Silicon Power SSD 128 GB: Big And Slow
Silicon Power may not be the first vendor to come into your mind when thinking of flash SSDs. The brand tries to create a buzz by providing high-capacity flash SSDs such as the test sample we received, which holds an impressive 128 GB.
However, the manufacturer seems to have forgotten to implement some performance, as the drive maxes out at 57 MB/s read throughput and roughly 30 MB/s for writes—both less than what a modern hard drive can deliver. While the 0.4 ms access time is sufficiently quick, power consumption isn’t special either—0.9 W idle power is below average for a flash SSD, and the only number that pleased us was the peak power of only 1.7 W.
While the drive still does well in the File Write Performance benchmark of PCMark05, it loses ground when it comes to starting Windows XP, which involves locating and providing multiple small files. Since I/O performance isn’t impressive either, the Silicon Power 128 GB flash SSD remains a nice option for medium capacity ultra-portable PC solutions, as it is indeed acceptably efficient. However, don’t expect it to perform particularly fast.
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Well, nothing new here.
A comparison of random write access time would have been very nice
since this a major disadvantage of SSD (as far as I know).
Some flash drives only reach 100ms access time!
In addition to write access times, it would be interesting to know about the effects to Windows swap memory performance. When Windows goes and uses swap memory, performance is usually plunged, due to multiple simultaneous accesses. However, writing to swap file might be continuous access while reading it might be random. But how about if some other program is read-accessing hard drive while Windows is writing to swap file? I do not know about swap memory specs, so I do not really know. (This is where Tom's testers would step in.
) SSDs might greatly decrease hard drive crunching, but if it requires much random write access (and if it is much slower like nerd999/asdf999 claims), there might not be so much advantage.
And it raised another thought about the lifespan: how much writing Windows swapping really does generally and how much would profuse everyday swapping eat memory cells (e.g. when photoshopping large images)?
My understanding of SSD implementation is not to use a swap file, as the access time is so much quicker it negates the need for one.
I've installed XP on a number of drives and I always remove the swap file, and I've never seen any impact.
Hope this helps
... A comparison of random write access time would have been very nicesince this a major disadvantage of SSD (as far as I know).Some flash drives only reach 100ms access time!
+1 Yeh would like to see that. Killer SSD test!!
Bob
Hey, nice review, thanks. Can you offer the same endorsement for the 32GB version of these samsung/OCZ drives? And can you provide the model numbers as tested?
How about tests where the OS is installed on the SSD, how much faster would the system feel as a result?
Anonymous @ 19/08/2008, it seems you quite haven't grasped the concept of swap files. They are not for increasing performance (as in speed) or caching. They are used to extend system memory by moving memory contents temporarily to the hard drive. Using high-speed SSD does not negate need for swap file (using more system memory would), it makes swap file usage more viable one! Removing swap file should not impact system performance negatively, it would usually make system faster (because Windows tends to swap even much before you are low on system memory). But you can remove swap file only if you have enough memory available. When using large applications at the same time (e.g. the whole Adobe Creative Suite), swapping tends to become useful, even if you have 2 gigabytes of memory available. It is usually easier and faster to swap applications on the disk than to close all your work files and close the applications. But low access times would help situations when your hard drive is already in work and Windows starts swapping. Sometimes it may take minutes before your system is really usable again.
Synchronos (anonymous @ 18/08/2008)