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

[-silencer-]

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.

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.

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.

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..

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.

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.

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.

[Sarduci]

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.

[-silencer-]

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.

[Sarduci]

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.

[-silencer-]

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.

[Sarduci]

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.

[BobGnarly]

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.

[-silencer-]

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.

[Thaeds]

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?)

[wowphreak]

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"