9 - The Conclusion

The Verdict

Wow .. seriously wow. I gotta tell ya, I really do like SSD drives. Fair enough, this is the first time we actually fully tested one so from that point of view my opinion might be a little subjective. But overall this certainly was a pleasant experience. Our test have shown very adequate SSD performance at the least up-to huge peaks when it comes to read-write performance.

Let's break down some of the important points. Pricing. Of course SSD drives still are relatively expensive.

• This 64Gb model will cost you 223 EUR, that's 3.5 EUR per Gigabyte.
• You can purchase a 73 GB WD Raptor for 139 EUR, that's 1.90 EUR per gigabyte.
• If you buy a WD 500 GB for 89 EUR which is 0.18 EUR per gigabyte !

So yeah, no doubt ... SSD is still too expensive. But it is getting more affordable and in a year from now prices definitely will match the Raptor prices and will be even faster. If anything I can finally see the Raptor prices go down this year thanks to the upcoming competition from SSD.

What more then ? Our tests though flabber gasting, also showed a weak spot. When your PC, Server, HTPC has to write a lot small files constantly, smaller than 4 KB then a WD Raptor is simply faster. However sequential read write speeds are better on spinning discs after the read/write head has moved into position. Random read write speeds on SSDs is ridiculously better because there's no disc head to move. A bit of a tradeoff I guess. But other than that the OCZ Core SSD driver pretty much annihilates any traditional drive and can even match the WD raptor.

To take the test a little bit further, away from Synthetic testing, we decided to make a clean install of Windows Vista on the SSD drive. For two full days I have been working on that system, playing some games .. work a little on it, just basic normal PC usage. And I just have to admit .. I love it. Really fast access times versus good speed and no noise. What's not to like ?

Well reliability, it keeps spinning like a ghost in the back of my head. As hey, a piece of equipment can be replaced yet the date on a HDD/SDD is priceless. You can't put a pricetag on your data man. So how worried need we really be?  SSD drives these days mostly use flash memory, and as explained, they do not have an infinite number of read/write operations.

Typically a SLC cell can handle hundreds of thousands writes before it's will go dead, then what? OCZ however opted to go for MLC, and I kind of dislike that as it's rated at 10.000 rewrites. But ...this MLC SSD has 10-bit Error Correction Control, so if cells fail .. you'll likely wont even notice it as we expect it'll be remapped and another one will be used, just like bad blocks are remapped on your HDD.

But let's put that in a formula:

Say that you write 16 GB worth of data each day (which really is a lot), including the swap file/memory paging, etc.

• It will take 4 days to fill the card (16GB x 4 Days = 64 GB). So one ("1") write (wear)cycle = 4 days.
• A 10,000 write cycle will take 10,000 x 4 = 40.000 days of usage at 16 GB per day before the limit is reached.

This is the equivalent of 40.000 / 365.25 = 109 years of usage.

Now the dilemma that is inside my head. What if 62 GB out of 64 GB is written, and the remaining 2 GB constantly rewrites due to log files and random stuff like swap files. That's the unsecure factor that nobody can answer. As that remaining 2 GB would wear out much much faster.

It's a very interesting concept, as you can apply this thesis, the less volume you use on a larger volume drive will exponentially increase reliability.

In the near future itll be interesting to see if SSD manufacturers will be able to implement an early-warning system similar to the S.M.A.R.T technology that is built into all of todays mechanical hard drives. However, with normal PC usage I would not worry too much. Hey, your traditional mechanical HDD can fail just as well.

So whether it is your overall normal PC usage or gaming, the SSD drive will suit your needs. Also another idea just popped into my mind. Alot of you just like yours truly have a HTPC right ? What's the number one and number 2 requirement of a HTPC ? Exactly .. silence. The second one due to preserving silence, keep heat level low. The SSD makes no noise, and does not get warm. Imagine an SSD like this as Windows Media Center driver and then perhaps over a network get your movies from your NAS or file-server. You can make that HTPC 100% silent and damn fast. Or what about working in photoshop ? All these large photo's and edits ... the SSD will speed it up man. Laptops then .. the 2.5" version is obviously ideal for a laptop usage. Though we didn't test, better power reduction, your data is virtually impervious to shock and vibration. There's no noise and you'll gain, weight reduction.

So there you have it folks, the possibilities are endless. I'm really excited about the technology, really ... and sure the price is still quite beefy. But that will change. We are at the dawn of a new era, the technology as presented in the OCZ Core SSD drives already is stunning. And fact is .. it can only get better, though I truly wish they would have opted single level cell NAND memory, just to kill off my remaining bit of worry regarding reliability. SLC also has even faster access times and write speeds.

But hey, clearly there are some things to really like about SSD drives. Boot speed, application launch times, and (though a little controversial right now) battery life are big plusses. On the down side you have price and limited capacity. Perhaps even ideally you could opt to combine both a HDD and SSD. One as boot / OS driver, the rest as file-storage.

Mark my words though; it will take some time, but eventually, spinning disk platters will be as obsolete as the punch card .. you do remember that one do you ? The Core Series is expected to retail for $169 (32GB), $259 (64GB), and $479 (128GB) while offering read transfer rates well over 100MBps and seek under 1ms. High-performance SSDs typically cost hundreds of dollars more than what we tested today; well over $800 OCZs advertised numbers are impressive and it's price as well.

The OCZ Core Series SATA II 2.5" SSD 64 GB version can be bought for just over 200 EUR / $259 and comes with a two year warranty.

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Should you be interested, this webshop offers 40 USD rebate on a 279 pricetag, thus 239.99 USD.

** Update. We heard that the drive has some incompatibility issues with Intel P945 chipsets. We tested this ourselved and indeed notice data corruption. A lot of Laptops use the P945 chipset in combo with Atom processors please be aware of this.