Review of caching SSDs: OCZ Revodrive Hybrid and Intel Smart Response technology. Lucid Virtu - the dubiousness of technology. Intel Smart Response is a double-edged sword
In the second quarter of 2011, Intel released a new chipset for motherboards - the Z68 Express. This chipset, having already proven technologies of the P67 and H67 chipsets, became the first carrier of another technology. The idea of moving frequently used blocks of information stored in the cache from hard drive to faster media. The emergence of solid-state drives (SSDs) on the market has opened up stunning opportunities for increasing the speed of the disk subsystem. Many users, after reading the reviews, decidedly asked the price of a new device. However, having noted the price list line and the weight of the wallet, people in most cases arrived at the well-known formula called “the toad is strangling.” And while IT analysts and manufacturing companies are predicting a bright future for solid-state drives, Intel is introducing Intel® for testing Smart Response Technology. This technology allows the user to have a hybrid hard drive, in which a cache that is small in size and price will be used solid state drive, and the data storage is a large hard drive. At first glance, the prospect is tempting, but everything is learned by comparison.
Intel, represented by its representative, organized a 310 series SSD for testing, with a capacity of “only” 80 gigabytes and an mSATA connector. And Gigabyte was the first to decide to use new technology and equipped some models of motherboards based on the Z68 chipset with an mSATA slot.
Below are technical specifications SSDs found on the manufacturer's website:
To experience the results of progress in practice, we collected test stand.
Stand configuration:
power unit- ATX 750W Cooler Master GX 750 Bronze
CPU - Intel Core i5 2400, 3.1GHz/LGA-1155/32nm/Sandy Bridge
System board- GigaByte GA-Z68XP-UD3
System memory
- 2 x (DDR-3 DIMM 2Gb/1600MHz PC12800 Transcend)
Disk drive- 320 Gb Seagate Barracuda (7200.12)
Video adapter - ATI Radeon HD 5670 1024 Mb
operating system- Windows 7 Home Premium
Testing was carried out on the following drive configurations:
SSD - SSD drive used as a system (main) HDD for storing information
HDD+SSD(Maximized)- HDD is divided into two partitions (system and file), SSD - caches in maximum mode
HDD+SSD(Enhanced)- HDD is divided into two partitions (system and file), SSD - caches in extended mode
HDD- HDD is divided into two partitions (system and file)
Smart Response Technology Activation
Before you start Smart setting Response in the operating system, you need to go into the BIOS and change the operation mode of the SATA ports to RAID. You don't need to collect the raid itself, that's it further actions are produced under the operating system.
Smart Response Technology support is implemented only in Windows Vista, 7 and Server 2008 operating systems. Therefore, lucky owners of XP will not be able to enjoy the innovation. Setting up this sacrament is quite simple. First you need to install the Intel RST SSD driver.
Then turn on acceleration and select a mode. The technology has two operating modes - Enhanced and Maximized.
In advanced mode, all data is written simultaneously to the hard drive and to the cache on the SSD. As a result, the write speed does not provide any advantages, and “special effects” can only be expected from the read speed. But in cases of sudden failures, the information will not have to be restored.
Maximum mode uses a writeback cache method. All data is written to the SSD, and data is reset to the HDD at intervals during idle mode. Taking risks of this algorithm- on the conscious choice of the user.
Intel engineers limited the cache size from 18.6 to 64 GB. Since the tested drive is larger than 64 GB, I was kindly offered to use the remaining part as ordinary data storage. This fact did not cause me much inspiration, since the remaining volume was modern conditions is quite small, but the quest to find the necessary file is complicated by one more drive letter. Somewhere, deep in the mind, the bony hand of marketing was visible.
Testing
First of all, I decided not to deny myself the pleasure and compare the boot time of the operating system. A window was placed in autoloading, and when it was drawn, the timer stopped.
The result was a little surprising. Following the logic - in extended and maximum modes, the loading time should be, well, at least approximately the same. In practice, it turned out that the extended mode loads consistently faster than the maximum mode. The result can only be attributed to a mysterious write-back algorithm.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
The following testing was carried out using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1. This is a synthetic test that allows you to measure the speed of reading and writing random sized data blocks of a drive.
In this test, it is immediately noticeable how difficult the task of reading random blocks becomes as their sizes decrease. And also a fatal collapse in the recording speed of the extended mode.
Iometer-1.1.0
We will consider further results in Iometer-1.1.0. Iometer is also a completely synthetic test that was developed by Intel and transferred to the Open Source Development Lab for further development under the Intel Open Source License. The test used writing/reading random blocks from 0 to 32K with increasing simultaneous access to 256 threads.
The results were quite predictable based on the trend. But in terms of values, I was interested in the maximum mode, which outperformed the advanced mode by several times.
PCMark07
Next in line is PCMark07. The PCMark testing suite is known for using not only synthetic tests, but also applied ones - trying to simulate the full user experience on the computer.
PCMark distributed the prizes quite logically. But I would interpret the difference in results between the extended and maximum modes as small.
And finally, the file copying speed was tested. To do this, a folder with small files, with a total size of 8.5GB, was copied first from the file partition to the system partition, and then from the system partition, but again to the system partition. Copying was done using Total Commander.
When the results were tabulated, it became noticeable how “carefully” the advanced mode copies from file to system partitions. Repeated testing only confirmed the trend. I haven’t come up with an explanation for this fact, but installing massive applications may take a little longer.
Number of impressions: 18046 |
Dedicated to Smart Response technology, it has collected more than a hundred comments and, it seems, only slightly less polar opinions about whether this thing works and why it is needed at all. Observing such interest, we decided to conduct our own SRT tests to try to answer the first, and, if possible, then the second question.
To test our preliminary hypotheses (which will be discussed below), we decided to use a standard home platform, for last year which has become truly classic: Intel Z68 + Intel i5. Our test bench is described in more detail as follows:
- Processor – Intel i5 2500K;
- Motherboard – ASUS P8Z68-V LX;
- System hard drive – Seagate ST500DM002;
- SSD drive – Intel SSDSA2MH080G1GC;
- RAM – 8 GB DDR3-1333;
- Operating system – Windows 7 x64.
Far from the latest Intel SSD model we used in testing
Preparation
First we needed to connect it to our computer SSD drive as a caching device. To do this, we (and you) will need:- Directly SSD;
- Motherboard with SRT support;
- Intel Rapid Storage drivers (downloaded from Intel website).
Configured Smart Response. Interior system disk- “with acceleration.” Volume_0001 is the cache itself, Volume_0000 is the remainder of the disk after subtracting 64 GB of cache. The user can handle it at his own discretion.
On the first tab of the Rapid Storage control center, click “enable acceleration”, select the necessary parameters (this process is shown step by step at the same link) - and voila! caching is enabled. It can operate in two modes: extended - simultaneous recording on HDD and SSD (in a sense RAID1) and maximum - recording first on SSD (in the same sense RAID0). We were interested in the maximum speed increase, so we chose the second one. Please note, however, that in this case the SSD becomes part of the system partition and any emergency shutdown of it will have unpleasant consequences for the OS. To disable the cache, use the standard Rapid Storage driver procedure.
Experiment
Since Smart Response is a caching technology, it would be logical to test its effectiveness on “heavy” OS applications. The hardest Windows application is obviously Windows itself. Next, programs were selected as standards of “common severity” Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Autodesk AutoCAD 2013. The loading time of each program was measured three times, and the system was rebooted between two calls. The average test results are shown in the table:As they say, no comments.
Other programs that were at hand were also tested on a less scientific basis; for example, Corel Draw X4 showed approximately a twofold increase. I foresee the question: why did the system take so long to load without caching? For the experiment, we deliberately chose used Windows, installed several months ago and during this time overgrown with a number of applications, including those with autoloading. In order to avoid the still unclear influence of torrents on caching, distributions were disabled for the duration of the experiment.
Application
So, we have experimentally proven that Smart Response significantly speeds up the operation of Windows and its applications. However, the question still remains, why use an SSD for caching when you can simply place the system partition on it? The experiment confirmed a number of our assumptions.
A test computer against the background of a carpet - so that no one has any doubts that we are talking about a Regular Home PC.
- Old or budget models SSDs are relatively slow and small in volume. Please note that the growth figures shown above were obtained on a SATA2 SSD. Size also matters: say a 60 GB SSD may not be enough for home computer, especially gaming.
- Smart Response can also be suitable for recycling untrusted SSDs. The lifespan of solid-state media is short; there comes a time when it is better to transfer the SSD to less critical work. SRT, especially in advanced mode, is quite a suitable variation of it.
- Finally, SRT, due to its ease of installation and configuration, can be considered as perfect solution problems when you need to quickly wake up your computer to perform some unusual actions. Let's say you don't place any great demands on your PC and are quite happy with its performance. But then suddenly the need to use AutoCAD arises (for coursework, for example). You can borrow an SSD or buy it cheap at a flea market - and budget acceleration is ready in 10 minutes.
Intel® Smart Response Technology is an Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST). This technology is a caching feature that improves computer system performance. Intel® RST allows you to configure computer systems with a Solid State Drive (SSD), used as a cache memory between the hard disk drive and system memory.
Intel® RST serves as a single drive letter solution. You do not need another drive letter for the SSD device used as cache.
System Requirements
- Intel® Z68, Z87, Q87, H87, Z77, Q77, or Intel® H77 Express Chipset-based desktop board
- Intel® Core™ Processor in the LGA 1155 or LGA 1150 package
- System BIOS with SATA mode set to RAID
- Intel® RST software 10.5 version release or later
- Single hard disk drive or multiple drives in one RAID volume
- Solid state drive (SSD) with a minimum capacity of 18.6 GB
- Operating system: Windows 8* or Windows 7* (32-bit and 64-bit editions)
Setup Guide
Configure SATA mode in BIOS setup:
- Start the computer, and press the F2 key to enter the BIOS setup menu.
- Go to Configuration SATA Drives.
- Select the setting for Chipset SATA Mode and change the value to RAID.
- Press the F10 key to save settings and restart the system.
Operating System Installation
Begin installing the operating system on the drive (or RAID volume):
- Install all required device drivers.
- Install the Intel RST software version 10.5 or later.
Enable Intel® RST
The Intel RST software denotes Intel Smart Response Technology as accelerated. To enable the Intel RST:
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At one time, we tested Intel Smart Response technology using a system with motherboard based on the Intel Z68 Express chipset running the Windows 7 operating system. Since then, not only has the generation of PCs changed, but also a new one has been released operating system Windows 8, which also supports Intel Smart Response Technology. Now it's time to test this technology on a new Intel platform with the new Windows 8 operating system.
Setting up Intel Smart Response Technology
As you know, motherboards based on Intel 6th and 7th series chipsets support Intel Smart Response technology, which is an SSD caching technology for HDD drives. Today, this technology is most actively used in ultrabooks, where small SSD drives (with a capacity of no more than 32 GB) act as a cache for large HDD drives, which ultimately makes it possible to create an inexpensive but productive subsystem data storage.
That is, if we consider an isolated HDD (as less productive solution) and SSD (as a more productive solution), then the option with SSD caching will be inferior in performance to SSD, but superior to HDD.
To take advantage of Intel Smart Response Technology, you will need a system based on Intel processor in combination with system board based on Intel 6th or 7th series chipset. Please note that not all Intel chipsets The 6th and 7th series support Intel Smart Response technology, but we won’t go into details now. Determining whether a motherboard supports Intel Smart Response Technology is quite simple. If SATA ports implemented through the chipset can be configured in RAID mode, then the board also supports Intel Smart Response technology.
Except motherboard with support Intel technologies Smart Response, you will also need an SSD drive and an HDD drive. The capacity of the SSD drive must be no more than 64 GB. You can, of course, use a more capacious drive, but no more than 64 GB will still be used for caching. In addition, if the SSD is 128 GB or more in size, then it makes more sense to install the operating system on it rather than use it for caching. The HDD connector can be anything.
The classic option for setting up Intel Smart Response technology is as follows.
The SSD drive and HDD drive are connected to the ports of the SATA controller integrated into the chipset. It is important not to get confused here, since the motherboard may also have SATA ports that are not related to the SATA controller integrated into the chipset (if there are additional SATA controllers on the board). If the SSD drive is new, then it must be formatted in advance and created one logical partition.
Then in Board BIOS must be specified for of this controller(Intel SATA PCH) RAID operating mode (instead of AHCI or IDE), but the RAID array itself does not need to be configured. After this, you can begin installing the Windows 8 operating system (for example, from a USB flash drive) onto the HDD.
The traditional method of “inserting” a RAID driver (Intel RST) by pressing the F6 key can not be used in this installation option, since the operating system Windows system 8 already contains all the necessary drivers.
After installing the operating system, you must install the Intel RST driver latest version(currently version 12.5.0.1066) and all other drivers necessary for the functioning of the system.
Next, reboot the system and launch the Intel RST driver control panel. If everything was done correctly, an additional Accelerate tab will appear in the Intel RST utility control panel, which allows you to configure the SSD caching mode. All that remains is to specify which SSD drive to use for caching and which HDD drive to cache.
You can also configure HDD caching using an SSD drive if the operating system was previously installed on the HDD itself. True, if you simply connect an SSD drive to a SATA port and select RAID mode in the BIOS for the SATA ports to which the HDD drive and SSD drive are connected, then the operating system, naturally, will not boot. Therefore, before switching to RAID mode, you must first perform certain system configurations through the registry editor. To switch to RAID mode from AHCI mode or IDE, you must set the Start parameter of type REG_DWORD to 0 in the following registry keys:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci;
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorV;
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStor.
After that, we reboot the system, go into the BIOS and change the SATA port mode to RAID. After downloading, you will most likely need to reinstall the Intel RST driver. That, in fact, is the whole simple procedure for setting up Intel Smart Response technology. It remains to add that SSD caching is possible in two modes: Enhanced (extended) and Maximized (maximum).
The Enhanced mode is more secure - data in it is recorded simultaneously on the SSD and HDD, and the user can be sure that if problems occur, they will not be lost.
Theoretically, the recording speed is limited HDD speed(the slowest device). But data is read from an SSD drive, so the reading speed in this mode is comparable to the read speed from an SSD drive.
In Maximized mode, data is initially written to fast SSD media (that is, to the cache), and only then, to background, are rewritten to a slow HDD.
However, as practice shows, in real (non-synthetic) applications the difference between the Enhanced and Maximized modes is not so great, and the Maximized mode is not so dangerous that you cannot take advantage of all its advantages. Therefore, in the future we will use exclusively the Maximized mode when testing Intel Smart Response technology.
Testing methodology
To test Intel Smart Response technology, we used our new ComputerPress Benchmark Script v.12.0 utility, detailed description which can be found in the March issue of the magazine. Let us only recall that this test utility is based on 12 real applications, which are divided into six logical groups: video conversion, video content creation, audio processing, digital photo processing, text recognition, data archiving and unarchiving.
The utility uses execution time as a performance indicator test tasks.
For testing, a stand with the following configuration was used:
- processor - Intel Core i7-3770K;
- motherboard- Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H;
- motherboard chipset - Intel Z77 Express;
- memory - DDR3-1600;
- memory capacity - 8 GB (two GEIL modules of 4 GB each);
- memory operating mode - dual-channel;
- video card - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660Ti (video driver 314.07);
- operating system - Microsoft Windows 8 (64-bit).
The test was performed once using only an Intel SSD 520 Series (240 GB) SSD, then using only a Western Digital WD20EFRX HDD (2 TB). At the final stage, testing was carried out using a WD20EFRX HDD with a cache based on an Intel SSD 520 Series SSD, configured using Intel Smart Response technology (Maximized mode). To ensure high precision results, all tests were run five times.
In addition to measuring the time required to complete test tasks, an integral performance indicator was also calculated for individual logical groups of tests, as well as the resulting integral indicator.
To calculate the integral performance assessment, initially the results of all tests were normalized relative to the results of testing a reference PC, which was taken to be a system with an SSD drive.
Next, the normalized test results are divided into six logical groups (video conversion, audio processing, video content creation, digital photo processing, text recognition, data archiving and unarchiving), and in each test group the intermediate integral result is calculated as the geometric mean of the normalized results. For convenience of presenting the results, the obtained value is multiplied by 1000. After this, the geometric mean of the intermediate integral results for all groups of tests is calculated. This is the resulting integral performance assessment. For a reference PC (system with an SSD drive), the integral performance result, as well as the integral results for each individual group of tests, is 1000 points.
Test results
The testing results are presented in Fig. 1-7.
Rice. 1. Test results in video conversion applications
Rice. 2. Test results in audio processing applications
Rice. 3. Test results in video content creation applications
Rice. 4. Test results in a digital photo processing application
Rice. 5. Test results in the text recognition application
Rice. 6. Test results in archiving applications
and data unarchiving
Rice. 7. Integral test results
It is clear that different applications benefit from using SSD caching differently. This is explained by the fact that not all applications actively use the storage subsystem, and the benefit from a productive storage subsystem appears only when the storage subsystem becomes the bottleneck (or, as they say, the bottleneck) in the system. However, in general, as one would expect, the most productive system is a system with an SSD drive, followed by a system with SSD caching, with a lag of 4%, and a system with an HDD drive is almost behind the system with an SSD drive in performance. by 8%.
If we talk specifically about groups of tests, the situation is as follows. The greatest benefits from SSD caching are video conversion, digital photo processing, and text recognition applications. But SSD caching has little effect on the speed of applications such as audio processing, video content creation, as well as archiving and unarchiving data. This is understandable - after all, in these applications the difference in performance between a system with an SSD drive and an HDD drive is minimal.
At first glance, the result looks rather strange for archivers, since they actively use the data storage subsystem. However, it is necessary to take into account that the ComputerPress Benchmark Script v.12.0 utility for WinRAR and WinZip archivers uses maximum data compression modes, which place a heavy load on the processor. And the data storage subsystem in this case is not a bottleneck in the system.
The general conclusions from our testing of Intel Smart Response technology are as follows. This technology really works and allows you to implement a fairly inexpensive way to increase the performance of the disk subsystem (naturally, we are talking about disk subsystem on which the operating system is installed). In any case, using Intel Smart Response technology will not make you worse, but achieving an average performance increase of 8% is quite possible. Considering that the retail price of a 64 GB SSD drive today is about 2.5-3 thousand rubles, despite the fact that this drive can be used for caching capacious HDD drives or even RAID arrays of drives, the cost of which is several times higher than the cost of one SSD drive, then the game is worth the candle.
