FZ1 wrote:Funny, I even mentioned it in my Apex review that most enthusiasts would be disappointed by the performance because they A) would have high expectations B) many are coming from RAID 0 systems with VR's so the performance difference is barely noticeable if at all.
All in all, I have no complaints about the Apex. Every once and awhile, I get a stutter but otherwise, everything is zippy.
Hello everyone. I'm new in this forum and I would like to make a few comments.
After having a Raid0 array with 3 x150GB velociraptors I noticed that the performance wasn't as expected. I was using the drives to handle the OS.
Then I changed all of them and purchased an Intel X25-E SLC 32GB drive.
The performance difference is MORE than noticeable. Not only I wasn't dissapointed but I was impressed by the performance of this little things.
After that I purchased a second one in order to setup a raid0 array on my ICH10R onboard controller.
The performance difference wasn't that of impressive. Of course everything was working faster but by a small difference.
The numbers though were impressive, even though the feeling wasn't very different at all after installing the second SSD.
I would like to point something out. In an OS environment the big impact that makes a difference is the read and write speeds of a disk in small KByte blocks.
This means that none of the benchmarks that test and measure SEQUENTIAL speeds can give you an overview of the speed of an SSD.
Programs like ATTO, Roadkils diskspeed V2 and CrystalDiskMark that measure small KB blocks can show you what an SSD can do in REAL life, meaning the OS.
This is the reason that performance can change when you set different Cluster size in the OS partition.
Below you can find two Screenshots from the Roadkils disk speed V2 benchmark.
The first one shows 3 Velociraptos 150GB in a raid0 configuration and also, in order to make the access time lower, with a small partition in the beggining of the disks (50GB).
The second one shows 1 Intel X25-E SSD 32GB drive.
3xWD Velociraptos 150GB @ RAID0 on ICH10R 50GB Partition
1 Intel X25-E SSD SLC 32GB on ICH10R
Forget about the overall score or the Access time.
focus on the 0.5,1,2,4 and 8KB blocks. Something weird in the write performance?
The raid0 array with the 3 velociraptors can write 0.5KB blocks in a speed of around ~100KB/sec where the Intel SSD on its own does this in a speed of 7.37MB/s.
This means that the writing speed of the Intel drive is 70 times FASTER than the VR's.
If you continue downwards you can see the differences.
In 8KB blocks the velociraptors can write with speeds of up to 1.39MB/s where the Intel drive writes at 77MB/s.
The same can be found if you use CrystalDiskMark v2.2
3xWD VR's @ Raid0 on ICH10R
1 Intel X25-E SSD 32GB
Take a look at the 4KB block random read and write speeds. This is the default block size (cluster size) that Windows Vista and 7 use when you create a partition and install the OS.
This is the difference that a really GOOD SSD can do in your system. And when you will combine it with a good subsystem (RAM, CPU,Motherboard) you will not believe you eyes.
