Slashdot Mirror

Here is PCPer.com's post on this update:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=805

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=789

Just for a second glance.

"Reading the PC perspective reviews and a couple of others the 5870 seems to be a bit faster than the GTX285 but not by much, and certainly not by a margin one would expect from a new generation of parts vs old."

I noticed the exact same thing. I was a bit disappointed by the 5870. Only at the highest resolutions, 2560x1600 4xAA 8xAF, did it start beating the GTX285 by a 10% margin. The GTX285 came out in January and is already under $300, how does ATI expect to compete with a $400 card that only offers 10% more at 2560x1600 resolutions that most LCDs don't even support? Even the power consumption isn't significantly different, with the GTX285 using about 10% more.

I'm afraid of what the $300 5850 will look like.

Also seems we won't be seeing support for 3 LCDs anytime soon:
" if you already have some DVI-ready monitors and are looking forward to triple monitor support you might be disappointed to learn that the DisplayPort connection requires an ACTIVE adaptor to be converted to a DVI connection. The adaptors are also expensive (around $100) and are pretty hard to find right now. AMD says they are trying to address this but short of selling their own version I am not sure what pull they have in this regard."

Thanks ATI! Sure it supports 3 LCDs, if you have some kinda special LCD that uses Displayport.

So there really is nothing to see here, move on....

"Reading the PC perspective reviews and a couple of others the 5870 seems to be a bit faster than the GTX285 but not by much, and certainly not by a margin one would expect from a new generation of parts vs old."

I noticed the exact same thing. I was a bit disappointed by the 5870. Only at the highest resolutions, 2560x1600 4xAA 8xAF, did it start beating the GTX285 by a 10% margin. The GTX285 came out in January and is already under $300, how does ATI expect to compete with a $400 card that only offers 10% more at 2560x1600 resolutions that most LCDs don't even support? Even the power consumption isn't significantly different, with the GTX285 using about 10% more.

I'm afraid of what the $300 5850 will look like.

Also seems we won't be seeing support for 3 LCDs anytime soon:
" if you already have some DVI-ready monitors and are looking forward to triple monitor support you might be disappointed to learn that the DisplayPort connection requires an ACTIVE adaptor to be converted to a DVI connection. The adaptors are also expensive (around $100) and are pretty hard to find right now. AMD says they are trying to address this but short of selling their own version I am not sure what pull they have in this regard."

Thanks ATI! Sure it supports 3 LCDs, if you have some kinda special LCD that uses Displayport.

So there really is nothing to see here, move on....

"Reading the PC perspective reviews and a couple of others the 5870 seems to be a bit faster than the GTX285 but not by much, and certainly not by a margin one would expect from a new generation of parts vs old."

I noticed the exact same thing. I was a bit disappointed by the 5870. Only at the highest resolutions, 2560x1600 4xAA 8xAF, did it start beating the GTX285 by a 10% margin. The GTX285 came out in January and is already under $300, how does ATI expect to compete with a $400 card that only offers 10% more at 2560x1600 resolutions that most LCDs don't even support? Even the power consumption isn't significantly different, with the GTX285 using about 10% more.

I'm afraid of what the $300 5850 will look like.

Also seems we won't be seeing support for 3 LCDs anytime soon:
" if you already have some DVI-ready monitors and are looking forward to triple monitor support you might be disappointed to learn that the DisplayPort connection requires an ACTIVE adaptor to be converted to a DVI connection. The adaptors are also expensive (around $100) and are pretty hard to find right now. AMD says they are trying to address this but short of selling their own version I am not sure what pull they have in this regard."

Thanks ATI! Sure it supports 3 LCDs, if you have some kinda special LCD that uses Displayport.

So there really is nothing to see here, move on....

There are some videos of Eyefinity at work in this article, here is a direct link as well:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=783&type=expert&pid=6

Lots and lots of tests and bechmarks. Looking good.

Intel 'Lynnfield' Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 Performance Testing Introduction :: TweakTown
Intel Core i5 and Core i7: Lynnfield CPUs reviewed - Intel, Core i5, Core i-750, Core i7, Core i7-860, Core i7-870, Lynnfield, Bloomfield, AMD Phenom II X4 - PC Games Hardware
Core i5 750 - Core i7 860 and 870 processor review
HEXUS.net - Review :: Intel Lynnfield Core i5 750, Core i7 860 and Core i7 870 CPU review: bombarding the mid-range : Page - 1/12
Legion Hardware
Intel Core i5 750 & i7 870 Review - Page 1 - The Next Nehalem-based CPU lineup
PC Perspective - Intel Lynnfield Core i7-870 and Core i5-750 Processor Review
Introduction - Intel Lynnfield Core i5 and Core i7 Processors | [H]ard|OCP
In Theory: How Does Lynnfield's On-Die PCI Express Affect Gaming? : Introduction - Review Tom's Hardware
AnandTech: Intel's Core i7 870 & i5 750, Lynnfield: Harder, Better, Faster Stronger[/QUOTE]
Intel Core i5 750 Core i7 870 Review - Overclockers Club
Techgage - Intel Core i7-870 & i5-750 - Nehalem for the Mainstream
Core i5-750 and Core i7-870 Processors Review | Hardware Secrets
Intel Core i5 750 Processor Review - TechSpot News
Intel Core i5 And Core i7: Intel?s Mainstream Magnum Opus : Introduction - Review Tom's Hardware
Intel Lynnfield Core i5-750 & Core i7-870 Processor Review
Intel's Core i5-750 and Core i7-870 processors - The Tech Report - Page 1
bit-tech.net | Review - Intel Core i5 and Core i7 Lynnfield review
bit-tech.net | Feature - Intel Lynnfield: Details and Architecture
Intel Core i5, Core i7 800 Processors and P55 Express - HotHardware
Intel Core i5-750 Processor BX80605I5750 | Intel Core i5-750,BX80605I5750,Lynnfield,LGA1156,CPU,Proocessor, Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield LGA1156 CPU Benchmark Performance Test Processor Review | Benchmark Reviews Performance Tests
Intel Core i7 870/Core i5 750/P55 Express chipset Review :: Introduction :: Motherboards.org

PCPer has another preview of the same content but includes video of the DX11 SDKs as well.

http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=7640

I have been working closely with OCZ on this new firmware and wanted to clear things up a bit. This new firmware *does not*, *in any way at all*, remove or eliminate orphaned data, deleted files, or anything of the like. It does not reach into the partition $bitmap and figure out what clusters are unused (like newer Samsung firmwares). It does not even use Windows 7 TRIM to purge unused LBA remap table entries upon file deletions.

What it *does* do is re-arrange in-place data that was previously write-combined (i.e. by earlier small random writes taking place). If data was written to every LBA of the drive, then all files were subsequently deleted, all data would remain associated with those LBAs. This actually puts OCZ above most of the pack, because their algorithm restores performance without needing to reclaim unused flash blocks, and does so completely independent of the data / partition type used. This is particularly useful for those concerned with data recovery of deleted files, since the data is never purged or TRIMmed.

Slashdot-specific Translation: This firmware will enable an OCZ Vertex to maintain full speed (~160 MB/sec) sequential writes and good IOPS performance when used under Mac and Linux.

Hardware-nut Translation: This firmware will enable OCZ Vertex to maintain full performance when used in RAID configurations.

I'll have my full evaluation of this firmware up at PC Perspective later today. Once available, it will appear at this link:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=760

Regards,
Allyn Malventano
Storage Editor, PC Perspective

Welcome to 2 weeks ago:

http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=7544

Allyn Malventano
Storage Editor, PC Perspective

The performance degradation in the Intel X-25 is not because of a "firmware bug". All SSD's will suffer performance degradation whether or not their writing/wear leveling algorithms have been updated via firmware.

You're missing several months of history here.

Back in February, several reviewers found that the X-25s performance fell to unacceptably low levels after a certain threshold was reached. Intel tried to deny it, saying that you'd never see the problem in real-world usage and only benchmarking the disk in a certain way would trigger the behavior. Which may be true, but the hardcore "Pimp My PC" crowd aren't going to spend hundreds of dollars on a disk that has even a remote chance of being triggered into a non-recoverable slow mode.

Intel relented and released a firmware to fix the issue, and the benchmarkers and reviewers saw the fragmentation problem vanish. It was a big deal because Intel positioned the disks to be the high-end in the SSD market and they were able to overcome most of the downsides to using SSDs in place of mechanical disks. (Except the price.)

The performance degradation in the Intel X-25 is not because of a "firmware bug".

Bugs can cause slowdowns, too

Though it's highly regarded, Intel's X25-M SSD had a firmware bug that adjusted the priorities of random and sequential writes, leading to a major fragmentation problem that dropped throughput dramatically. The issue was originally uncovered by PC Perspective after two months of testing. Those tests showed that write speeds dropped from 80MB/sec. to 30MB/sec. over time, and read speeds dropped from 250MB/sec. to 60MB/sec. for some large block writes.

https://www.techworld.com.au/article/302571/ssd_performance_--_slowdown_inevitable?pp=3

Before firmware update

the result suggested a write speed of 30 MB/sec.

http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=3

After firmware update

After composing myself, I did the same file copy I had tried earlier. 76 MB/sec.

http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=4

Not a firmware bug?

The performance degradation in the Intel X-25 is not because of a "firmware bug".

Bugs can cause slowdowns, too

Though it's highly regarded, Intel's X25-M SSD had a firmware bug that adjusted the priorities of random and sequential writes, leading to a major fragmentation problem that dropped throughput dramatically. The issue was originally uncovered by PC Perspective after two months of testing. Those tests showed that write speeds dropped from 80MB/sec. to 30MB/sec. over time, and read speeds dropped from 250MB/sec. to 60MB/sec. for some large block writes.

https://www.techworld.com.au/article/302571/ssd_performance_--_slowdown_inevitable?pp=3

Before firmware update

the result suggested a write speed of 30 MB/sec.

http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=3

After firmware update

After composing myself, I did the same file copy I had tried earlier. 76 MB/sec.

http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=4

Not a firmware bug?

The X25-M's initial firmware was unusually bad; the degradation was more rapid and more severe than necessary. Thus, they issued a firmware update. The results were quite impressive. It not only reduced the perf degradation, but it seems to have made writes faster across the board.

Working article link (from Google)
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=752

Now all I need is a molecular bonded shell and a Super Pursuit mode, and I'd be ready to go.

First a quick clarification: Intel X25 series SSDs do not use their RAM as a data writeback cache. Intel ships racks full of both M and E series drives, with those drives living in a RAID configuration. They couldn't pull that off if the array was corrupted on power loss. The competition had to start using large caches to reduce write stutters and increase random write performance, mostly in an attempt to catch up to Intel.

The parent article is a bit 'off' as far as bandwidth vs. IOPS on RAID controllers. You can saturate even the best PCI-e RAID cards with only spinning disks. I'm currently pegging an Areca with 10 1TB 5400 RPM drives. The ultimate bandwidth is not limited by bus speed - it is the speed of the internal data pipelines within the card itself. I have yet to see a RAID card pull anywhere close to the theoretical 2 GB/sec possible over PCI-e x8. The 24-drive crazy Samsung RAID video that's floating around required three different RAIDs going in parallel to hit 2 GB/sec.

What people also need to realize is that high end RAID cards were built around a theory of using a large cache and a dedicated processor to handle XOR calculations for RAID-5 and 6. Even the best performing cards will, at best, perform on-par with a high IOPS SSD like an X25 series.

The parent article also speaks briefly of Native Command Queuing, hinting that it is not implemented in RAID cards. This is flat out wrong:

1. Only very high end cards properly implement NCQ at the host and drive level (i.e. Areca):
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=695&type=expert&pid=6

2. Only some SSDs implement NCQ beyond a queue depth of about 4 (i.e. Intel).
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=750&type=expert&pid=8

The *real* reason even the best RAID hardware does not scale properly with SSD usage is the fact that a good RAID card has an upper IOPS limit matching just *one* SSD. Adding more SSDs only increases throughput, and it takes roughly half the number of SSDs to saturate a given controller (as compared to using HDDs).

The parent article heavily confuses 'streaming' with 'IOPS'. A given RAID card can 'stream' just as well with either HDDs or SSDs. Where 'IOPS' comes into the equation is how far your average throughput drops as those requests become more random in nature. Random accesses cause the RAID controller to have to juggle more data. Here is an example: Placing an X25-M G2 behind an Areca RAID card will result in a *reduction* in IOPS, but no change in sequential throughput. The RAID card processor simply can't juggle the commands as fast as if that same X25-M G2 was connected to the motherboard controller directly. With a single SSD outmaneuvering the RAID controller, adding more SSDs only helps the RAID scale in sequential throughput, not IOPS.

For SSDs to behave properly behind a RAID, the entire RAID process needs to be rethought. You don't need a bunch of writeback cache and a bulky controller architecture. You need a very lightweight XOR engine with *no* cache. The best example of this is creating a RAID of SSDs on an Intel ICH-10R controller. IOPS scales beautifully. 3 or 4 X25s on an ICH-10R will even outmaneuver an ioDrive, and gives several times the IOPS performance of any RAID card.

Allyn Malventano
Storage Editor, PC Perspective

First a quick clarification: Intel X25 series SSDs do not use their RAM as a data writeback cache. Intel ships racks full of both M and E series drives, with those drives living in a RAID configuration. They couldn't pull that off if the array was corrupted on power loss. The competition had to start using large caches to reduce write stutters and increase random write performance, mostly in an attempt to catch up to Intel.

The parent article is a bit 'off' as far as bandwidth vs. IOPS on RAID controllers. You can saturate even the best PCI-e RAID cards with only spinning disks. I'm currently pegging an Areca with 10 1TB 5400 RPM drives. The ultimate bandwidth is not limited by bus speed - it is the speed of the internal data pipelines within the card itself. I have yet to see a RAID card pull anywhere close to the theoretical 2 GB/sec possible over PCI-e x8. The 24-drive crazy Samsung RAID video that's floating around required three different RAIDs going in parallel to hit 2 GB/sec.

What people also need to realize is that high end RAID cards were built around a theory of using a large cache and a dedicated processor to handle XOR calculations for RAID-5 and 6. Even the best performing cards will, at best, perform on-par with a high IOPS SSD like an X25 series.

The parent article also speaks briefly of Native Command Queuing, hinting that it is not implemented in RAID cards. This is flat out wrong:

1. Only very high end cards properly implement NCQ at the host and drive level (i.e. Areca):
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=695&type=expert&pid=6

2. Only some SSDs implement NCQ beyond a queue depth of about 4 (i.e. Intel).
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=750&type=expert&pid=8

The *real* reason even the best RAID hardware does not scale properly with SSD usage is the fact that a good RAID card has an upper IOPS limit matching just *one* SSD. Adding more SSDs only increases throughput, and it takes roughly half the number of SSDs to saturate a given controller (as compared to using HDDs).

The parent article heavily confuses 'streaming' with 'IOPS'. A given RAID card can 'stream' just as well with either HDDs or SSDs. Where 'IOPS' comes into the equation is how far your average throughput drops as those requests become more random in nature. Random accesses cause the RAID controller to have to juggle more data. Here is an example: Placing an X25-M G2 behind an Areca RAID card will result in a *reduction* in IOPS, but no change in sequential throughput. The RAID card processor simply can't juggle the commands as fast as if that same X25-M G2 was connected to the motherboard controller directly. With a single SSD outmaneuvering the RAID controller, adding more SSDs only helps the RAID scale in sequential throughput, not IOPS.

For SSDs to behave properly behind a RAID, the entire RAID process needs to be rethought. You don't need a bunch of writeback cache and a bulky controller architecture. You need a very lightweight XOR engine with *no* cache. The best example of this is creating a RAID of SSDs on an Intel ICH-10R controller. IOPS scales beautifully. 3 or 4 X25s on an ICH-10R will even outmaneuver an ioDrive, and gives several times the IOPS performance of any RAID card.

Allyn Malventano
Storage Editor, PC Perspective

The last page of the review states that these should cost you roughly $3 per GB. Whether that's "laughably expensive" depends on what you want to do with the drive.

Slashdot could have linked to the article the story submitter wrote for PC Perspectives: SLI on Life Support on the AMD Platform: Oh SNAP!.

"A little more speed" ? how a bout a lot more speed ? Putting the OS on a quality SSD gave lots of people immense performance gains. ...Until the SSD starts to fragment. This drops the amazing read speeds and the write speeds fall into the toilet. Right now, there are solutions, but they're either rare or sketchy.

High-performance SSDs are not ready for prime time yet, not with the general populace. I give it at least two years - this is time for Windows 7 to gain traction in the marketplace, and time for all this TRIM bullshit to get worked-out. Until then, rotational media will still rule.

"A little more speed" ? how a bout a lot more speed ? Putting the OS on a quality SSD gave lots of people immense performance gains. ...Until the SSD starts to fragment. This drops the amazing read speeds and the write speeds fall into the toilet. Right now, there are solutions, but they're either rare or sketchy.

High-performance SSDs are not ready for prime time yet, not with the general populace. I give it at least two years - this is time for Windows 7 to gain traction in the marketplace, and time for all this TRIM bullshit to get worked-out. Until then, rotational media will still rule.

This older Slashdot post linked in the story links to a story that covers that topic very well: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669

This piece has more commentary on the release as opposed to regurgitating specs: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=732

It looks like this new architecture is going to be quite different than the desktop counterpart.

This review compares the same motherboard to an AMD-based system that is micro-ATX not mini-ITX, but does have the same price: $189 or so.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=708&type=expert&pid=4

If power consumption doesn't matter to you, the AMD X2 7750 + 780G + 400w PSU is a much better performer.

Pardom my knowledge for being ever so slightly out of date. As of less than a month ago, that wasn't the case:
April 13, 2009
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=8

"...when Microsoft finally adds it to Windows 7 (it's not in there yet)"

Also regarding the trim support on the Vertex:

"The Indilinx guys have gone ahead and implemented a draft form of TRIM and OCZ has released a (very) beta version of a TRIM tool for use with their Vertex series drives...As of this writing the tool causes severe data corruption in 64 bit environments."

So it is still very much a work in progress (though again, that is almost a month old, so I can't say how it has progressed since then)

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=5

OCZ has not yet solved it. They currently rely on TRIM, and in my testing that alone is not sufficient to correct the fragmentation buildup. IOPS falls off in this condition as well.

Sorry, but that article does not say anything about Vertex drives, it does not say anything about firmware updates of Vertex drives and I've seen nothing in the Anandtech article requiring you to use TRIM commands to get the more balanced performance.

As a storage editor, I would like you to point to an article refuting Anands claims about the Vertex. Mods, someone just chiming in as an editor of a PC mag should not get free mod points, even if they provide a link. Although the part of the Intel drives is interesting, backing up Anands claims.

Intel has solved theirs about 95%, but they are helped by their write speeds being limited to 80 MB/sec. With the new firmware, it is *very* hard to get an X25-E to drop below its rated write speed.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=5

OCZ has not yet solved it. They currently rely on TRIM, and in my testing that alone is not sufficient to correct the fragmentation buildup. IOPS falls off in this condition as well.

Allyn Malventano
Storage Editor, PC Perspective

All flash drives *do not* have the issue. What really happens is your small write IOPS will be on the low side and your sequential writes will always be full speed *unless* you implement some form of write combining. The write combining cheats a bit by taking small random writes and writing them in a more sequential fashion to the flash itself.

The catch is that when you come past that now fragmented area, the controller has to play musical chairs with the data while trying to service the write originally requested by the OS. End result - slower write speed.

Some well behaved controllers (Intel, Samsung) will take a little extra time to defragment the block while it's servicing the sequential write. Optimized controllers (Intel M series) will now rarely fall below their advertised write speed of 80 MB/sec.

Other more immature controllers leave the data fragmented and simply move the whole block elsewhere. This results in a compounded fragmentation, which can eventually drop write speed to 1/3 to 1/5 of it's write speed when new.

I authored the original articles on the matter:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=691

Allyn Malventano
Storage Editor, PC Perspective

All flash drives *do not* have the issue. What really happens is your small write IOPS will be on the low side and your sequential writes will always be full speed *unless* you implement some form of write combining. The write combining cheats a bit by taking small random writes and writing them in a more sequential fashion to the flash itself.

The catch is that when you come past that now fragmented area, the controller has to play musical chairs with the data while trying to service the write originally requested by the OS. End result - slower write speed.

Some well behaved controllers (Intel, Samsung) will take a little extra time to defragment the block while it's servicing the sequential write. Optimized controllers (Intel M series) will now rarely fall below their advertised write speed of 80 MB/sec.

Other more immature controllers leave the data fragmented and simply move the whole block elsewhere. This results in a compounded fragmentation, which can eventually drop write speed to 1/3 to 1/5 of it's write speed when new.

I authored the original articles on the matter:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=691

Allyn Malventano
Storage Editor, PC Perspective

The most interesting thing is the last section on the last page.

PC Perspective: Intel Responds to Fragmentation with New X25-M Firmware - My Theory - It Can Write Faster
by Allyn Malventano 2009-04-13

My own personal theory is that Intel got things *too right* with their custom controller. ...

Despite using MLC flash memory, competitors have broken the 200 MB/sec sequential write speed barrier, and have done so with only 4 channel controllers. The X25-M talks to its flash across 10 parallel channels. If the X25-M was truly flash speed limited at 80 MB/sec, other MLC flash would have to be over 6x as fast to achieve stated speeds over the fewer channels available. ...

My hunch is they expected MLC write speeds to remain relatively low across the marketplace, and like many other products in similar chains, imposed a hard limit of 80 MB/sec to their M series drives. ...

If an M series drive could write as fast as an E series drive, there would be considerably less market for the latter. ...

I just think it can go faster than 80 MB/sec.

I think that Allyn is onto something because if you look at the graph for write speed of the X25-M (MLC) it seems utterly perfect at 80 MB/s, almost like there is an artificial cap on the speed, while the one from the X25-E (SLC) series it produces a standard waveform, like Allyn pointed out, and not an artificial flat line.

I too believe that Intel is artificially capping the performance of this drive and they might decide to uncap it sometime in the future once the competitors start snapping at their heels or if enough time goes by and they decide to introduce a new SSD MLC based performance/server oriented product line and remove the cap then. This is very similar to the situation with processor multiplier locks that they remove in their performance oriented Extreme processor lines.

I frankly don't like this kind of behavior from Intel since they know that they have the upper hand so they are just doling out enough performance to beat the competitors and to satisfy the current customers but at the same time holding back to create a market for their X25-E product line with slightly higher performance.

I think the other shoe will drop sooner or later on the 80 MB/s cap.

Research

I've been doing research into Solid State Disks in the last few weeks and this article is yet another one of those for Required Reading in the course of learning about SSD. I've even wrote a detailed post with links to reviews and articles. You can read up on the linked articles to get a good primer on things.

Solid State Disk Benchmarks

I touched on this at the end of this page:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=8

OCZ is getting there, but they are trying to keep up with the IOPS of Intel's 10 channel controller with their own 4 channel controller. Something has to give. In this case it is their Vertex fragments fairly quickly and won't come back on its own. It *requires* a TRIM utility to be run on it to restore full write speed.

It's a tradeoff. With the new firmware, the X25 goes *slightly* slower with random writes of random sizes, but this is because it is more aggressively defragmenting itself on the fly. It does this to keep closer to its full write speed. The Vertex does not have the luxury of that overhead with only 4 channels.

It's not how much you write to it, it's how you write to it. Write a bunch of small files to random locations and it will fragment, dropping subsequent write speed. There is a pic of the effect on the last page of my article:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=10

What you're thinking of is essentially the response time of the flash itself. Most drives appear to be engineered to assume the flash is at its end of life and keep their timings to that level. No drive I have tested has slowed for this particular reason.

d) When their datasheet also says, "Should the host system attempt to exceed 20 GB writes per day by a large margin for an extended period, the drive will enable the endurance management feature to adjust write performance, this feature enables the device to have, at a minimum, a five year useful life"...

You make many good points, but I should point out that the quoted feature never made it into the retail product. When conducting the testing for my article, I wrote several TB per day to my X25-M and experienced no drop in write speeds - provided those writes were more sequential than random.

Constantly hitting an X25-M with small writes will net you at most an average 50% drop in sequential write speeds. The drive will eventually reach an equilibrium based on the mix of write sizes you hit it with. The M has larger flash blocks and has to track a relatively higher level of write combining, and it is possible for it to get 'stuck' at some very low write speeds (see the article for more detail). This is a unique condition that Intel is currently looking into.

Getting back to the quoted section: The write speed slow downs seen in my testing resulted only from the ratio of small/large files written and had nothing to do with the rate / volume of data written over any particular time period.

Article in question:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/13/2337258
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669

In response to the post, I would recommend either an MLC SSD with very high IOPS (Intel), one of the newer MLC SSD's with on-board SRAM cache (OCZ Vertex / 3rd gen Samsung), or for the highest overall read/write throughput, a pair of SLC SSD's in RAID-0. For SLC, the Intel drive is very good, but there are much cheaper alternatives out there (i.e. G.Skill rebranded Samsung SLC). Note that the X25-E uses write combining, and will take that same 50% worst-case sequential write hit. Other SLC units are not as fast at small writes (no combining), but their performance remains rock steady regardless of what you hit them with.

The G.Skill SLC drive I mentioned:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231186

Regards,
Allyn Malventano
Storage Editor, PCPer.com

I think slightly misinterpreted this article:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669&type=expert&pid=5

Anyways, writing zeros, or writing something else sequentially should essentially be the same. More dumb Flash based SSDs actually respond to writing zeros, so I just remembered "here you can do the same zeroing trick".

...50% more? since when? Sure, the Nano may use more power, but it's nowhere near 50% more. 60.1*1.5 is 90.15, and x2 it's 120.2. The Nano tops out at 77.5. Making up bullshit is not "interesting" or "insightful".

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=664

The benchmarks for the new Atom 330, dual-core HyperThreaded CPU seem to turn the tides though.

The Nano has ALWAYS been a better CPU than the Atom but that doesn't seem to matter when it comes to the push that Intel has...

A review of the ION platform with a dual core Atom 330 is here:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=663

I suppose the big question is what is the computing need out there.

I called "silly" on the massive parallelizing of very limited SIMD units because of the limited scope of applications. Financial? Yes, there is one options pricing algorithm that can be tackled very nicely with massive SIMD, but the rest of the financial industry needs less specific computing hardware. GPU cores are getting more capable, and they will eventually find a sweet spot where they are useful for video encoding and other things that lots of people actually do. Kudos to NVidia for trying to make GPUs more accessible, it will find some interesting niches, but what I see listed in the parent's post is pretty much a copy of the applications that were known two years ago, before CUDA launched.

Linux Gigabyte IRAM working, Windows = Gigabyte IRAM working just fine. Figure out what the "finicky piece of trash" here, really is... & it's not Winodws, OR, the Gigabyte IRAM!

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"You haven't produced a repro recipe for a known working configuration" - by ion.simon.c (1183967) on Tuesday December 16, @07:50PM (#26140177)

Windows has a working configuration for the IRAM, and good reviews on it abound online, such as this one:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=224

Linux doesn't have a working SATA device layer apparently, or one that can make the Gigabyte IRAM work properly. By way of comparison? Windows does.

(That doesn't make the IRAM a piece of junk, because the IRAM works on Windows just fine. If anything is a "finicky piece of junk" here, it is Linux, plain & simple).

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"Why, exactly are you bringing this up? IIRC, Linux kernel drivers don't use a HAL..." - by ion.simon.c (1183967) on Tuesday December 16, @07:50PM (#26140177)

Because you asked HOW hardware is accessed, & on Windows? That IS exactly how it works... and, it works, with the Gigabyte IRAM, unlike on Linux apparently. A clear cut case of Windows has more support for hardware in its HAL & drivers substrata than does Linux.

Your calling the IRAM a "finicky piece of trash" is only because you're just another disgruntled Linux user who can't make it work, and neither can your kernel hacker apparently. Windows has the Gigabyte IRAM working, perfectly fine, by way of comparison. I wonder what the "finicky piece of trash" here really is (Linux apparently, because the Gigabyte IRAM works fine on Windows...

APK

Why would you want a CPU for video encoding when a decent GPU can do it ten times faster?.

Another review with some more data, including memory channel performance testing, good explanations of overclocking process, etc.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=634

This quick synopsis gives you some good info on why it helps AMD: http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=6262

Another non-slashdotted look can be found here:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=616&type=expert

More good analysis here:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=602

This is a highly unlikely move for NVIDIA. Check out this article for good info on why not:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=601

Maybe out in 5 years, but not anytime soon.

Yes, but that's because Intel moved a lot of logic to the northbridge. Notice the honking great big heatsink and fan? Atom's a good processor, but the whole setup is so 'backwards' it really does look like they're trying to fiddle the performance/Watt figures.

For those of you interested, the Atom CPU really DOES use just about 4 watts at load. The 60 watts number is for the entire system including power supply, motherboard, DVD-ROM, hard drive, etc. Idle power on both of these parts is measured in milli-watts so you can see how much power each uses under load by looking at the power consumption graphs on page 8:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=597&type=expert&pid=8

The gap between rest (on the far left) and load (middle) is much greater for the VIA Nano processor than the Intel Atom - in fact you can barely tell the Atom processor has changed wattage at all.

Besides having more cache and higher FSB freqency, the Nano is also x86-64!
It's a nice thing indeed, but it'd be like comparing apples and pears.

Yes, I did misread your comment. Nevertheless, most of my comment still stands. A 4870 in Crossfire performs significantly better than the X280 and the 9800 GX2 every benchmark I've seen except Crysis, and these cards also have the capability to be run in a quad Crossfire mode. Oh, and two of them sell for less than one of NVidia's top dogs.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1301
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=581&type=expert
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990

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