G.Skill Titan 256GB SSD

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: TimBob
Well, the more time I spend with this thing, the more stuttering I see and the less I like it. Seems like the majority of Titan owners don't have of a problem, but for some reason it doesn't seem to like my system. I've tried pretty much all the tweaks from the OCZ forums, but it all amounts to the same slow downs.

Any of you successful Titan users feel like adding another Titan for Raid 0?

Hehe, my wife would kill me if I got another one.

Is that the only drive in your system TimBob? I would imagine that you will still stutter if you don't have another drive to offload a few things to (i.e. browser profiles and temp files, filesharing apps, your browser downloads folder).

Also, if that reply from Gary Key is correct, the Titan is probably getting a firmware upgrade soon to alleviate the stuttering further (the Apex isn't out yet and I haven't seen any other dual Jmicron models yet).

 

[imported_TimBob]

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: TimBob
Well, the more time I spend with this thing, the more stuttering I see and the less I like it. Seems like the majority of Titan owners don't have of a problem, but for some reason it doesn't seem to like my system. I've tried pretty much all the tweaks from the OCZ forums, but it all amounts to the same slow downs.

Any of you successful Titan users feel like adding another Titan for Raid 0?

Hehe, my wife would kill me if I got another one.

Is that the only drive in your system TimBob? I would imagine that you will still stutter if you don't have another drive to offload a few things to (i.e. browser profiles and temp files, filesharing apps, your browser downloads folder).

Also, if that reply from Gary Key is correct, the Titan is probably getting a firmware upgrade soon to alleviate the stuttering further (the Apex isn't out yet and I haven't seen any other dual Jmicron models yet).

I tried offloading the IE temp files to my raptors. I also tried changing the temp/tmp environment variables to the raptors. Pagefile on raptors/no page file. Performance actually seemed worse when I started offloading to the raptors.

Tried Diskeeper hyperfast.

Maybe I'm just spending too much time installing/testing the stutter. Now that I'm finally done reinstalling all my software, I can see how it performs under normal usage.

 

[aka1nas]

Did you end up disabling Superfetch? I would actually leave it on with a desktop with as much RAM as we both have. OCZ's recommendation to disable it makes a lot more sense for laptops where you will be rebooting it much more often. IME, Superfetch only causes mild stuttering while first populating RAM when you start Windows. I am pretty sure that it is helping after that is done. Any time you end up reading from the cache instead of the SSD you are freeing it up to service more random writes.

 

[Old Hippie]

Seems like the majority of Titan owners don't have of a problem,

I'm not having any stuttering problems but mine seems "capped" at @ 150 MB/sec. read.

My first speed test was done in IDE mode and I figured the cap would disappear with the SATA drivers installed. No such luck.

With a new install of XP Pro and all my programs loaded, the average read is 133.4 MB/sec and 0.2 ms access time.

I've done most of the easy tweaks and when I get a little more time I may do the partition alignment tweak but I worked on it all day yesterday and am tired of screwing with it for the moment.

Is it worth 300 to me? Probably. It's definately much faster than the 80GB VR it replaced. Before I loaded tons of programs, boot times were scary fast ( 10-15 seconds ). With all my programs loaded it's @ 40-50 seconds. Programs open NOW.

I like it but I also bought a 300GB VR for 300 when they first appeared and I liked it too.

 

[imported_TimBob]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
Did you end up disabling Superfetch? I would actually leave it on with a desktop with as much RAM as we both have. OCZ's recommendation to disable it makes a lot more sense for laptops where you will be rebooting it much more often. IME, Superfetch only causes mild stuttering while first populating RAM when you start Windows. I am pretty sure that it is helping after that is done. Any time you end up reading from the cache instead of the SSD you are freeing it up to service more random writes.

At first, I tried with it off, but I turned Superfetch back on this morning. I agree with you and don't think there is any reason to disable it.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: TimBob

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: TimBob
Well, the more time I spend with this thing, the more stuttering I see and the less I like it. Seems like the majority of Titan owners don't have of a problem, but for some reason it doesn't seem to like my system. I've tried pretty much all the tweaks from the OCZ forums, but it all amounts to the same slow downs.

Any of you successful Titan users feel like adding another Titan for Raid 0?

Hehe, my wife would kill me if I got another one.

Is that the only drive in your system TimBob? I would imagine that you will still stutter if you don't have another drive to offload a few things to (i.e. browser profiles and temp files, filesharing apps, your browser downloads folder).

Also, if that reply from Gary Key is correct, the Titan is probably getting a firmware upgrade soon to alleviate the stuttering further (the Apex isn't out yet and I haven't seen any other dual Jmicron models yet).

I tried offloading the IE temp files to my raptors. I also tried changing the temp/tmp environment variables to the raptors. Pagefile on raptors/no page file. Performance actually seemed worse when I started offloading to the raptors.

Tried Diskeeper hyperfast.

Maybe I'm just spending too much time installing/testing the stutter. Now that I'm finally done reinstalling all my software, I can see how it performs under normal usage.

Yeah they will stutter bad while you're installing software. Once you get everything installed though it should be much better.

 

[imported_TimBob]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: TimBob

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: TimBob
Well, the more time I spend with this thing, the more stuttering I see and the less I like it. Seems like the majority of Titan owners don't have of a problem, but for some reason it doesn't seem to like my system. I've tried pretty much all the tweaks from the OCZ forums, but it all amounts to the same slow downs.

Any of you successful Titan users feel like adding another Titan for Raid 0?

Hehe, my wife would kill me if I got another one.

Is that the only drive in your system TimBob? I would imagine that you will still stutter if you don't have another drive to offload a few things to (i.e. browser profiles and temp files, filesharing apps, your browser downloads folder).

Also, if that reply from Gary Key is correct, the Titan is probably getting a firmware upgrade soon to alleviate the stuttering further (the Apex isn't out yet and I haven't seen any other dual Jmicron models yet).

I tried offloading the IE temp files to my raptors. I also tried changing the temp/tmp environment variables to the raptors. Pagefile on raptors/no page file. Performance actually seemed worse when I started offloading to the raptors.

Tried Diskeeper hyperfast.

Maybe I'm just spending too much time installing/testing the stutter. Now that I'm finally done reinstalling all my software, I can see how it performs under normal usage.

Yeah they will stutter bad while you're installing software. Once you get everything installed though it should be much better.

Probably, but based on reviews and many other peoples experiences, I was expecting no stuttering issues. Maybe they don't install software . I usually like to be able to use my PC though while I'm installing. I guess that's something I'll have to live without for now in exchange for incredible read speeds.

Seems like many others also have raided them which I assume would help since you would now have 4 controllers to work with (if it somehow balances writes between all of them). I don't really need another 128gb of space though since I have 4TB NAS for all my storage.

Now that I'm finished with installing, the last few hours of playing with it have been lightning quick.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: TimBob

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: TimBob
Well, the more time I spend with this thing, the more stuttering I see and the less I like it. Seems like the majority of Titan owners don't have of a problem, but for some reason it doesn't seem to like my system. I've tried pretty much all the tweaks from the OCZ forums, but it all amounts to the same slow downs.

Any of you successful Titan users feel like adding another Titan for Raid 0?

Hehe, my wife would kill me if I got another one.

Is that the only drive in your system TimBob? I would imagine that you will still stutter if you don't have another drive to offload a few things to (i.e. browser profiles and temp files, filesharing apps, your browser downloads folder).

Also, if that reply from Gary Key is correct, the Titan is probably getting a firmware upgrade soon to alleviate the stuttering further (the Apex isn't out yet and I haven't seen any other dual Jmicron models yet).

I tried offloading the IE temp files to my raptors. I also tried changing the temp/tmp environment variables to the raptors. Pagefile on raptors/no page file. Performance actually seemed worse when I started offloading to the raptors.

Tried Diskeeper hyperfast.

Maybe I'm just spending too much time installing/testing the stutter. Now that I'm finally done reinstalling all my software, I can see how it performs under normal usage.

diskkeeper is a defrag utility... did you set it to never ever ever defrag your titan? because you shouldn't defrag those...

I am not blaming you or anything, I assume you did, I just wanted to make sure.

Just ebay the sucker and get something good. the titan is 300$ right? the intel SSD is 400$ now.

 

[imported_TimBob]

Yes, I disabled the defrag. Just wanted to see if that hyperfast did anything. Can't tell any difference and not even really sure what it's doing.

Titan is up to 330 right now on newegg. Maybe I will take a few bucks loss on it on ebay.

 

[Old Hippie]

Have you tried the little SSD Tweaker?

I'm not getting the stuttering issues but it seems to make everything a little faster.

 

[Viper GTS]

Here's an example of the kind of issues I'm seeing in my SSD testing. These are steady-state numbers after fully breaking in the drive using iometer. These are all SLC SSDs running on an SAS controller, with drive cache disabled (SOP for this usage).

512K 100% Random, 50/50 R/W split

The data is:

Sustained read speed
Sustained write speed
Avg/max read latency
Avg/max write latency
Max latency

Although the average latencies tend to be lower on the SSD's every model I've seen is subject to some horribly long max IOs. The 15K's in comparison are very predictable, although their average isn't as low they don't get the massive 1/3 to 1/2 second spikes like the SSD's do.

If one of you Titan owners want to make your drive cry fire up iometer and run 100% random 128K IO in a 50/50 split. Keep outstanding IO's low (2), & then let it run until the numbers stabilize. I can provide 15K SAS and a few SSD results for comparison. Some of the SSD's I have in house exceed 500ms latency which is just absurd.

Viper GTS

 

[taltamir]

why do you disable the drive cache?

 

[Viper GTS]

Absolutely zero tolerance for data loss. Our use cares much more about not losing data and having very predictable latencies than about maximizing bandwidth/performance per drive. We can always throw more drives at a system if we need more performance. A typical installation uses a minimum of hundreds of 15K SAS drives, and potentially thousands.

Viper GTS

 

[Rubycon]

I disable superfetch as it seems to be a waste of time for me. Programs open no faster whether it's on or off. I suspect on a properly utilized/set up S3 system (Solid State Storage) results would be similar.

 

[taltamir]

cache creates data loss?

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: taltamir
cache creates data loss?

Potentially, yes. If power is lost while data is in volatile memory, it will be lost.

 

[coolVariable]

I think people that experience stutter might be the ones that either filled their drive or have achieved "steadystate" performance for the SSD.
Once every cell has been written to once, the next write requires the cell to first be read, then wiped, then written to. That obviously takes longer ... thus stuttering.

Could we get some confirmation of this theory?

Would definitely suck since EVERY drive at some point will reach the point where every cell has been written to once.

 

[allthatisman]

Originally posted by: TimBob

Originally posted by: allthatisman

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: Rubycon
Saying you're happy with it is like a car guy saying he's happy with his 10 second 'Vette that stalls out every other intersection!

I love that analogy.

I think I'll be sticking with my VelociRaptors for now.

It's not an accurate one(at least from my point of view), but since you already have your Velociraptors... Day 3 and so far I can wait to RAID another one, but hey, thats just me.

So, you've never had any stutter with your Titan? Did you do any tweaks?

I was attempting to recreate a stutter this morning and did it pretty easily by just copying my Fallout 3 folder to the desktop and then trying to multitask.

I dont NOTICE any stuttering, not to say that there isnt a little, but with so many years with mechanical HDD's I hardly think a little hiccup is enough to denounce the entire line-up. Platter HDD's for as far as they have come, are simply not as fast, at least in most benchmarks and to the naked eye... which is all that really counts anyway IMO. I WAS going to get another 128gb, but newegg decided to price gouge a little on a new product, so I will wait until they get tired of them laying on the shelves. With 2 of these in RAID 0, I cant see needing anything faster, or larger for a while.

 

[allthatisman]

Oh and I also used the SSD tweaker program, and my HDTune benchmarks improved a bit, but now Vista takes a lot longer to shut down... that is the only real side effect. Honestly I should have left well enough alone since I wasn't having any problems(still am not) but whatever, I can always reinstall...

 

[IntelUser2000]

I think people that experience stutter might be the ones that either filled their drive or have achieved "steadystate" performance for the SSD. Once every cell has been written to once, the next write requires the cell to first be read, then wiped, then written to. That obviously takes longer ... thus stuttering. Could we get some confirmation of this theory? Would definitely suck since EVERY drive at some point will reach the point where every cell has been written to once.

You got it. But I bet not even the cheapest controller on the drives that's stuttering is that DUMB. All modern SSD drives regardless of price will try to get around that one way or another.

 

[Old Hippie]

Originally posted by: allthatisman
Oh and I also used the SSD tweaker program, and my HDTune benchmarks improved a bit, but now Vista takes a lot longer to shut down... that is the only real side effect. Honestly I should have left well enough alone since I wasn't having any problems(still am not) but whatever, I can always reinstall...

Any or all of those tweaks can be undone manually.

 

[Old Hippie]

I think people that experience stutter might be the ones that either filled their drive or have achieved "steadystate" performance for the SSD.

You think TimBob filled his drive in @ 24 hrs?

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
I think people that experience stutter might be the ones that either filled their drive or have achieved "steadystate" performance for the SSD.
Once every cell has been written to once, the next write requires the cell to first be read, then wiped, then written to. That obviously takes longer ... thus stuttering.

Could we get some confirmation of this theory?

Would definitely suck since EVERY drive at some point will reach the point where every cell has been written to once.

the drive only has 128GB... and MLC chips are supposed to be good for 10,000 writes. or 1,280,000 GB total. Performance should only be measured IN steady state.

 

[imported_TimBob]

I've reinstalled Vista 64 + software/games 3 times. Windows 7 twice. I'd definitely say that I've filled up my drive.

I have used the tweak utility from OCZ forums.

Allthatisman, in my case, I don't see the stutters as little unnoticeable hiccups. What I'm experiencing is definitely noticeable. If I'm installing something on my Titan, my system is basically useless until the install is finished.

Seems like you guys are having better luck on Nvidia chipsets. I might try it out on my EVGA 680i at some point just to see if it reacts better to the Nvidia controller.

Now that I'm done with installs, it performs beautifully.

 

[Old Hippie]

Seems like you guys are having better luck on Nvidia chipsets

I'm using an Intel P35 on an Abit IP35-Pro.

I wonder if you got a defective unit?