The new SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News and Advice)

[chris-m]

For the most part, yes. But if you want more than 64-80GB, that 128GB Vertex still looks tempting.

[Sponsi]

Heh, the 80GB Intel SSD on Newegg.com is already out of stock.

I wish I wasn't so cheap and would just buy the 160GB right now. Instead I'm going to wait until August 10th, when Bing.com doubles their Cashback percentage. Hopefully there will be discounted ones on eBay by then as well.

[dsknight]

I waited too long! Argh, curse you, indecision...

[jcll03]

i know i feel the same way.

[Sponsi]

It's noq out of stock on Newegg.ca as well.

Puget Systems has both available but at a premium price:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/store/?c...e=X25-M%2034nm

[makaveli72]

Well it's been 3 months now since i've had my Vertex 60GB and I paid $199.99 for it shipped then (Apr. 30); And to this date it's only lowered $9 less...I definitely feel good about that.

[davepermen]

Originally Posted by dsknight

So from what I've read, is it that we're just hoping that Intel gives us a firmware update for the G2 drives to enable TRIM-ing? This looks like the perfect drive to get but I don't want to get burned by vaporware

TRIM is entierly unimportant on those drives. It's just nice to have. the drive is certainly not vapoerware in it's current state.

and intel stated, that they will update the firmware with TRIM support. so far, intel was quite trustable in such cases, not?

[Jackboot]

Well maybe this post will get lost amongst all the Intel talk right now but...

NEW FIRMWARE FOR JMICRON DRIVES (JMF602 Controller)

This is not an official release...I actually have no idea where it originated. But the readme properties says it was written by JMicron and the utility itself was made by Quanta. My *guess* is that this is the new modified firmware that is being used by Kingston in their V-series drives. But the utility appears to be able to flash any JMF602(B?) controller (Core V2, Solid, Apex and many many other drives). I am not sure if the utility will work for the old JMF602A controllers (Core V1).

The included readme says:

The package includes a new version “090508S” firmware to improve “lag” problem.

Since the new Intel drives are released and I'm going to replace my OCZ Solid Series drive anyway, I thought...what the heck, I'll play with it and if I brick my drive then no big deal. I had no idea if the utility would even recognise my solid series. But it did.

Updating the firmware will erase the drive contents so obviously back up your data first because you will need to do a fresh OS install etc.

The results

"Stock" firmware from OCZ:
This is the same old sad story with these drives...terrible 4KB random write performance causes stuttering.



"new" firmware:



So small random writes go from awful to...still awful, but improve by 3X. In my short "real world" testing so far, I can notice an obvious difference in the areas that were so annoying before:

• browsing through folders there is no longer any pauses
• as I'm typing this post the cursor doesn't freeze and take a second or two to catch up with what I've typed

There are some other "real world" tests that I need to get to since I've had to do an OS reinstall but so far it is looking good. I was just going to jump on a new Intel but maybe I can hold off for another couple months if I can get some descent performance out of this old dog for a bit longer!

I've attached the flashing utility to this message in case you want to USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! This almost certainly voids your warranty and you run the risk of bricking your drive.

I've also attached the IOMeter file that I used to run the above tests. You will need to remove the .txt extension so that the file is called random4k.icf in order to use it with IOMeter. I had to add the .txt extension in order to attach it here. Here are the details of the configuration of this test:

• 8GB section of the disk
• Queue depth = 4
• 100% random write
• 3 Minutes run time
• 4KB

I haven't used the newly flashed drive extensively at all though so again USE THE NEW FIRMWARE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! I cannot say how this affects read/writes for other file sizes yet because I haven't tested it much. I did do ATTO and CDM before and aside from small random write performance everything else looks about the same. However, I do get strange results with CDM, but I think this has to do with how crappy this benchmarking program is for use with SSDs.

EDIT 1:
I learned of this firmware update from this locked (edit: now unlocked again) topic at the OCZ forum.

Edit 2:
SuperTalent has released this firmware on their support page. It is called "FWUPD_090508s.rar" and seems to work for any drive that uses a JMF602x controller.

[davepermen]

nice post. i hope this works for all the users with the jmicrons. so if they now get "good enough" for basic os usage, they sure get "good enough" as a cheap secondary storage drive with an intel as a first one, f.e.

one could say "too late, too less", but still, anything that helps is nice.

[davepermen]

hm.. i do hope anandtech catches this and reports on it in a new ssd update (including the new intels, and all etc.. i think this anandtech part evolves into a halfyearly series (and 'halfyearly' looks too funny as a word )