Tempted...

[Playap0wnr]

I woke up and saw thishttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...m-_-20-239-045 deal. (Hopefully I did that link right)

Would that deal be better than this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147134 I was planning on buying the Samsung but the coupon makes the Hyperx soooo tempting.

Thanks

[Mind_Reader7]

My vote goes to the HyperX. Cheaper, faster reading/writing

[Odanez]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148442

better than the Kingston (reliability) and cheaper than the Samsung although the Samsung is probably of similar quality. If you really want high write speeds than go with the Samsung.

[AruisDante]

I'd stick with the 830. Its controller is more reliable and has higher overall performance than the particular SandForce one in the Kingston.

[ORL]

Big fan of the M4 myself as well. have been toying the idea of a pair of those in Raid 0 for playing with. My 60 gig one has been great. Samsung makes a good product but this I say only from friends comments as I have not owned one. Kingston has lost my love in the pass due to some bad memory I used in my parents PCs, 2 sets in a row from BestBuy. Not their fault I hope but none the less from there.

[Odanez]

There is not much point in raid 0 for SSDs since if you get bigger ones they kind of act like raid 0 internally already. See the write speed differences in the M4 going from 60 to 120 or 240GB? That's because it can write to more memory chips in parallel.

[pckid9234]

im loving my M4
Its cheaper then samsung and prob same reliability... Not to many complaints about them

[ORL]

When I had two 60 GB ones it felt like there was a change loading heavy games like Crysis (Sold the second to brother) . I never really put it under the benches to be honest though. I would like to test what you said for sure in comparison. Besides my Bi-Annual bonus is coming and im feeling the urge to... upgrade.

[AruisDante]

From my experience, the small increase in performance you get from RAID'ing SSD's isn't worth the loss of TRIM support and the greatly increased chance of failure, since SSD's aren't that stable anyway.

[hostage67]

Originally Posted by Odanez

There is not much point in raid 0 for SSDs since if you get bigger ones they kind of act like raid 0 internally already. See the write speed differences in the M4 going from 60 to 120 or 240GB? That's because it can write to more memory chips in parallel.

In some cases this is true, in particular going from 120gb to 256gb drives you see this jump in performance. But 256gb and 512gb drives are the same speeds. Also keep in mind that the speed for a single drive will be limited by the sata speeds, going raid allows you to bypass this by using multiple channels to full capacity.

Originally Posted by AruisDante

From my experience, the small increase in performance you get from RAID'ing SSD's isn't worth the loss of TRIM support and the greatly increased chance of failure, since SSD's aren't that stable anyway.

Again this really depends on the drive. The better drives like the M4 and Samsung should be able to handle the TRIM in a Raid setup so you don't really lose anything. You still lose some performance per drive as the raid is not 100% efficient, but gaining massive read/write speeds can be of use in some scenarios (particularly for video recording).

I have 4x 120gb M4's setup in a raid which allows me to run video recording up to 5760x1080, on a single drive I do not believe those kind of resolutions would be possible.

256gb M4 - 270mbs
512gb (Raid-0, 4x 120gb) M4 - 484 mbs

The 256gb drive is clearly more efficient, but the overall 484 write speeds on the Raid is enough of a performance increase to make things possible that would not otherwise be. In my raid setup I am showing about a 70% efficiency using the slower drive and only SATA II, while the 256gb is faster and using SATA III.

Anyways there is a time and place for both setups.

[PommieB]

It depends what you are doing, trim may or may not work in raid0, the new RST driver supposed to have limited support, but it's iffy at best, M4 work well in raid without the need of trim anyway the GC is pretty aggressive, a raid0 with two drives gives an estimated 30% improvement, 4 x raid going to get you 45% depending on the drives, 2 x 256 would have been better than 4 x 125 anyway and gain depends what your using them for, for a OS drive a single drive would suffice.

Raid0 on ssd is a gain and lose situation, you gain hugely on sequential, but lose on IOP's and 4K, still you do get an overall improvement and yes my preference would be the M4, people are still comparing the Samsung 830 with M4 original release speeds, with those the 830 was better overall, there as been big performance improvements with the later M4 firmware including the uncapping of read and write speeds.

The uncapping has improved both the 64gb and the 128gb, in the case of the 128gb by well over 100% and an estimated 35% on the larger drives, the two smaller drives are still limited having smaller amounts of memory, not enough to make use of all the controllers pipelines. These improvements in performance have put the M4 slightly ahead of the Samsung 830's, enough for Samsung owners to want a firmware upgrade.

Crucial capped the original read and write speeds on the M4's smaller drives, to make the larger drives sell better.

If you need raid, you buy the drives, if you don't, stick with a single drive.

[Playap0wnr]

Maybe pull back on topic here, should I get the Kingston? I know it probably isn't as great as the Crucial M4 or Samsung but its $80.

[pckid9234]

Originally Posted by Playap0wnr

Maybe pull back on topic here, should I get the Kingston? I know it probably isn't as great as the Crucial M4 or Samsung but its $80.

what i learned on EOCF- buy right buy once... prob spent an extra 200$ just from screwing up and cheaping out. And its still not perfect

[Playap0wnr]

Originally Posted by pckid9234

what i learned on EOCF- buy right buy once... prob spent an extra 200$ just from screwing up and cheaping out. And its still not perfect

Well, it sold out before I even had the chance to buy it, so 830 series it is.

[jmilch]

Originally Posted by Playap0wnr

Well, it sold out before I even had the chance to buy it, so 830 series it is.

I got my 830 series for $89 shipped. cant beat the price to performance ratio there.

[Playap0wnr]

Originally Posted by jmilch

I got my 830 series for $89 shipped. cant beat the price to performance ratio there.

Where? I'd kill for that price right about now

[Sephious]

Originally Posted by AruisDante

From my experience, the small increase in performance you get from RAID'ing SSD's isn't worth the loss of TRIM support and the greatly increased chance of failure, since SSD's aren't that stable anyway.

If the help file is anything to go by, TRIM works in RAID arrays now with the latest Rapid Storage Technology betas.

"•TRIM
This feature provides support for all pass-through solid-state drives (SSDs) in your storage system that meets the ATA-8 protocol requirements. Also, support is provided for SSDs that are part of a RAID 0 array. This feature optimizes write operations, helps reduce device wear, and maintains unused storage area on devices as large as possible."

As for the 830 128GB at $89.99: Both Tigerdirect.ca/com and Newegg.com had one-day sales on them. Assuming UPS doesn't **** up yet again, I should have my 2 128GB 830's tomorrow.

[PommieB]

Whether trim works or not depends on the computer chipset if everything is compatible, trim may work in raid0, some setups might pass trim to the ssd's in a raid0 array, some may not, Intel have been saying there rst driver supports raid0 and ssd's have been saying the same for a long time now, there's a better chance with the latest rst beta, but it's still hit and miss, the tests I've seen by benchmark sites is more positive, with a lot of maybe's.

Trim is hard to test, a site that tests for trim very thoroughly and they tested the new beta on three different set-ups, there was only one set up they could say that trim was positively working, what was positive, it was the first raid0 test that looked as if trim was working at all, so the signs are better than they were.

I wouldn't believe everything you read, all that statement means is the rst driver is compatible with raid0, besides GC as improved so much on some controllers that trim is hardly a issue anymore.

[Sephious]

Originally Posted by PommieB

Whether trim works or not depends on the computer chipset if everything is compatible, trim may work in raid0, some setups might pass trim to the ssd's in a raid0 array, some may not, Intel have been saying there rst driver supports raid0 and ssd's have been saying the same for a long time now, there's a better chance with the latest rst beta, but it's still hit and miss, the tests I've seen by benchmark sites is more positive, with a lot of maybe's.

Trim is hard to test, a site that tests for trim very thoroughly and they tested the new beta on three different set-ups, there was only one set up they could say that trim was positively working, what was positive, it was the first raid0 test that looked as if trim was working at all, so the signs are better than they were.

I wouldn't believe everything you read, all that statement means is the rst driver is compatible with raid0, besides GC as improved so much on some controllers that trim is hardly a issue anymore.

Considering it is directly under the "TRIM" heading, I'd say it does relate directly to TRIM.

And, you're correct on your last point. I've been running my SSD's in RAID-0 since I got them, and they're regular old Vertexes. I haven't noticed a marked decrease in performance over time with them due to the garbage collection (the majority of the time I used these drives was on a RST driver that didn't support TRIM in RAID-0).

You're also correct that it is extremely hard to test if TRIM is actually working. I found one piece of software that can supposedly monitor TRIM commands, but to download the trial you have to email them and they have to send it to you.

[PommieB]

I hope that trim is working for you, it may do, but without properly testing for trim it's hard to say, I've done a fair bit of research on the subject with a mixed amount of success, here's a recent link from the Intel community forum on the subject.

http://communities.intel.com/thread/29704

It's ambiguous at the best, as you ran your raid0, previous to using the the latest rst driver, did you see a noticeable difference. I can't seem to get a possible answer one way or the other. Changed that last sentence, I've been trying to get a clear answer to raid0 and trim for years.

Here's another link I found, nothing positive there either.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2256066