SSD shootout, round II: OCZ, Super Talent and Mtron do battle

If you'll recall, a slew of prohibitively expensive SSDs were pit against one another last summer in a battle royale of pricey HDD replacements. Fast forward a year and change, and the barrier to entry for one of these heralded devices has dropped significantly. That being the case, we've a feeling HotHardware's latest shootout will be a whole lot more relevant for the average joe / jane. The aforementioned test simultaneously reviews the OCZ Core Series 64GB MLC, OCZ 64GB Standard SLC, Super Talent MasterDrive MX 64GB MLC and the Mtron MSP 7500 32GB SLC. Interestingly, the writeup didn't conclude with a medal ceremony, but rather, it elaborated on the merits of each and where it would likely fit best. You know what that means -- time to bust out the spectacles and get to readin'. Chop chop!

[Kr3st @ Sep 13th 2008 4:56PM]

I read this 2 nights ago, the OCZ core series ends up on top.

[Sam Zebian @ Sep 13th 2008 5:07PM]

Wow, how much of a coincedence is this... I'm looking to return my eee 1000 to get the 1000h to get a bigger and faster ssd for it, and the eee 1000h is only $410 now, so I won't be spending much more. Thanks to this ssd battle I don't have to look around as much. Thank you engadget and hothardware.

[pball_inuyaha @ Sep 13th 2008 5:20PM]

I just hope stiff competition and advances in tech and mass production drive the price down a lot. It would be awesome in two or so years time when I build a new computer to use an ssd as the system drive or even larger storage drives too.

[steve @ Sep 13th 2008 5:23PM]

don't buy any of these SSDs!



OCZ Core review:
http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=106

Ridata Ultra-S plus review:
http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=276

[Nihility @ Sep 13th 2008 5:33PM]

That article is from 10 days ago, it's been popping up all over then net. I doesn't cover the Intel drives, which came out after, and it doesn't cover the OCZ core V2. It's irreverent really.

[paul34 @ Sep 13th 2008 6:02PM]

Damn Engagdget, always so irreverent! They should learn some respect!

[BigD145 @ Sep 13th 2008 6:03PM]

Irrelevant?

[kevinm @ Sep 13th 2008 5:51PM]

Intel's SSDs are coming out. I'd wait to compare these to that.

[ybd @ Sep 13th 2008 6:06PM]

Note: The "SSD" in the title of this news stands for Super Smash Drothers.

[eggothewaffle @ Sep 13th 2008 8:20PM]

Super Smashed Daughters? I'm sure plenty of the guys here would love to "play" that "game."

[MojoKid @ Sep 13th 2008 10:02PM]

Yeah, the Intel SSD is tested here:

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Intel-X25M-80GB-SATA-Solid-State-Drive-Intel-Ups-The-Ante/


Big fast for sure. :)

[OnlyShawn @ Sep 14th 2008 1:11AM]

I'm sorry...barrier to entry? that's a economic technical term with a real definition, not a phrase that's interchangeable with "prohibitively high cost".

Am I missing something here? was there some factor that was keeping manufacturers from selling products in the market that's now changed?

[Kevitivity @ Sep 14th 2008 3:36AM]

The only time I have ever seen RAM actually burn was some Super-Talent sticks. Ya, I've had bad RAM before, but I've never seen new RAM that was working fine then die with visible scorch marks around some smaller parts on the sticks.

[jorvay @ Sep 14th 2008 4:00PM]

Does anyone else hear MTron and think of the best space lego sets from the late 80's and early 90's? Were they good guys? Were they bad? I just don't know.

[DaveL @ Sep 15th 2008 12:52AM]

Seriously... hold off on buying an SSD... particularly the OCZ Core. I've tried them and the overall real world performance is no where near what they claim. (Go to the OCZ forums and witness the carnage for yourself.) The review under emphasizes small file read/writes (i.e. "oh that'll just happen if you're copying a bunch of .jpg") but the reality is that everyday tasks like surfing the web can make your computer stutter (start and stop in quick intervals) as the browser writes page content to its cache and doing anything in the background can bring your system to a screeching halt for several seconds. It's like you've been instantly teleported back to the days of single core CPUs and 5,400 RPM hard drives. There's also ICH8/9/10 incompatibilities which can limit the stellar read times and I don't have to comment on the price per Gb.

It's frustrating because SSD read times can be amazing and make you realize how much of a bottleneck your HDD really is but it's only a tantalizing taste of things to come. BTW, keep an eye out for emerging MFT (Managed File Transfer) technologies as preliminary software versions are making a cruddy MLC SSD read and write at over 800 Mb/s by grouping small files into larger blocks. (It's more complicated than this but that was my take on it.) I tried EasyCo's MFT with the Core and despite some early version issues, it was slamming demanding game levels open at ludicrous speeds like inside of 1.5s. Anyway, the Velociraptor is the best thing going right now and while you never know what the storage companies may have up their sleeves... it's looking like it may be the last spinny disk I buy with the way things are shaping up with solid state stuff.

[Jason Litka @ Sep 15th 2008 2:00PM]

Anyone know what SSDs Dell is shipping these days in their notebooks? I'm planning on ordering an E4200 when released tomorrow and I'd like to know the difference between the "Ultra Performance Solid State Drive up to 64GB" and the "Solid State Drive up to 128GB".