the pack, and scoff at the notion of waiting out the next technologies maturity. So when Benchmark Reviews began testing SSD's last year en mass, it seemed like we were doing very little more than toying with the untouchable. The nice thing about competition between hardware manufacturers is that it forces product improvements. I don't have to please anyone with my test results, since they are what they are. There's no doubt that the manufacturer would like a positive review, but if I make one manufacturer angry because I don't give their product a glowing review and they decide to ignore future product requests (Antec, XFX, Scythe, Transcend, and Thermalright) I can just simply move on to their competition. But if they're serious about producing excellent products worthy of praise, they'll be back with a bigger and better design the next time around. I mention this, because only four months after their SATA-I SSD launch, Silicon-Power has announced a series of SATA-II SSD products. Perhaps the best is yet to come. SP064GBSSD25SV10 Conclusion
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