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Intel Introduces Tools to Optimize 34nm SSD Performance in Windows 7

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:44:13 -0500

Intel today announced the availability of a couple of new tools and a new firmware for its 34nm X25-M SATA SSDs. The Intel SSD Optimizer and the new firmware, both of which leverage the Windows* 7 ATA Data Set Management Command (known as Trim), are designed to preserve the out-of-box performance of Intel SSDs, while the Intel Solid-State Drive (SSD) Toolbox contains applications to better monitor the health of SSDs.

According to Intel, the Trim attribute of the ATA Data Set Management Command "synchs the operating system's view of deleted files with those that are deleted, but not erased on the drive."

Trim helps the SSD identify unused blocks of data, thereby lending stability to the health and performance of the SSD. Intel said in the press release that 34nm X25-M 160GB owners can expect an improvement of around 40 percent in sequenstial write speeds with the firmware update, which amounts to write speeds of up to 100MB per second.

"Not only will Windows 7 users receive the performance enhancements of the Trim command, but so will our Windows XP and Vista users," said Pete Hazen, director of marketing, Intel NAND Solutions Group.

Image Credit: Intel

FCC: Internet Speeds Much Slower than Claimed

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:34:58 -0500

You can now curse your ISP with even more conviction. A task force set up by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has revealed that actual broadband speeds are slower than promised speeds by as much as 50% to 80%.

Although the task force didn’t name any decent ways to express dissent, it is suggested that indignant consumers learn the art of protesting from the true masters of the art: the Palestinians, who have pioneered some of the most effective and economical techniques, including stone pelting and the fabled catch-and-hurl-back-teargas-grenade technique.

Coming back to the subject of broadband access, the task force is busy preparing a report on ways to enhance broadband penetration in rural and urban areas. The panel will submit its final report to Congress in February. It said in an interim report that anywhere between $20 and $350 billion might be needed for installing necessary wireless and landline infrastructure. Its estimate depends on the internet speed.

“This speaks to consumer empowerment. And if you are advertising one speed but delivering another, that takes power away. Consumers can't make accurate decisions based on quality of service from one provider off another,” Joel Kelsey, an analyst at Consumers Union, told the Washington Post.

The panel said in its report that while nearly 2/3 of Americans are wallowing in broadband bliss and 1/3 have access but haven’t subscribed, 4% have no access whatsoever. The panel also expects smartphones to march ahead of blander phones by 2011.

Image Credit: RTE

Comcast Now Offering 50Mbps For $100 In Some Areas

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:02:19 -0500

Just recently Comcast dropped the price on their “Extreme 50” Internet package (for those that are also subscribing to their Digital Voice or cable TV) from $139.95 to $99.95.

This new Extreme 50 package was just launched in Washington, DC and surrounding areas today, but the price for the $139.95 service is dropping nationwide. Along with this deployment, Comcast plans to get DOCSIS 3.0 to 65 percent of their territory by the end of this year.

According to Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas, “We already have a bundled incentive with our other tiers, so this is similar. It was just a matter of time before we introduced a bundled incentive price for Extreme 50.”

With this drop, Comcast now offers the cheapest 50Mbps broadband in the United States.

Image Credit: Comcast

USB 3.0 Blazing Speeds Only Theoretical, For Now

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:27:56 -0600

Though many people are keenly awaiting the commercial launch of USB 3.0, it is advisable that they subdue their alacrity a touch as it will take some time for the technology to warm-up. A prototype USB 3.0 hard drive being showcased at the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show is only able to manage read speeds up to 1320Mb/s and writes speeds of up to 1000Mb/s, which is around a quarter of what is possible with USB 3.0.

A representative for the USB Implementers Forum also confirmed to TG Daily that it will take a bit of time before devices begin to fully tap the potential of the new technology.

IBM SSDs Set I/O Speed Record

Paul Lilly — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:30:31 -0500

Solid state drives (SSDs) are best known for the potential performance gains, but the numbers currently being touted could be just the tip of the iceberg. Engineers and researchers at the IBM Hursley development lab in England and Almaden Research Center in California have taken SSD technology to new heights by demonstrating performance results that surpass the world's fastest disk storage solution by 250 percent.

Using a combination of flash solid-state technology and IBM's storage virtualization technology, the company managed to transfer data at a sustained rate of over one million Input/Output (I/O) per second boasting a response time of under one millisecond. When pitted against the fastest industry benchmarked disk system, the company claims not only was performance improved by 250 percent, but it did so at less than 1/20th the response time and by taking up 1/5th the floor space, all the while requiring only 55 percent of the power and cooling.

The (new) Fastest Hard Drive Ever

David Murphy — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:59:40 -0500

Ok, so technically a Dilophosaurus hocked the venom loogie all over Nedry's face. But in marketplace of consumer hard drives, there is no question that Western Digital's Velociraptor is the beast to be feared. The new 300GB, 10,000-RPM device comes as a much-needed bolster to Western Digital's high-performance storage line. After all, it's been two years since the launch of the 150GB Raptor X, and other drive manufacturers have been quick to take note.

Prior to today, Samsung's HD103UJ was the reigning king of storage, offering an unbeatable combination of awesome speeds at a price-per-gigabyte ratio that made the Raptor line of drives look ancient by comparison. After all, why would anyone want to spring for a slower 150GB drive when a slightly bigger investment would net a super-fast terabyte drive? The Velociraptor might still not be the best option for frugal computer enthusiasts on a strictly price-to-size ratio, but it's still not going to break the bank. Western Digital is selling the drives for exactly the same amount as the Raptor X drives at their launch: $300

Western Digital engineers must have been watching Honey I Shrunk The Kids when they were brainstorming for new storage ideas. The Velociraptor achieves its new footholds of speed and storage as a result of its reduced, 2.5-inch size. You're undoubtedly thinking about the ramifications of this, given that every modern desktop system under the sun fits 3.5-inch drives. Well, Western Digital's one step ahead of the form factor. It's strapped each Velociraptor drive to a mounting mechanism that conveniently doubles as a giant heatsink for the drive itself. Dubbed the "Icepak," the all-black base allows helps ensure that the drive run at temperature and noise levels comparable to the Raptor X.

The two-platter Velociraptor runs with the same cache as its predecessors, 16MB. Although the Velociraptor's drive's interface takes a much-needed upgrade from SATA 1.5 Gb/s to 3 Gb/s. Modders will frown at the drive's attachment to the the desktop: removing the Velociraptor drive from its Icepak voids the warranty. It's also pointless. Western Digital told us that the Velociraptor's power requirements exclude it from being able to be used in laptops.

So then. Just how fast is the new Velociraptor? Requisite charts and graphs and such are below. Before we begin, we need to note that we're running benchmarks on a drive that's an engineering sample. Once Western Digital release final, as-shipped-to-consumers drives, you can bet your byte that you'll be seeing a full review in Maximum PC. That said, here's a spoiler: in our real-world testing, the drive we checked out was 59 percent faster than a Raptor X and 18 percent faster than Samsung's HD103UJ.

Single-drive test

BENCHMARKS
	WD Velociraptor	WD Raptor X	Samsung HD103UJ
HDTach Burst (MB/s)	255.1	117.6	204.5
HDTach Random Access (ms)	7.1	8.1	13.7
HDTach Average Read (MB/s)	104.6	65	96.8
HDTach Average Write (MB/s)	96.7	63	84.4
PCMark05 Overall	9457	5956	8014

All HDTach scores use HDTach 3.0.1.0.

We've bolded the best scores in the above benchmark chart, although it would probably be easier to just note that the Velociraptor beats its peers in every single category we test. Five for five. Gold medal. Epic win. It's important to note that HDTach scores are a synthetic benchmark, more designed to make sure a drive is running up to snuff. We care about the PCMark05 score most of all--it's an accurate representation of real-world storage demands by an operating system and its software.

But wait, there's more! Since we were feeling a bit antsy, we decided to test the RAID performance of the Velociraptor against its predecessor. We're mainly concerned about RAID 0 performance, although we included a measurement of the Velociraptor's RAID 1 stats for those who are a bit more into data replication.

RAID test

BENCHMARKS
	WD Velociraptor	WD Velociraptor (RAID 1)	WD Velociraptor (RAID 0)	Raptor X (RAID 0)
HDTach Burst (MB/s)	255.1	229.9	346.6	204.9
HDTach Random Access (ms)	7.1	7.2	7.2	8.2
HDTach Average Read (MB/s)	104.6	100.8	168.2	104.9
HDTach Average Write (MB/s)	96.7	93.5	162.9	113.6
PCMark05 Overall	9457	8471	11609	8495

All RAID scores use onboard RAID as provided by our test bed's motherboard, an Evga 680i.

Save for the most minor of difference in random access times, it's obvious that two hunks of awesome working in tandem are better than anything else we've seen on the storage front. A RAID 0 Velociraptor setup clocks in PCMark05 scores approximately 37 percent faster than a RAID 0 array of two Raptor X drives. That's all well and good, but there's one more encounter the Velociraptor has yet to meet -- the Holy Grail of speedy storage, a solid-state drive.

How does the Velociraptor fare against an SSD? Come find out!

For this most epic of challenges, we're pitting Mtron's Pro-series 64-gigabyte SSD against a Velociraptor in both single and RAID 0 test environments. Just as a matter of principle, we should note that the former's $1,950 MSRP represents a cost-to-gigabyte ratio of around 30-to-1, whereas a $300 Velociraptor drive comes in at a crisp 1-to-1 ratio of dollars-spent per gigabytes-purchased. Yes, solid-state drives are just that expensive. But for the cost, you're getting a drive that runs at a dedicated read/write speed, given that there are no physical platters to manipulate. An SSD is also silent, uses little power, and is far more durable (again, due to the lack of mechanical movement) than a standard hard disk drive.

Velociraptor vs. SSD

BENCHMARKS
	WD Velociraptor	Mtron Pro SSD	Velociraptor (RAID 0)	Mitron Pro SSD (RAID 0)
HDTach Burst (MB/s)	255.1	109.6	346.6	183.5
HDTach Random Access (ms)	7.1	0.1	7.2	0.1
HDTach Average Read (MB/s)	104.6	102.8	168.2	100
HDTach Average Write (MB/s)	96.7	51.7	162.9	61.9
PCMark05 Overall	9457	17062	11609	21035

Best scores are bolded in each connection catagory (ie: single drive & RAID).

It puts up a valiant fight, but the Velociraptor is simply no match for a solid-state device. In the real-world PCMark05 suite of tests, a single solid-state drive is 80 percent faster than a single Velociraptor and 47 percent faster than a pair of Velociraptors in a RAID 0 configuration. If you can survive the burning hole in your bank account, a solid-state drive is still the Holy Grail of speedy storage. But when it comes to consumer-level drives that are both affordable and practical, you cannot beat a Velociraptor.

Western Digital hasn't announced any other iterations in the Velociraptor drive line, although they did give the tiniest of hints that they might consider exploring see-through treatment for the drives. While we think that they could also find a way to bundle the drives in their naked, 2.5-inch form with the help of an OEM vendor, we're not going to hold our breath on that one happening anytime soon.

June 2004: The Speed Issue

The Maximum PC Staff — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0500

In the PDF archive of the June 2004 issue, you can find:

Speed Matters
Power Supply Primer
Geek Quiz
Awesome Game Reviews, including Unreal Tournament 2004 and Far Cry!
Ask the Doctor
Rig of the Month
The Watchdog
And a whole lot more!

Click the flippin sweet cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!