http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/ Engadget Comments for Corsair's blistering P256 SSD reviewed: look out, X25-M http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
Eh... What?]]>Jun 6th 2009 8:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 8:25AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 8:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 8:28AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/]]>Jun 6th 2009 10:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 10:56AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 11:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 1:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 3:00PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 3:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 6:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
so its crap. :P]]>Jun 6th 2009 8:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/06/05/corsair-p256-256gb-ssd-review/7

4.5 megabytes per second versus the intel's 39. It's no contest. Yes, this drive is maybe 3rd place (4th if you count the X25-E), but it's a distant third place.]]>Jun 6th 2009 11:23AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 11:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 1:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 4:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 5:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
You hit the nail on the head man, the MFRS have to compromise in either sequential, random or both depending on their priorities. It's only a matter of months before drives start showing up that have it all, plus, all the time we wait, the cheaper the tech gets too.]]>Jun 6th 2009 6:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 9th 2009 5:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
'Nuff said.]]>Jun 6th 2009 8:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
Random write speeds:
Intel X-25M: 39.49MB/s
Corsair P256: 4.67MB/s

Random Write Latency:
Intel X-25M: 0.30ms
Corsair P256: 2.5ms

Corsair now also makes failure products :P.]]>Jun 6th 2009 11:21AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
The Corsair P256 and OCZ Summit both use the new Samsung controller, and while they don't have the random write performance of the Intel X25M (overkill), their random write performance is 1000X better than SSDs. that use the old JMicron controller, and they don't experience any of the write stuttering whatsoever.

Also, as many review sites have covered, the random write performance of drives using the new Samsung controller or an Indilinx controller are still blazing fast, and for non-server use Intel's X25M random write performance is total OVERKILL and doesn't provide any TANGIBLE BENEFITS over those two other controllers for desktop use. As long as the SSD isn't using JMicron's old controller (which literally has random write performance on the order of 1000X worse than the Indilinx), you won't notice a difference.

In addition, Intel's over-optimizing for random write performance led the X25M to have a sequential write speed of only 75MB/sec --- whereas the Indilinx or new Samsung controller-based drives doing over 200MB/sec (while still having plenty of random write performance)

==== Lastly, my recommendation for EVERYONE is to read Anandtech's 20+ page SSD article in addition to Anandtech's, PCperspective's, and Bit-tech's reviews of SSDs. They provide a ton of very helpful information to understand the complexities of SSDs ===]]>Jun 6th 2009 1:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 4:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
Thanks for that post, helped clear some confusion up for me.

And just from personal experience, I have always been satisfied with Corsair products to date.]]>Jun 6th 2009 5:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 8:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.2s2d.net/2009/05/15/corsair-p256-cmfssd-256gbg2d-on-a-mac-pro/
Check it out.....
]]>Jun 6th 2009 9:11AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 9:22AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 9:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 10:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 9:11AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 11:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 12:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
]]>Jun 6th 2009 2:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
Can you get wear leveling to work with a raid setup? I was always little confused about that. At some point I thought I read that it wasn't possible, or that raid screws up some types of SSD maintenance, but stuff keeps changing. Anyone know?]]>Jun 6th 2009 5:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
Anyway, sure SSDs can be used in RAID. The RAID controller will only deal with the "logical" location of the data. The wear-leveling occurs BELOW that, and is invisible to the RAID controller. ]]>Jun 7th 2009 12:29AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
Truly, I've been using my P256 for 6 weeks of intensive graphic design and photography (Lightroom + 50MB DNG & NEF files) and no other HDD even comes close! I would have gotten an Intel device if the capacities were >160 GB but I needed the 256. I am overwhelmingly impressed. The drive upgrade beats a 4-5x improvement in processor speed for my workflow. You can't buy that performance increase AT ANY PRICE (except a SSD) today.

I cannot stress enough how awesome SSD computing on a MacBook Pro is. (Yes, you will have to do a careful teardown of your machine with the right patience and tools to do it right, but you're all hackers, right?)]]>Aug 25th 2009 1:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 9:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/not even close in real world usage.

]]>Jun 6th 2009 9:29AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 9:31AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 9:33AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
Random reads/writes matter.]]>Jun 6th 2009 11:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 11:31AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 4:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Intel X-25M: 39.49MB/s
Corsair P256: 4.67MB/s

Random Write Latency:
Intel X-25M: 0.30ms
Corsair P256: 2.5ms

it's not even in the same order of magnitude.


and to say that it doesn't suffer from slowdown like the Intel drives do is bullshit.
It's a fundamental problem with flash based drives to slowdown once they have written to every block once.
That is why the TRIM command needs to be FULLY supported and the blocks need to be cleaned when they are eraased, not when they are being re-written.

this "review" has FAIL written all over it.
]]>Jun 6th 2009 9:28AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 9:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/Jun 6th 2009 10:00AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
The Corsair P256 and OCZ Summit both use the new Samsung controller, and while they don't have the random write performance of the Intel X25M their random write performance is 1000X better than all the other SSDs that use the old JMicron controller, and they don't experience any of the write stuttering whatsoever.

As many review sites have covered, for non-server use Intel's X25M random write performance is total OVERKILL and doesn't provide any TANGIBLE BENEFITS over the new Samsung or Indilinx controller. As long as the SSD isn't using JMicron's old controller (which literally has random write performance 100X worse than any of these drives), the random write performance won't be an obstacle of any kind.

In addition, Intel's over-optimizing for random write performance led the X25M to have a sequential write speed of only 75MB/sec --- whereas the Indilinx or new Samsung controller-based drives doing over 200MB/sec (while still having plenty of random write performance)]]>Jun 6th 2009 2:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/FAIL!

so it's overkill if you optimize for Random reads/writes which is the VAST MAJORITY of everything that a computer does that actually bottlenecks a drive (very little is stored sequentially on an SSD thanks to block level wear leveling which basically takes advantage of the ultra low "seek" times of flash memory and spreads blocks of even LARGE files all over the "disk") but okay to optimize for artificial benchmarks that do nothing?

oj, i see, you really DON'T know what you're talking about.

there are no sequential reads and writes of anything larger than a block size on an SSD drive.

The very same Anandtech article you cite will explain this very well.
for reference you can read starting here:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=8

this will explain that, once again, you can't erase anything less than a whole block at a time, so in order to prevent the same block (the "first") from being the target of all the erases on a non-full drive, SSD controllers employ block level wear leveling which basically splits every file larger than glock size and sends it to an algorithmically selected block that hasn't been written to as much and thus creates the necessity for RANDOM read access being the MOST important metric for an SSD drive.

If random read weren't important, and only sequential read were important, than the very same JMicron controllers you are bagging on would be perfectly acceptable for use in desktop SSD drives, because they have very good sequential read performance even when "used"
citation here: (see drives #3&4)
go to page 14 as i can't enter enough url's to directly link

instead, we get the famous "stuttering" of JMicron drives due to their TERRIBLE random read performance, and we get this while just trying to open a simple application.
citation here: (look for the second table and read directly above and below it as well as the numbers on the table)
go to page 17 as i can't enter enough url's to directly link


you also say that the Intel drive has a sequential write speed of 75MB/s which is patently false as proved by this wonderful graph from the same article which shows it to be 191.7 MB/s. Or basically within 10% of the indilix/samsung drives.
citation here: go to page 24 as i can't enter enough url's to directly link

now go to look at random write speeds and see that the intel has a speed of 23.1 (now a bit higher evidently by the other tes but lets keep the same numbers from the article)
or even then nearly 500% higher than the corsair drive.

random matters
more so than ANY sequential number ever will.

sequential numbers are published (by anand's own admission) as "sexy big numbers" to sell drives.

That's it.

]]>Jun 6th 2009 10:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
Sorry, but you're the one who doesn't know what they're talking about. When people talk about sequential vs. random performance they mean "sequential or random as far as the host is concerned". Regardless of the fact that the host doesn't know where the data is actually located because of wear leveling, they still run the tests that way and see differences. The reasons would have to do with the controller, and its ability to predict the locations of things, and the way the cache works, and the ability of the controller to parallelize the operations when they are sequential, etc. ]]>Jun 7th 2009 12:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/06/corsairs-blistering-p256-ssd-reviewed-look-out-x25-m/
And there are several safe and documented procedures that can restore Samsung/Crucial + Intel drives to new condition by booting off a cloned external drive, writing one volume-filling file to the SSD, erasing the file, reformatting the SSD and then re-cloning the drive & make it the boot device again. Depending on how much capacity you're truly using on the device you need to do this every 9-12 months. And the fact that the whole process takes about 60 minutes on my MacBook Pro.... well, it's faster than defragging a Windows (which you have to do every week!)

In my book the 100x increase in speed over a 7200.3K mechanical disk for desktop use is more than worth it.

]]>Aug 25th 2009 1:23PM