[Mini Review] OCZ Core Series SSD 2x32GB RAID0

14-08-2008, 11:48 PM #1 (**permalink**)

Dudes,

After what seems like a monumental delay my pair of 32Gb OCZ core series SSD finally arrived, so I'll just share my initial results with you. I'm mainly interested to see if they really are as fast as they say and also which stripe sizes give maximum performance.

Setup
OS Vista x64 Ultimate SP1
Asus Maximus Formula (ICH9 HDD controller)
2 x OCZ Core Series 32GB

Benchmarks used
HDTach 3.0.4.0
HDTune Pro 3.0

Method
All benchmarks are performed on unformatted drives with writeback cache enabled and advanced performance enabled via device manager.

Single Drive Benches Write Back Cache Enabled:-

HD-Tune
Max Transfer rate:- 121.8 MB/sec
Min Transfer rate:- 89.9 MB/sec
Average Transfer rate (STR):- 110.5 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst rate:- 113.9 MB/sec

HD-Tach
Average read:- 115.9 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst Rate:- 135.5 MB/sec

Right off the bat you can see that the transfer rates dip up and down at regular intervals. I've read elsewhere that the cause of this is to do with the way speeds are measured by the programs in question Source. That aside the results are pretty much inline with OCZ's claimed performance figures, but I'd ignore the CPU usage figures as I'm sure they use a random number generator to get those figures varying by +/-50%.

RAID 0 Benchmarks

I always run my system with RAID 0, so obviously this is the most important part of the testing for me and in particular Stripe sizes for the arrays and their impact on performance is of key importance because it would be a shame to have these cracking little drives and then have them setup sub-optimal.

16k Stripe Writeback Cache Enabled

HDTune
Max Transfer rate:- 134.0 MB/sec
Min Transfer rate:- 119.6 MB/sec
Average Transfer rate (STR):- 133.0 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst rate:- 1982.1 MB/sec

HD-Tach
Average read:- 140.2 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst Rate:- 3164.8 MB/sec

32k Stripe Writeback Cache Enabled

HDTune
Max Transfer rate:- 168.7 MB/sec
Min Transfer rate:- 156.7 MB/sec
Average Transfer rate (STR):- 167.1 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst rate:- 1955.5 MB/sec

HD-Tach
Average read:- 177.5 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst Rate:- 3286.7 MB/sec

64k Stripe Size Writeback Cache Enabled

HDTune
Max Transfer rate:- 186.5 MB/sec
Min Transfer rate:- 178.9 MB/sec
Average Transfer rate (STR):- 184.7 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst rate:- 2150.6 MB/sec

HD-Tach
Average read:- 196.3 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst Rate:- 3339.3 MB/sec

128K Stripe Writeback Cache Enabled
HDTune
Max Transfer rate:- 224.0 MB/sec
Min Transfer rate:- 215.7 MB/sec
Average Transfer rate (STR):- 220.7 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst rate:- 1971.3 MB/sec

HD-Tach
Average read:- 238.7 MB/sec
Access Time:- 0.4 ms
Burst Rate:- 3456.2 MB/sec

Conclusion
As is plain to see the larger the Stripe size the better the performance, at least in regard to Sustained Transfer rates with 128k Stripe offering 220.7MB/s or 238.7MB/s depending which benchmark you go by and it has to be said that it does make you wonder what would happen if even higher stripe sizes were available. It was curious that the access times didn't improve at all when running in RAID 0 vs single drive as is normally found on conventional HDD's.

Under general use I can say that in every way the system feels far snappier and programs launch with incredible speed and it really does feel like finally after all these years HDD's are catching up to the other hardware that has been advancing at a phenomonal rate and we can expect further leaps forward as SSD technology matures. Obviously the size of the disks is somewhat miserly, but for a dedicated system drive these have just enough capacity to be useful. The benefit of using these kinds of drives as pure storage drives is a little suspect as the price per Gb is frankly terrible when compared to conventinal HDD's, but for your OS you will be pretty hard pressed to find anything that offers this level of performance for the money. I'd say it's money well spent!

15-08-2008, 12:45 AM #2 (**permalink**)

woah nice find on stripe size ! tried pcmark05 hdd test to see which stripe is better yet ?

Just got word my 4x32GB OCZ SSD Core drives were shipped out to me so hopefully they come tomorrow - bad time for me to come down with the flu and fever though

15-08-2008, 03:11 AM #3 (**permalink**)

haven't tested PCMark yet, haven't used it in getting on for a couple of years now, but I'll look into it.

Yeah the stripe size was an eye opener for me, with regular HDD's I'd never found stripe size to really make any tangible difference, sure in the benches there was a marginal improvement with different arrangements, but lets be honest here... has anyone ever been able to 'feel' the difference between a 16k stripe and 128k one while actually using a PC? nah, course not!

I'd still experiment with the stripe size though George, you never know a 4 disk array may react a bit differently to my tiddly 2 disk array hehe.

Oh... and ignore that flu mate, refuse to acknowledge it and it'll go away before you know it.... simply put, refuse to be ill. I've managed to beat leprosy, the plague, ebola and small pox with that very technique

Hope you're better soon bruv.

Maff

15-08-2008, 03:53 AM #4 (**permalink**)

Thanks Maff... keep us updated on how your SSD raid array performs for everyday

15-08-2008, 07:26 AM #5 (**permalink**)

Very nice mini review Jaffa thanks for sharing , seems like finally the SSD drives has come down in price in the last months. Interesting conclusion.

16-08-2008, 11:27 PM #6 (**permalink**)

Oh lol, OCZ have just announced Core Series V2 due in shops in just over a week according to Tony from OCZ. Source

Faster reads and writes apparently than Version 1. I think I'm just going to stop buying anything for my computer, literally the day after I buy anything something better comes out.... I'll never learn.

17-08-2008, 06:53 PM #7 (**permalink**)

Yeah saw the V2.. oh well - V1 for me for now 4x 32GB OCZ SSD Core 2.5" SATAII solid state disks tests

11:01 PM

Just an update regarding day to day use:-

SSD RAID array continues to impress, one thing that seems much faster than before and frankly surprised me is the speed that web pages load now, it had always been a source of irritation that despite having a pretty good (20MB) connection pages often loaded somewhat slowly. Now they seem to load damn near instantly which I really didn't expect. Game loading times are very much better and the usual delay while waiting for all game engine features to be loaded is reduced significantly, level loading times are a little better, but being as its only loading a single file the difference was never going to be that big due to the fact that its not really making use of the drives strongest point (random access). Stuff like Photoshop and Office just load like lightning, usually with photoshop you could read the name of each module the program is loading at startup, but now it just a blur of letters that can't even be identified

Windows load times are slightly faster, but not dramatically so, maybe 3 or 4 seconds quicker compared to my old array, but I think this is more to do with the fact that the main delay is from the time it takes to initialise the devices and I have absolutely tons of stuff connected to this PC... TV card NIC and x-ammount of USB devices.

*EDIT*
Tried PCMark05 and for some reason it seems to be running the HDD tests on my storage drive instead of the main OS array