OCZ Core 64GB MLC SSD Review.. (Testing in progress..)

(Just skip to the end if you want to know if MLC SSDs are better than RAID0 Raptors and multiple separate hard drives.)

Preface:
The hard drive is by far the slowest aspect of your computer, in all forms of data access and transfer (well, except an optical/floppy drive). There are a few ways to improve performance. First, we need to clarify hard drive performance, because there are two main measurements for two different purposes.
- Access time. This is the time it takes for a hard drive to locate a file when it is requested.
- Transfer rate. This is the speed at which a file is transferred after it has been found.
Faster hard drives, 5400rpm to 7200rpm to 10000rpm to 15000rpm, usually result in lower (better) access times and sometimes faster transfer rates.
Transfer rate is usually limited by the hard drive's internal controller and data connection: ATA66/100/133, SATA 1.5Gb/s, SATA 3.0Gb/s, etc.
Once we have the stats on a particular drive (my Raptor 36.7GB drive is 10,000rpm & SATA 1.5), we have a choice to RAID0 them. RAID1 is for data redundancy and does little to affect performance. RAID0 splits the files over both drives, using a slight overhead to split/combine files while transferring (in theory) at twice the speed. RAID0 does *nothing* to improve access time.
Solid State Drives (SSDs) have the benefit of having very low access times, respectable read speeds, and usually sub-par write speeds.
MLC SSDs are slightly slower and have a lower number of lifetime writes than SLC SSDs, but they're much less expensive and our purpose for WoW won't be using writes often - only during patches including changes to /Data.

The lag in large cities of WoW is caused by the game having to retrieve hundreds (or thousands) of very small data files quickly - think of all the world & player object models & textures that are coming and going while you're in a city. Each displayed piece of a player's gear has to be loaded when they enter your client's area. These data requests are not in any particular order, so random access and transfer times are very important, especially the access times because there are so many I/O requests. Even on Raptors, the time required to access each of these files is too long, resulting in city lag as they're loaded. RAID0 does very little to reduce this lag, since the majority of the time is spend *finding* the data, not *transferring* it.
I had considered spending $600 on a couple 300GB 10k rpm Velociraptors to combat this lag, but then I considered an SSD. OCZ Core SSDs can locate ~14 files in the time it takes for a Velociraptor to find one (0.3ms to 4.2ms access time), and the transfer rate for file to be read is similar. (SSDs can be in a RAID0 array like Velociraptors, so the comparison I'm making is drive to drive.) For our use in WoW - many small reads in a short period of time, but not needing to write to disk - the SSD was an easy choice over the Velociraptor. Based on known results of SSD vs 10k rpm hard drive testing, and the fact that I want to use the drive as data storage for extremely quick random reads, the SSD should be a MAJOR upgrade over any mechanical hard drive.

My OCZ Core 64GB Solid State Drive arrived today from Newegg. The 32GB drive was just lowered to under $200 today, and I'm sure that one would have worked fine for WoW as well. Here's the drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227344 ($249)

These were the primary links that convinced me to try out an OCZ Core SSD for WoW:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/ocz-co...drive-review/8
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.p...d_state_disk/1

Package:
I'm glad I had some old laptop 2.5"->3.5" drive bay brackets. The SSD comes in a small retail box and small info pamphlet, but that's it. You'll need to provide your own SATA2 data/power cables, mounting brackets, and screws. I'm surprised how light the drive is - think of just a few ram sticks.

Install:
Install is identical to any other SATA drive, except you'll want 2.5"->3.5" mounting brackets for a proper install. The drive comes pre-formatted NTFS, which means I had no work on the Windows side once I finished the hardware install. Opening the Computer Management screen in Windows, the drive shows 56.33GB free, which is expected with the standard advertised space. Keep in mind that my 36.7x2 GB Raptors only show up as 68.93GB, and my 250GB drive is 232.88GB. This is due to the way *all* drives are advertised and the difference between base 2 and base 10 number systems. Expect around 28GB space on the 32GB model. Since WoW's data directory only needs ~8GB space, that's far more than enough. Even with the extra content of WotLK, I seriously doubt it'll go beyond 15GB. I opted for the 64GB model simply because it was twice the capacity of 32GB for only $50 more.

WoW Setup:
I renamed my main WoW/Data directory to WoW/Data-bak, then removed the /Data link in all my other WoW directories. I'm using symlinks, as everyone should, especially if you decide to get an SSD. Next, I copied the WoW/Data-bak directory to the SSD, which took about 2 minutes. This is an acceptable time for 8GB of data - approximately 67MB/s write speed. I renamed this file to WoW/Data, then symlinked this directory in all my other WoW directories. For reference, my main WoW install is on a RAID0 (striped) array of 2 36.7GB 10k rpm Raptors. My other WoW installs are on a 250GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 7200rpm drive, symlinked to the Data directory on the Raptor array.

Initial testing:
I'll need to re-test the load times of WoW to the login screen, because if there was any improvement here it's not easily obvious. I didn't expect the game to load any quicker.

I loaded up all 5 instances of WoW on my oc'd Q6600, 4GB memory, Windows XP, 8800GTX, 2x 24" LCDs in span-view mode. I started out in the Allerian Stronghold in Terokkar, which usually isn't too bad for lag, so I hopped on a gryph flight to Shatt. Usually, this results in me having to wait at the flight master after landing in Shatt for 20-45 seconds as the city is loaded, then it is extremely slow moving around as objects/players come into and out of view. I was STUNNED - I was IMMEDIATELY able to move around, fly around, and enjoy the game as it should be played. Although frame rates naturally aren't as good in the city, the fps hit I'm sure is due to my videocard struggling over 3840x1200 resolution with so many polygons to render. In any case, Shatt is now very playable - not once did I lose /follow on my alts! Before the SSD, it was barely playable. I then loaded up 4 WoW instances on just 1 24" (to reduce the fps hit I was taking in span-mode), and all 4 WoW instances were smooth in Shatt.


Conclusion:
Performance (in reducing lag in cities/Shatt) was even better than I had expected. The cause of the lag absolutely must be the vast amount of random reads being requested on the hard drive. Don't bother with Raptors if you don't have them yet. I loaded up 4 WoW instances from my 7200rpm Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB drive, symlinked to the Data directory on the OCZ Core SSD, and Shatt was smooth. Using the Raptor RAID0 array instead of one 7200 drive made little difference. Using the SSD to host the Data directory made a world of difference. One 32GB SSD for under $200 with a symlinked Data directory is all you need to remove the hard drive bottleneck for smooth performance in Shatt.

If you're building a new computer primarily for multiboxing WoW, save $200 on a high-end videocard (go HD4850 instead of GTX 280 or 4870x2) and get an OCZ Core 32GB (or larger model, but unnessary for the size of WoW's data) SSD to host the WoW/Data directory. Find a way to reduce other expenses for such a major upgrade.

I'm loving this so much, I've got plans to order an Areca ARC-1200 RAID controller (on-board processor and memory, so little overhead on the CPU) and another OCZ Core 64GB SSD.

Absolutely awesome review man! Very well constructed and thought out with incredible results.

I'm saving now for a completely new machine and this'll help tremendously--I absolutely hate lagging in AV when our raid runs by their raid at IBGY.

Nice review, man. I've been waiting for it ever since you said you were ordering the SSD. Thanks a bunch for the write-up.

I'm about to order some parts (or maybe a whole new computer, you know thaaat goes hehe), and I think I might put one of these in just for WoW.

I just have one question: Do you have any thoughts wrt how this compares to say Vista 64 with 8G of RAM so you are RAM caching all those textures? I mean, on paper it seems like it should be a win.

We just got a few of these in at work to test out as a local store for transaction logs... there's a spare, and I'm hoping to get my grubby paws on it for a few days if I can ;)

i have 8gb ram installed on Vista 64 and i don't lag in shat. But i DO if i have my 3 shamans all there at once..i drop to about 20fps.. But if i'm only on one account i usually have 60 at least. I have thought about these SSD drives for a long time now and OCZ is finally getting these types of drives into a price segment i can afford.

Do you think putting 2 of the 32gb versions in RAID0 would be better then the 64gb version? (I'm assuming yes here)

But if all of these textures are stored in RAM, there should be NO lag, regardless of how many toons you are running - or at least less lag than even an SSD.

Unless, of course, these textures take > 4-5G that an 8G system should have left over after 5 clients. Then you are still paging from disk. I just have a hard time believing there are THAT many, even in shat.

hmmm

hmm

4 solid state disks in raid0.......

... sounds excellent :-D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'BobGnarly',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112512#po st112512

But if all of these textures are stored in RAM, there should be NO lag, regardless of how many toons you are running - or at least less lag than even an SSD.

Unless, of course, these textures take > 4-5G that an 8G system should have left over after 5 clients. Then you are still paging from disk. I just have a hard time believing there are THAT many, even in shat.

hmmm

---

The problem in question is Flying INTO SHattrah or Loading Alterac Vally
when its loading all those textures into your ram it takes a LONG LONG time to do it, while searching for each small texture file

once its in the memory everything is good, as long as there is no use of swap filing

Great review... have been waiting for the price on these things to come down to more 'reasonable' levels :)

Quote:

---

I loaded up 4 WoW instances from my 7200rpm Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB drive, symlinked to the Data directory on the OCZ Core SSD, and Shatt was smooth. Using the Raptor RAID0 array instead of one 7200 drive made little difference. Using the SSD to host the Data directory made a world of difference. One 32GB SSD for under $200 with a symlinked Data directory is all you need to remove the hard drive bottleneck for smooth performance in Shatt.

---

Quick question, why only put your wow/data directory on the SSD... why not put the OS and your complete WoW directories on the SSD?

Quote:

---

Don't bother with Raptors if you don't have them yet.

---

Doh! Curse my impatience.... ;)

Thanks for the enjoyable write-up. As I have no spare bays left in my main rig, I'm going to have to think very carefully about what to do if the shiny new raptors I have on order don't live up to expectations! I suspect they'll be shelved in favour of this setup to be honest.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'BobGnarly',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112398#po st112398

I just have one question: Do you have any thoughts wrt how this compares to say Vista 64 with 8G of RAM so you are RAM caching all those textures? I mean, on paper it seems like it should be a win.

---

I would think with Vista and 8GB of RAM, performance would be even better for 5-boxing since you'll have more RAM available to store loaded data. I'm still on the fence about upgrading to a Q9450, 8GB, Vista64, etc right now or holding off until Nehalem/i7 in 6 months or so. I'm leaning on holding off for awhile, since the performance difference with the new architecture should be worth it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Stabface',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112436#pos t112436

We just got a few of these in at work to test out as a local store for transaction logs... there's a spare, and I'm hoping to get my grubby paws on it for a few days if I can ;)

---

It literally only took about 15 minutes for the install - if you could borrow one for a night that's all the time you'd need.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Lowvez',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112503#post1 12503

Do you think putting 2 of the 32gb versions in RAID0 would be better then the 64gb version? (I'm assuming yes here)

---

Definitely, but it'd cost much more. The 32GB version is around $199, and the 64GB version is around $250. That's why I went with 64GB - I didn't want to drop $400 on something that I hadn't tested yet. Now I can get another 64GB for 128GB of RAID0 loveliness. Keep in mind that most motherboards just allow for one RAID array, and I like my RAID0 Raptors. So I'd need a separate controller card to put in a RAID0 of SSDs. RAID0 of SSDs would easily improve the read transfer rates, so it would be faster for reading random data and large sequential data than one Raptor, but it'll still likely be slower than sequential reads than RAID0 Raptors and possibly slower on write speed than one Raptor. Do not get an SSD to be a drive you'll need to write to with any performance hopes - that means don't use them for OS/swap/full installs, even if you RAID0 them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'BobGnarly',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112512#po st112512

But if all of these textures are stored in RAM, there should be NO lag, regardless of how many toons you are running - or at least less lag than even an SSD.

Unless, of course, these textures take > 4-5G that an 8G system should have left over after 5 clients. Then you are still paging from disk. I just have a hard time believing there are THAT many, even in shat.

hmmm

---

I have a feeling that the data structures and algorithms the WoW developers have used limit performance on high-end machines in order to have decent performance on low-end machines. Beyond the OS's ability to cache data, I think WoW probably does too good of a job at releasing memory too soon..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Talos',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112543#post11 2543

The problem in question is Flying INTO SHattrah or Loading Alterac Vally
when its loading all those textures into your ram it takes a LONG LONG time to do it, while searching for each small texture file

once its in the memory everything is good, as long as there is no use of swap filing

---

This is true - it's the initial load of town that is bad, but I also find a boost in fps the entire time I'm in town. Unfortunately it varies too much due to the amount of players in town and how many polygons I'm trying to render to put a number on it, but I'd guess somewhere in the 10-40% range for an increase in fps after the initial load.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'moog',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112593#post112 593

Great review... have been waiting for the price on these things to come down to more 'reasonable' levels :)
Quick question, why only put your wow/data directory on the SSD... why not put the OS and your complete WoW directories on the SSD?

---

Because SSDs are NOT better than Raptors for writing data, which the OS does on its drive, and you definitely don't want a swapfile on an SSD. A lot of writing gets done to your config/Add-On folders in WoW - keep in mind that SSDs have a limited amount of writes in their lifetime (millions of writes, so more likely a longer lifespan than standard hard drive anyway). The space isn't large, so I want more room available for other games as well. The main issue was solving the lag in Shatt/cities, and that's done. Other large files that need to be loaded - like the WoW.exe, will be faster on a RAID0 of Raptors since the transfer rate is higher - access time doesn't really come into play because it only has to find one file.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Otlecs',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112618#post1 12618

Quote:

---

Don't bother with Raptors if you don't have them yet.

---

Doh! Curse my impatience.... ;)

Thanks for the enjoyable write-up. As I have no spare bays left in my main rig, I'm going to have to think very carefully about what to do if the shiny new raptors I have on order don't live up to expectations! I suspect they'll be shelved in favour of this setup to be honest.

---

Don't feel too bad about it - the Raptors are still the best option for an OS/swapfile drive. You can always easily add in a 32GB SSD later. That's what I've done - I still have my RAID0 Raptors. :) Honestly, the SSD is so small (think of about 10-15 credit cards stacked together), even if you don't have a spare drive bay, you could find some place to mount the thing. My main point was that if I were building a new rig and limited on cash, I'd get one Raptor (OS/swap/main installs) and one SSD (storing random data that needs to be quickly loaded) over two Raptors. The SSD has very limited use - you don't want to store data that will be read sequentially, since Raptors will be faster in loading sequential data. You only want to use the SSD for data that needs to be randomly read many times in short amounts. That makes it perfect for game data like WoW. Some other games, like Counterstrike maps, would be better stored on a Raptor RAID0 array, since the data is sequential and only has to be found once, then depends on transfer rate (RAID0 Raptors!) to load.

Bummer, I was hoping for performance data and not just a review. The OCZ 64GB is still the rebranded Samsung 64GB unit. There's a lot more data out there under that. We've tested them at work for high read I/O database applications but unfortunately they dont come in big enough sizes for us.....

NOTE TO ALL READERS:

This unit is an SLC unit, not the cheaper MLC unit. MLC units are much slower than the SLC units by design. You will never find this kind of performance out of the current generation of MLC drives. Not all SSD's are created equal.


As far as a lack of mounting hardware, these are intended out of the box as laptop drive replacements or 2.5" server drives. Most laptops have friction mounts (i.e. they just fit in there) and 2.5" drive bays on servers come with all of the mounting gear you need.

This is the OEM version from Samsung:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147054

Edit:
Sorry, this is the SLC version from OCZ
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227295
That has the same stats as the Samsung unit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Sarduci',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112668#post 112668

Bummer, I was hoping for performance data and not just a review. The OCZ 64GB is still the rebranded Samsung 64GB unit. There's a lot more data out there under that. We've tested them at work for high read I/O database applications but unfortunately they dont come in big enough sizes for us.....

NOTE TO ALL READERS:

This unit is an SLC unit, not the cheaper MLC unit. MLC units are much slower than the SLC units by design. You will never find this kind of performance out of the current generation of MLC drives. Not all SSD's are created equal.


As far as a lack of mounting hardware, these are intended out of the box as laptop drive replacements or 2.5" server drives. Most laptops have friction mounts (i.e. they just fit in there) and 2.5" drive bays on servers come with all of the mounting gear you need.

This is the OEM version from Samsung:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147054

---

Wrong. This OCZ Core 64GB model is an MLC unit, but yes, it's a rebranded Samsung for the consumer market. That's why it's 0.3ms access time and only $250 for 64GB compared to the SLC models with 0.1ms access time by Samsung/OCZ for around $700+.

That Samsung model you listed is an SLC. This link is the rebranded SLC OCZ of that model:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227295 ($795)

This is the rebranded MLC OCZ model I purchased:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227344 ($249)

The OCZ *Core* series is MLC - that's why the price is so low. Performance isn't as good as SLC SSDs, but it's still FAR better than RAID0 Raptors. Look at the difference:
4.2ms for Raptor 150GB access time.. $170. ($295 for 300GB)
0.3ms for OCZ Core 32GB MLC access time.. $199. ($250 for 64GB)
0.1ms for Samsung/OCZ 32GB SLC access time.. $400+. ($600-795 for 64GB)

Transfer rates are comparable between the three. SSDs don't have the problem of losing transfer speed the further from the center of the disc either.

NOTE TO ALL READERS (including the above poster):
As stated in the title, it's still a test in progress - I only had an hour or so last night to play around with it, and since so many have commented that they want a review, this was my initial impression. I fully plan on detailed performance differences in the near future with various configurations of my machine. I wouldn't have jumped into this purchase without fully researching the product. There are plenty of online reviews comparing the MLC OCZ Core SSDs to Raptors, SAS drives, SCSI drives, and SLC drives. For the price/performance, you'll be hard pressed to find something else better to solve our lag issues due to hard drive seek times in busy areas.

Linky to the MLC version would have been helpful. [img]../forum/images/smilies/biggrin.png[/img] You may want to edit your post again.

The one other thing that should be known is that MLC units have a greater rate of cell failure than SLC units. If any one layer of a multilayer cell fails the whole thing is bad. It increases the chance of data loss when (not if) it happens. This is true with any technology though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Sarduci',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112706#post 112706

Linky to the MLC version would have been helpful. [img]../forum/images/smilies/biggrin.png[/img] You may want to edit your post again.

The one other thing that should be known is that MLC units have a greater rate of cell failure than SLC units. If any one layer of a multilayer cell fails the whole thing is bad. It increases the chance of data loss when (not if) it happens. This is true with any technology though.

---

The failure rate is due to limited number of maximum writes - something we won't ever come anywhere close to hitting if we're just using the drive to read random data from games - which is exactly my stated use for the drive. I've had plenty of standard hard drives fail within 3-5 years, so what makes standard drives more special than SSDs with this regard? There are advantages and disadvantages to using standard hard drives vs SSDs depending on the situation. Using an SSD as a data host for random reads is a perfect scenario.

Sectors in a HDD is a single unit of data. A cell in a MLC is multiple units of data.

Cell failure can come from overuse, which like you said is highly unlikely, or from a stuck bit in the cell, which is more likely. All storage mediums have data corruption issues, hence the phrase that it's true with any technology. A stuck bit isn't an issue with that directly, since the bit was written correctly and is only detected when new data with a different value is written there. Then the entire cell, not the one sector of the drive, is marked as bad.

To combat this issue, HDD have up to 20% slack space to redirect to reserved clusters. That 1TB disk drive? Yeah, it's more like 1.1 or 1.2TB at full usage. SSDs, as far as all of the documentation I've read from the OEMs, do not contain this and you can actually see a decrease in overall compacity when a section or group of cells fails.

This is really all heading away from your origional point, which is that SSD's are faster at random seek I/O than platter based drives. Both types of SSD's win that hands down.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Talos',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112543#post11 2543

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'BobGnarly',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112512#po st112512

But if all of these textures are stored in RAM, there should be NO lag, regardless of how many toons you are running - or at least less lag than even an SSD.

Unless, of course, these textures take > 4-5G that an 8G system should have left over after 5 clients. Then you are still paging from disk. I just have a hard time believing there are THAT many, even in shat.

hmmm

---

The problem in question is Flying INTO SHattrah or Loading Alterac Vally
when its loading all those textures into your ram it takes a LONG LONG time to do it, while searching for each small texture file

once its in the memory everything is good, as long as there is no use of swap filing

---

My hypothesis was based on a particular functionality present in Vista. Vista attempts to "cache" parts of your drive into unused RAM. This is why Vista will usually appear to be using all the RAM you have, even if your applications really aren't. So my thought was, as you were running around in the game and reading textures, it should be caching all the textures into RAM. Then, when you zone to shat, org, w/e, those textures are in cache and you'd be retrieving them at RAM access speeds.

Again, this is all on paper, just thinking out loud.

I'm with you silencer on the wait for i7, but man, shat (and to a lesser degree, all the outlands) are soooo painful right now. :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'BobGnarly',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112954#po st112954

I'm with you silencer on the wait for i7, but man, shat (and to a lesser degree, all the outlands) are soooo painful right now. :(

---

If you've got a spare $200.. try out the 32GB OCZ Core SSD. Since it's just being used to host some data files, it'll be easy to transfer to the new i7 machines when we get them. I don't dread going to Shatt now. :)

I have a question. Can you achieve this same effect by just loading your data file on a USB flash drive and reference it from there? Seems a lot cheaper, even if it's not quite as fast. (Would still be much faster than a HD, right?)

USB flash drive is kinda a generic term what yeh talking about the the flash drive yeh can put on yer keyring if so no the thru put them really sucks , yeh seek time are fast but the thru put is like a fraction of "32GB OCZ Core SSD"

Right but isn't the seek time the whole point of using a SSD instead of a 10000 rpm drive in raid 0?

I mean, I wouldn't expect using a USB flash drive to be as fast as a SSD, but maybe faster than loading the data file from a HDD? Would be awesome if someone would test it or something.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'BobGnarly',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112954#po st112954

My hypothesis was based on a particular functionality present in Vista. Vista attempts to "cache" parts of your drive into unused RAM. This is why Vista will usually appear to be using all the RAM you have, even if your applications really aren't. So my thought was, as you were running around in the game and reading textures, it should be caching all the textures into RAM. Then, when you zone to shat, org, w/e, those textures are in cache and you'd be retrieving them at RAM access speeds.

Again, this is all on paper, just thinking out loud.

I'm with you silencer on the wait for i7, but man, shat (and to a lesser degree, all the outlands) are soooo painful right now. :(

---

Correct, Vista will preload commonly used programs into RAM for quicker access. If the memory is needed then the precache is dumped to make room for programs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Thaeds',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115661#post1 15661

I have a question. Can you achieve this same effect by just loading your data file on a USB flash drive and reference it from there? Seems a lot cheaper, even if it's not quite as fast. (Would still be much faster than a HD, right?)

---

No, the USB bus is polled and not bi-directional. The bus itself is silly inefficient and is slower than a IDE or SATA connection.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Sarduci',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115790#post 115790

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Thaeds',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115661#post1 15661

I have a question. Can you achieve this same effect by just loading your data file on a USB flash drive and reference it from there? Seems a lot cheaper, even if it's not quite as fast. (Would still be much faster than a HD, right?)

---

No, the USB bus is polled and not bi-directional. The bus itself is silly inefficient and is slower than a IDE or SATA connection.

---

Right but it's access times still destroy the HDD right? Each time you answer me it seems you're only talking about transfer speed, and not addressing access times.

I know Vista made that Ready Boost technology just exactly for this purpose, to read small bits of data off flash drives for faster performance due to access times so I'm having a hard time seeing how this would be different.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Thaeds',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115988#post1 15988

to read small bits of data off flash drives for faster performance

---

thats the problem

were not talking about small bits of date (for which it would be an improvement indeed)
we are talking about a 8.5gig /data/ folder....

seek time will indeed be better, but it is offset by the loading time it takes to get the 500mb texture file trough the usb bus into the ram....

Update on 32GB Price Slo-mo version. It is on sale + Mail In rebate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227343

Original Price: $219.00

After $45 Sale: Price $174.00

After $60 Mail In Rebate: $114.00

Hurry :)

[Edit] Looks like all models have some kind of sale/rebate going on: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...TabStoreType=0[/Edit]

Just a quick update.. I haven't had much of a block of WoW time this last week - work & political research the last couple weeks is only eating more of my time lately.

I'm glad to see the price of SSDs (especially the Core series) decrease - it's a perfect solution for our use. The main thing I wanted to point out that I've noticed the past few times I've logged in, I haven't *ever* lost /follow since installing the SSD. I used to have to stop walking every 3-5 seconds while moving around in Shatt or the start of AV or I'd lose /follow, but now I can ride around with crusader aura or fly all around Shatt and never worry about having lost a /follower. Infamous Platforms is smart in offering SSDs to the multibox community - I'm sure they've done the testing to understand that the reduction in city lag from using a symlinked SSD over RAID0 Raptors is *far* greater than the benefit of going from a single typical 7200rpm drive to RAID0 Raptors.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Talos',index.php?page=Thread&postID=116068#post11 6068

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Thaeds',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115988#post1 15988

to read small bits of data off flash drives for faster performance

---

thats the problem

were not talking about small bits of date (for which it would be an improvement indeed)
we are talking about a 8.5gig /data/ folder....

seek time will indeed be better, but it is offset by the loading time it takes to get the 500mb texture file trough the usb bus into the ram....

---

See, I'm not sure if you really understand what's going on, because if the files loaded were 500mb big then a 10,000 rpm drive would smoke a SSD. The reason the OP has such a huge performance gain from a SSD is because the files in the data folder are small enough that the gains in access times make up for the losses in sequential read or throughput. So it seems to me these same type of gains, maybe on a smaller level could be made with USB flash instead.

I'm not completely sure I know what I'm talking about either, but I want to make sure you're following my logic here!

actually the thru put of the ssd is about 60 megs per second with no seek time seek time where as the thru put of a decent hard drive is around 60 megs per second with seek time.

These ssd are basically flash drives that are raided together to get better thruput yer basic flash drive gets about anywhere from 5-15 megs a second thru put.

So using a flash drive aint gonna cut it if yeh hit a major city and have to load 100 megs of textures times that by 5 and yer looking at a slide show.

If these devices improved the quality of the Trade Channel as much as the framerate in a big city, I'd be more excited about them!!

You can get the 32 GB version for $99 AR from newegg now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227343

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Thaeds',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115988#post1 15988

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Sarduci',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115790#post 115790

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Thaeds',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115661#post1 15661

I have a question. Can you achieve this same effect by just loading your data file on a USB flash drive and reference it from there? Seems a lot cheaper, even if it's not quite as fast. (Would still be much faster than a HD, right?)

---

No, the USB bus is polled and not bi-directional. The bus itself is silly inefficient and is slower than a IDE or SATA connection.

---

Right but it's access times still destroy the HDD right? Each time you answer me it seems you're only talking about transfer speed, and not addressing access times.

I know Vista made that Ready Boost technology just exactly for this purpose, to read small bits of data off flash drives for faster performance due to access times so I'm having a hard time seeing how this would be different.

---

If the bus isn't as fast as a physical drive, then I really don't care squat about access time since you'll never be able to get it out in time. USB is slower than a standard platter based drive regardless of access time unless you're talking about sending the same exact amount of data or less than USB can send in one chunk. Anything over that gets slaughtered by the physical drives ability to bulk send through or read/write at the same time. USB 2.0 is fail compaired to IDE/SATA/SATAII/Firewire800 simply because of design limitations.

Now, if you are compairing something like sustained data transfer in a continous block segment on the drive (aka MSSQL database) and you have a large read (say 4TB+ to a backup file) you lose all advantage in a SSD. No random seek takes away any kind of edge it has against the platter based system. Then it's all about shear throughput, and 15,000rpm SAS (serial attached SCSI) using a fiber switched infrastructure would blow it out of the water hands down. The limiting factor then in the controler interface of the drive system.

The best way to use a SSD, imo, is to copy a single full WoW install onto it. Then symlink/junction as many new directories off it as you want WoW installs (4 more for a 5 boxer). I keep WTF\Accounts symlinked, and WTF\ itself "unlinked", so every account has its own config.wtf (so each can have different graphic and audio settings), but its up to you. I also keep cache, errors, and logs unlinked since they are directories where data is written to, and I don't want data conflicts.

Remember, the operating system does a good job recognizing a symbolic link and caching it "correctly" when opened in read-only mode. And all the wow data\ files, the largest chunk of data, is opened in read only mode. There is no point in creating 3-4 copies of the same directory, you are in fact being extremely inefficient when you do this. Creating a raid0 out of SSDs is a waste of money, the only reason to hook it up to a raid controller is if the controller has a write cache, the way the SSDs work is that in order to write data (after a while) it has to first read a segment of flash memory, make the changes, then write it back, especially with small changes. Basically it takes an extra 1-2 hits of reading to make writes. But again, in WoW, the only times you are writing to disk is the cache\ directory, and wtf\ upon logout, these are minimal and trivial (even the cache\ directory is probably lazy-write, so it only writes every now and then).

A 16GB ssd is more than enough space for wow+wotlk, a 32GB would let you put the PTRs and the betas on it as well. I would backup your wtf\ folder every now and then to the hard drive, just to be on the safe side.

A flash/thumb drive would operate worse than a regular hard drive, its easy to test yourself, just run any benchmark hard drive in burst read mode. Its an order of magnitude slower than a hard drive almost (at least mine are). Its not just the USB interface, USB2.0 is pretty fast as evinced by things like Drobo, its simply that regular flash drives are not meant for high speed read/write. There are of course better flash drives that can operate faster (meant for fast SLR cameras), but they start approaching the price points of SSDs.

btw very good writeup on OCZ 1 SSDs here

http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=106

I have a SSD at work (Samsung gen2, expensive as hell) and imo the $99 for the OCZ v1 at Newegg is a good price, and some people will see a perf improvement in WoW by putting (at least) the data directory on it. But the SSD is gen1, OCZ has already released generation 2, and Intel just released a few days ago its own SSD implementation. The OCZ v1 is supposed to have relatively high failure rates. I'm on the fence of buying one at home, but I think i'll just wait until I buy my next PC and put a SSD in there, by the time I build it the Intel SSDs should be out and hopefully lower in price.

The OCZ v1 SSDs (the one at Newegg for $99) suffers huge write penaltys for small files, don't think of putting stuff like your operating system or browser on it.

What mounting solution did you use? Ijust got the 32 GB version delivered today.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Sarduci',index.php?page=Thread&postID=118441#post 118441

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Thaeds',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115988#post1 15988

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Sarduci',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115790#post 115790

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'Thaeds',index.php?page=Thread&postID=115661#post1 15661

I have a question. Can you achieve this same effect by just loading your data file on a USB flash drive and reference it from there? Seems a lot cheaper, even if it's not quite as fast. (Would still be much faster than a HD, right?)

---

No, the USB bus is polled and not bi-directional. The bus itself is silly inefficient and is slower than a IDE or SATA connection.

---

Right but it's access times still destroy the HDD right? Each time you answer me it seems you're only talking about transfer speed, and not addressing access times.

I know Vista made that Ready Boost technology just exactly for this purpose, to read small bits of data off flash drives for faster performance due to access times so I'm having a hard time seeing how this would be different.

---

If the bus isn't as fast as a physical drive, then I really don't care squat about access time since you'll never be able to get it out in time. USB is slower than a standard platter based drive regardless of access time unless you're talking about sending the same exact amount of data or less than USB can send in one chunk. Anything over that gets slaughtered by the physical drives ability to bulk send through or read/write at the same time. USB 2.0 is fail compaired to IDE/SATA/SATAII/Firewire800 simply because of design limitations.

Now, if you are compairing something like sustained data transfer in a continous block segment on the drive (aka MSSQL database) and you have a large read (say 4TB+ to a backup file) you lose all advantage in a SSD. No random seek takes away any kind of edge it has against the platter based system. Then it's all about shear throughput, and 15,000rpm SAS (serial attached SCSI) using a fiber switched infrastructure would blow it out of the water hands down. The limiting factor then in the controler interface of the drive system.

---

Last time I check usb 2.0 top theoretical thruput was 480Mbps.

if yeh check out http://techreport.com/articles.x/15433 yeh see an ssd drive with a thruput of 250MB/s
from the looks of http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...as,2004-6.html the fastest sas 15k drive read is 174 MB/s

So at this point the only thing that platter drives do better is in write speeds and storage space.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'wowphreak',index.php?page=Thread&postID=118854#po st118854

Last time I check usb 2.0 top theoretical thruput was 480Mbps.

if yeh check out http://techreport.com/articles.x/15433 yeh see an ssd drive with a thruput of 250MB/s
from the looks of http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...as,2004-6.html the fastest sas 15k drive read is 174 MB/s

So at this point the only thing that platter drives do better is in write speeds and storage space.

---

480 Megabits (Mb) per second is only 480 / 8 = 60 Megabytes (MB) per second. I'm not sure if you're implying USB 2.0 is 480 MB/s or 480 Mb/s, but there's a significant difference. If there weren't, people would have been using USB 2.0 for internal drive connections long before SATA, but that didn't happen because parallel ATA 66/100/133 is faster than USB 2.0.
Without a doubt, I'd take one relatively generic WD SE16 7200rpm drive (or other large capacity 7200rpm drive) and one MLC SSD (something comparable to OCZ Core) over multiple Raptors for multiboxing. I can't stress enough how important extremely low read access times and decent read transfer rate can be for eliminating the significant hard drive bottleneck in Shatt/AV. I'm working on getting a video capture card on a 2nd PC so I can capture video without having fraps affect performance.. then everyone can see the massive benefit of the SSD for hosting data. I've bought a lot of "experimental" computer components over the years for the sake of testing out breakthrough capabilities that either turned out to be a waste of money (SCSI scanner, Jaz Jet 1GB external disk drive, Bigfoot Killer NIC, Rambus memory) or a fantastic improvement over available technology (original Athlon and Core2, Voodoo2 SLI 3D cards, SSD for hosting data). I obviously have no regrets at all with the OCZ Core purchase, and I don't ever dread traveling to cities like I used to.

Regarding a post above, I listed in the original review post that I used 2.5"-> 3.5" laptop to standard hard drive brackets to mount the Core in my case. You could use any method though - an external laptop hard drive case, or securing the drive with rubber bands. With no moving parts, it's much more durable for mounting solutions than relatively fragile platter-based hard drives.

I still have *never* lost /follow since installing the SSD.

Thanks alot for this review.

Ordered my new SSD drive a few minutes ago, cant wait :)

I just want to chime in at this point on the SSD debate now that I've got a chance to play around with mine:

The difference is... Stunning. Amazing. Unbelievable. I'm maxing FPS in Shatt on 5 wow instances. When using the zeppeling, sometimes I don't even really see the load screen it's so fast--Just a blur of yellow.

Just a heads up to people ordering the OCZ drive, remember to get a 2.5" -> 3.5" mounting bracket and SATA data cable, neither are included in the box. And naturally, you will need a free power cable, so make sure your power supply has it.