I chose(ordered) 320 120gb instead of 510 120gb

[Mr Dohz]

Am I nuts to do so ?
My motherboard is P67 and is it in disadvantage not to take advantage of Sata 6GB/s ?

This is my first foray into SSD , so I thought I want to spend less and get the hang of it first.

:|

 

[dma0991]

Any SSD will give a significant speed boost compared to a HDD so it does not matter that much that you are getting a 320 instead of 510. If price and budget is not the matter to you then getting the 510 would have been a better choice regardless of whether this is your first foray into SSDs.

If your motherboard has a vacant SATA 6GB/s port might as well use it for the SSD and SATA 3GB/s for the others. Either way your motherboard should have at least 2 SATA 6GB/s under Intel and another 2 SATA 6GB/s under a 3rd party controller on some P67 motherboards.

 

[Bufes]

... getting the 510 would have been a better choice...

Are you sure about this, given the random r/w speeds of 320 and 510? Kind of a blank statement, imho.

 

[nanaki333]

since you're only running sata2, then the 320 was probably the better choice. i don't think you're going to notice the differences sata3 offers anyway unless you plan on doing lots of benchmarks or copy files back and forth to the ssd. everything is going to open in seconds after you click it either way

 

[bgstcola]

I'm in the same situation. I'm buying a fast 2600K p67 computer and I think I'm gonna go with the 320 instead of the 510.

I'm thinking that the 320 will feel at least as responsive as the 510 because of the random performance.

Most importantly isn't the 320 a safer choice? Judging from the few newegg reviews the 510 seems to have more issues.

Finally, I can get a 160gb 320 for the price of the 120gb 510.

I don't understand why people say that the 320 is a bad choice for a sata3 computer. Doesn't that depend on how you use your computer? I mean if it is mostly browsing, mail, ms-office, searching and stuff like that, isn't the 320 a better choice regardless of which sata version you have?

 

[Veliko]

The 320 uses an Intel controller whereas the 510 doesn't. It's why I went with the 320.

 

[Bauss]

Ok guys, anyone who is having doubts about the merits of the 510 compared to a 320 on a SATA3 board needs to understand this:

In just about any scenario short of intense server workloads, you will see no benefit from the random 4k performance that the 320 offers over the 510. They BOTH have more than sufficient amounts of it, due to NONE of your programs being designed to take advantage of any of it. Remember, programs are designed to be able to run on an HDD with .50 MB/s of random 4k reads/writes with hundreds of milliseconds of latency and seek time.

That said, once you have sufficient random performance (which has been the case for over a year now in SSDs, IMO), sequential performance is what will give you more tangible performance gains in load times, copy times, etc.

If you have a SATA3 port, get a SATA3 drive. If cost is not a factor, It's really that simple.

So what I'm trying to say is that unless you saved a huge and justifiable amount of money by purchasing a 320, you probably should have chosen a 510.

 

[dma0991]

If OP was comparing a 320 with a bigger capacity but cost similar to a 510 with a smaller capacity I would have gone for the 320 instead but since both of them are similarly sized it would be logical that the 320 will be a lot cheaper. Capacity is more important than speed to me when it comes to SSD as most SSD these days are pretty fast already but if there were no budget to put into consideration, a 510 would be awesome to have.

 

[Bufes]

Bauss: The question I tried to ponder is not 'what is sufficient', but rather 'is any of the 320 and 510 faster for my usage?' There are probably many tasks where 510 is much faster, but Anandtech 2010 bench shows a desktop 'normal' workload where 320 is faster, exactly because its random performance is better.
As a current buyer, 'both are sufficient' does not help me decide. Seeing the difference 974:853 iops in that specific (normal, not heavy!) desktop workload benchmark, I would say that I want those 14% more, and for my money, 853 is not sufficient.
Then there is a fact that many manufacturers decided that 2011 is a sequential era and the fact that Anand created a new 2011 benchmark with more sequential IOs. Those facts bear some weight to them, but I don't consider any of them a proof that 510's random speeds are sufficient for any desktop user.
Sorry for the long post - this all from a person who tries to understand and decide well. (Definitely not from a person who knows it all.)

 

[Bauss]

Bauss: The question I tried to ponder is not 'what is sufficient', but rather 'is any of the 320 and 510 faster for my usage?' There are probably many tasks where 510 is much faster, but Anandtech 2010 bench shows a desktop 'normal' workload where 320 is faster, exactly because its random performance is better.
As a current buyer, 'both are sufficient' does not help me decide. Seeing the difference 974:853 iops in that specific (normal, not heavy!) desktop workload benchmark, I would say that I want those 14% more, and for my money, 853 is not sufficient.
Then there is a fact that many manufacturers decided that 2011 is a sequential era and the fact that Anand created a new 2011 benchmark with more sequential IOs. Those facts bear some weight to them, but I don't consider any of them a proof that 510's random speeds are sufficient for any desktop user.
Sorry for the long post - this all from a person who tries to understand and decide well. (Definitely not from a person who knows it all.)

Keep in mind:

1) The results that are shown for the 510 are not 6Gbps scores. They're 3GBps scores. This essentially limits the 510s real potential, especially considering almost 30% of the operations are sequential. To get a better look at how these drives fare with a SATA3 controller, look at the 2011 storage benches.

2) Performance for both will fall as smaller drives are slower than larger ones.

Again, with the right money and a SATA3 board, I'd never consider a 320. Just not worth it IMO if you're spending hundreds on an SSD.

With regards to whether or not 4k performance has reached a plateau, consider this: 99% of people have HDDs and more RAM than their OS knows what to do with. That being the case, most software will not demand more 4k random performance than is ever available from an HDD, and will tend to cache data to RAM to help keep performance up. It wouldn't make sense to do it any other way given the average PC.

It's because of this that you'll never see SSD makers race for the most random performance again in the near future. It just doesn't get put to use in current desktop environments. Even when I load all the apps on my Mac, It takes 4 seconds. Furthermore, they all get cached to RAM so it takes even less the next time. Software simply doesn't know what to do with it.

All I'm saying is that, as a desktop user, there's many reasons to choose one SSD over another. Price, Power Usage, Sequential I/O, Reliability, Availability, Capacity, and Used state Performance just to name a few.. Random 4k I/O shouldn't really be one of them anymore.

 

[Mr Dohz]

True. Valid points across.
I am not based at the US , so whichever hardware I gets would be more expensive. I also wished I can get a Vertex 3 or 510 , but if I can save some money but still get a big boost from mechanical drives , it will be good enough.

One thing I need opinions though , in real world applications , how much difference are we talking about ?

 

[Bauss]

True. Valid points across.
I am not based at the US , so whichever hardware I gets would be more expensive. I also wished I can get a Vertex 3 or 510 , but if I can save some money but still get a big boost from mechanical drives , it will be good enough.

One thing I need opinions though , in real world applications , how much difference are we talking about ?

Between SSDs? Nothing noticeable until you start opening dozens of apps at once. Then, you might see a second or two difference here and there.

If you don't have an SSD, you should really just be trying to get any SSD. Simply having an SSD will give you huge increases in the responsiveness of your system when it needs to access the disk. Prices are still based so much on the flash chips that capacity still drives costs, regardless of the quality/speed of the controller. So any larger drive will almost always cost more than any smaller drive. This means, you'll never have to consider capacity when choosing a drive.

Figure out how much space you can afford, then get the cheapest modern drive you can find at that capacity.

 

[nanaki333]

Between SSDs? Nothing noticeable until you start opening dozens of apps at once. Then, you might see a second or two difference here and there.

If you don't have an SSD, you should really just be trying to get any SSD. Simply having an SSD will give you huge increases in the responsiveness of your system when it needs to access the disk.

totally. gave my buddy an ocz onyx and his system has never been snappier. he used to have a raid5 array with everything on it, now he just has the OS and his regular apps on the onyx and it opens everything faster than the array ever did.

 

[bgstcola]

According to this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-320-crucial-m4-realssd-c400,2908-11.html

The 320 loads applications 28% faster than the 510 on 6gbs. I understand that the difference in sequential performance is much higher in the 510s favor, but if 90% of your usage is stuff like loading applications wouldn't the 320 make more sense?

Btw. what about general os navigation. Opening control panel and stuff like that. Is that random or sequential?

 

[Bauss]

According to this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-320-crucial-m4-realssd-c400,2908-11.html

The 320 loads applications 28% faster than the 510 on 6gbs. I understand that the difference in sequential performance is much higher in the 510s favor, but if 90% of your usage is stuff like loading applications wouldn't the 320 make more sense?

Btw. what about general os navigation. Opening control panel and stuff like that. Is that random or sequential?

PCMark is a synthetic benchmark. It doesn't give you as accurate a glimpse of how your computer will actually respond. If you look at any actual load times, you get the following:

Load Times:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20653/7 <-- bottom graph
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1579/7/ <-- 2nd graph
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4205/the-macbook-pro-review-13-and-15-inch-2011-brings-sandy-bridge/6 <-- graph near the bottom

For the most part, an SSD in and of itself is all you need to get better boot and load times. No single thing you can load will really show off the difference between SSDs in terms of performance. Loading things simply isn't limited by random performance in real scenarios.

On the other hand...

Copy Tests:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20653/6
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1579/7/ <-- 1st graph

File copies still show huge differences between SSDs. Pretty much the only place where you'll actually see tangible differences in how fast SSDs do stuff is in file copies and other large sequential writes. This is why companies are focusing on it. It's truly the last place to differentiate.

TL;DR: OS stuff is mostly small and random, yet any modern SSD can more can satisfy any desktop usage pattern. File copies and synthetic benchmarks are the only place drives differ it seems.

 

[bgstcola]

Bauss you kinda convinced me that there's no real world difference except copying files.

I still have two reasons to prefer the 320:

1) Reliability. From what I have read the 320 seems to be at least as reliable as G2. But what about the 510? There's already a few people at newegg with dead drives and other problems.

2) Price/GB. I can get a 160gb 320 for the price of af 120gb 510. If file copy time is the only real world performance difference. How often do you copy files from a disk to itself? It seems to me that for most people the extra space would be worth more.

 

[SickBeast]

From what I understand, 34nm technology is faster and more reliable than the 25nm process for SSDs. This comes straight from Kingston themselves.

 

[bgstcola]

From what I understand, 34nm technology is faster and more reliable than the 25nm process for SSDs. This comes straight from Kingston themselves.

That might be true in general, but from what I've read Intel has added something to improve reliability in the 320 and they claim it should be at least as reliable as G2.

Of course only time will tell...

This is a difficult decision.

 

[Zap]

Most importantly isn't the 320 a safer choice?
...
Finally, I can get a 160gb 320 for the price of the 120gb 510.

It is indeed the "safer" choice because it is essentially the same Intel SSDs we know and love, with 24nm NAND and tweaked performance.

And yes, price-wise it is cheaper per GB than the 510.

As long as you know that Intel considers the 510 to be a higher end drive, I think the 320 is fine.

 

[SickBeast]

As long as you know that Intel considers the 510 to be a higher end drive, I think the 320 is fine.

Look at what Intel considers to be a higher end CPU:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x.html

Often I find that the difference between Intel's PR and reality is massive.