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[Mini Review] OCZ Core Series SSD 2x32GB RAID0
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14-08-2008, 11:48 PM
#1 (permalink)
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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!
