Silicon Power 32 GB Solid State Disk review - Guru3D

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SSD is the future make no mistake. With Silicon Power's product the dynamics change a bit. A couple of weeks ago they released a new series of drives. We got one fresh from the factory this is their...

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Cybermancer · 08-20-2008, 22:57 | posts: 12,530 | Location: Cyberspace | User is Offline

Impressive how much faster those SSDs are compared to HDDs (after 16KB sizes).
$349 USD for the 32 GB SLC version is still pretty expensive, imo, and those 32 GB might not even be enough for "just" an OS drive.

A few mistakes I found:
page 1, paragraph 5, line 6: "(...) there's nothing more important that your data."
http://www.guru3d.com/article/silico...-disk-review/1

page 2, paragraph 4, line 4: "The benefits that these drivers offer (...)"
http://www.guru3d.com/article/silico...-disk-review/2

page 4, paragraph 1, line 1: "Installation of a SSD drive is no different than installing any other driver."
http://www.guru3d.com/article/silico...-disk-review/4

Norvekh · 08-20-2008, 23:55 | posts: 1,862 | Location: Ohio | User is Offline

Over $10 a gigabyte is a bit much to bear, even for the performance. I just hope prices continue their downward trend. Impressive nonetheless.

Ven0m · 08-21-2008, 01:57 | posts: 82 | Location: Warsaw, Poland | User is Offline

Great review, great drive.
There are software solutions that minimize wear of the SSD, while increasing small blocks writes performance - with SLC, there should be no greater problems with long-term reliability.

32GB is not enough for Vista + Visual Studio + some soft, but 128GB would be ok. Read throughput and access time are very impressive.
When prices drop, I'll have to consider getting one of these.

batraxos · 08-25-2008, 23:09 | posts: 5 | User is Offline

Wouldnt mind seeing how it performs on RAID too...
Anychance of getting your hands on another one of those critters
and bench it on RAID ?

volkov956

i am still to weary of Flash Memory to want to get it (hoping for a previous HDD tech to come out)

PeterV · *Last edited by PeterV; 09-02-2008 at 04:40.*

It is expensive considering a Raid0 drive setup will match, or even beat, it.
eg you can have 1Tb Raid0 Sata2 for that same price (or less).
Raid0 also 'flat lines' the drive speed - taking away the decline in transfer rate that a single disk has as it moves closer to the centre.
So I currenly have a 140Mb/s (sustained and constant across the entire disk) 640Gb (2x 320Gb) Seagate Raid0 system that cost under half the price of the 32Gb SSD !
Access speed.... well HDD can't win that, but that still doesn't make SSD anywhere near worth the cost.

So it will be a while before SSD can really match HDD abilities cost effectively.
(2 years or so?)

maleficarus™ · 11-09-2008, 03:14 | posts: 326 | Location: Canada | User is Offline

Won't be in my future untill the price comes back down to planet earth at around $1 a GB

Tat3 · **Memory**: 3*2Gb 8-8-8-20 @ 1640MHz

With that money you could get 3*1tb drives...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ven0m

32GB is not enough for Vista + Visual Studio + some soft, but 128GB would be ok. Read throughput and access time are very impressive.
When prices drop, I'll have to consider getting one of these.

Same here... And if you use VMware you need 128gb minimum.

Classic Satch · 11-09-2008, 03:56 | posts: 4,780 | Location: Alaska | User is Offline

Eh, a 300GB Velociraptor will do just fine until the SSD's become economically viable to us enthusiasts.

allesclar

i think its more along the lines of lower power consumption, i can see these coming to laptops more so than desktops. I still cant see the advantage over price these have over the current SATA drives. Yes they may be faster but are they really worth what you pay, considering also how much less space they have.

Classic Satch · 11-09-2008, 04:31 | posts: 4,780 | Location: Alaska | User is Offline

Quote:

Originally Posted by allesclar

i think its more along the lines of lower power consumption, i can see these coming to laptops more so than desktops. I still cant see the advantage over price these have over the current SATA drives. Yes they may be faster but are they really worth what you pay, considering also how much less space they have.

True enough. However, the access times and transfer rates of SSD's, especially the SLC variety, are quite enviable. The RAID 0 results from some of these SSD's is astounding. However, would it really be worth the incredble cost? Eh, not so much.

kylzer · 11-09-2008, 05:35 | posts: 14,690 | Location: Aberdeen, UK | User is Offline

very fast wait till thoses prices drop

albion · 11-09-2008, 07:51 | posts: 581 | Location: Albion | User is Offline

Way too pricey still...

leexgx · 09-22-2009, 14:04 | posts: 26 | Location: uk | User is Offline

for norm use 1 cache based SSD (vertex/sam) is far faster then any HDD RAID setup, Seq Read and Write speed means nothing when it cant be backed up with random I/O that hdds can't do well, as to why RAIDing SSD is pointless as the IOP is very high the extra SSD norm just gives you more space then speed (not human could detect, benchmarks would show it, and data rate whould be a lot higher)

its the cost thats to high