2 x OCZ Vertex 4 256GB in R0

JR. · 24 Apr 2012 at 10:28

Hi,

I thought folks would like to see the level of performance that can be reached with two of OCZ's latest Vertex 4s running on a P67 board (spec as in sig. below).

Benches run with Intel RST 11.0, high performance powerplan and CPU at 4800MHz.

Kind regds, JR

roachyuk · 24 Apr 2012 at 15:39

Nice scores and speed there .....how does it work with trim/garbage collection using raid 0 or is there a application you use to maintain the drives?

JR. · 24 Apr 2012 at 16:08

roachyuk said:
Nice scores and speed there .....how does it work with trim/garbage collection using raid 0 or is there a application you use to maintain the drives?

Hi roachy,

No trim yet for Raid 0 - as far as I am aware.

GC seems to be very effective but I'm still learning what management regime is required (e.g. how often I need to leave my rig idling at logon and for how long)

Regds, JR

wazza300 · 24 Apr 2012 at 16:09

do you notice any real world difference though from a single ssd to a raid 0?

roachyuk · 24 Apr 2012 at 16:21

i am on the verge of buying a new ssd so trying to work out whether to go raid......decisions ....decisions lol

JR. · 24 Apr 2012 at 16:26

Hi wazza,

I feel it depends on the use case.

For example, game load times and manipulating video files (both of which I do a lot) are noticeably faster. Whereas, if I'm honest, with app load times I'm not fast enough to notice the difference

The Vertex 4s are remarkably good as single boot drives and the trim functionality seems to be immaculate. A single V4, as a boot drive in my lappy, punches a remarkable (for a laptop) score of 985 in AS SSD. I'm still mulling over breaking my raid up and having a V4 as a boot drive in both my P67 desktop and my HM67 lappy - decisions... decisions...

Regds, JR

roachyuk · 24 Apr 2012 at 16:38

yeah was thinking raid 0 on ssd as you said your not fast enough lol me neither....so although the performance is there using as a boot drive is a waste...future is bright though when we can afford them to use as storage drives....transfering between drives then will be awsome.

ChileanLlama · 24 Apr 2012 at 17:23

You'll get about a year to 18 months of normal use before you see any degradation in performance on a RAID0 SSD. Even then it's only about a couple of hours at most to manually clean them.

OFC if you have decent GC it will probably take even longer before it's needed.

roachyuk · 24 Apr 2012 at 17:30

ahhh single drive it is then.......thanks for the info llama....now the intel 520 or vertex 4 lol.....think ill stay with intel ....for reliability .

delpy8 · 24 Apr 2012 at 18:33

Nice speeds would you get this with 2 x 120gb vertex 4s

JR. · 24 Apr 2012 at 19:23

delpy8 said:
Nice speeds would you get this with 2 x 120gb vertex 4s

Hi delpy,

I understand that the 128's write speeds are a bit slower than the 256's but I reckon they would still be awesome in a raid.

Regds, JR

delpy8 · 24 Apr 2012 at 19:28

JR. said:
Hi delpy,

I understand that the 128's write speeds are a bit slower than the 256's but I reckon they would still be awesome in a raid.

Regds, JR

Decisions decisions,i wonder if the sandisk extremes would be better or even the mushkin Chronos deluxe?

Justintime · 25 Apr 2012 at 06:45

ChileanLlama said:
You'll get about a year to 18 months of normal use before you see any degradation in performance on a RAID0 SSD. Even then it's only about a couple of hours at most to manually clean them.

OFC if you have decent GC it will probably take even longer before it's needed.

Longer, have seen no degradation on 2yr old RAID 0 arrays with quite a lot of use.

ubersonic · 25 Apr 2012 at 08:38

wazza300 said:
do you notice any real world difference though from a single ssd to a raid 0?

Interested in this, unless your doing some heavy industrial super high definition video editing then surely by 900MB/s your deep into diminishing returns?

ChileanLlama · 25 Apr 2012 at 08:51

Justintime said:
Longer, have seen no degradation on 2yr old RAID 0 arrays with quite a lot of use.

I guess I must be in the heavy use bracket then

Clav · 25 Apr 2012 at 09:30

wazza300 said:
do you notice any real world difference though from a single ssd to a raid 0?

I never noticed any differences apart from in benchmarks. I have used pretty much all combinations of single ssd, raid 0 ssd and most recently the z68 smart response ssd caching. I really haven't noticed any real world difference between all of the set ups.

ChileanLlama · 25 Apr 2012 at 09:54

Clav said:
I never noticed any differences apart from in benchmarks. I have used pretty much all combinations of single ssd, raid 0 ssd and most recently the z68 smart response ssd caching. I really haven't noticed any real world difference between all of the set ups.

Absolutely agree.

For normal use then you won't notice the difference. The only other reason is if you need the storage space, rather than speed, e.g. it may be more cost effective to buy multiple 512GB SSDs because 1TB drives either don't exist or are proportionally more expensive.

Conversely a lot of the problems associated with running SSDs in RAID0 are over exaggerated as well (e.g. the absence of TRIM).

JR. · 31 May 2012 at 22:18

Hi,

Here's an update following the release of the latest firmware, version 1.4.

2 x Vertex 4 256GB -

Remarkably, there is no sign of performance degradation even if I pummel the array with massive amounts of data - it is as if the V4's benefit from some form of pseudo trim functionality even when in R0.

(testbed - Asus P8Z77 WS, I7-2700K at 4800MHz, 16GB of Ram at 1600MHz CL 9)

Regds, JR