Firmware Update 2CV102M3 Results

[idata]

I have 2 X-25M 80gb in Intel RAID 0. Here are before and after results for the 102M3 firmware update:

Before:

After:

No significant difference, as far as I can tell.

I'm running Win7 64 and this comment from the update readme file did not happen:

Note: For computers booting into Windows 7 after a firmware update,  

a message appears when the operating system starts that prompts you to restart the computer. Restart when prompted.

FYI

Ken

[idata]

Ok, first time I've done a firmware update on any of my Intel SSDs. Worked fine, easy, worked on my PC in AHCI mode. It was a newer, unused 80GB G2, going from 02HD to 02M3. I put a few files (jpg) on it just to see if they would be cleared or damaged, they were preserved and just fine. Here are before and after benchmarks:

Although the differences are small, and my SSD is an 80GB vs redux' 160 GB, I'll compare them anyway.

I lost a little in both sequential read and write speeds, while redux gained a bit in each.

Redux lost a little more than I did in 4k read and write, and while mine both diminished, my read speed was barely touch.

In 4k with 64 threads, we both increased a decent amount in read speed, and just a touch increase in write.

Our read and write access times are the opposite of each other, redux writes are faster than the reads, mine vice versa. My new read access time is pretty good, even if I lost 0.003ms.

If we can accept these results at face value, I traded some sequential read and write performance, and some 4k write performance for a relatively large gain in 4k 64 thread (NCQ depth) read speed. Given that NCQ was developed for HDDs to reduce head movement and latency due to their functional realities, while those issues are non-existent in SSDs, I must ask what is the point in optimizing this in SSDs?

I've read that SSDs use NCQ to keep busy while they wait for other systems of a PC that are to busy to accept data the SSD is ready to send to them. So with modern CPUs and DRAM memory, this still occurs? I really don't know, but that would surprise me if true. I'm just questioning and trying to learn.

[idata]

NCQ in an Intel SSD enables concurrency in the drive so that up to 32 commands can be executed in parallel.

One of the revisions listed for with the f/w is improved NCQ capability, which is why 4K/64 performance has improved.

[idata]

Yes redux, I wasn't seeing it in that way. I'm aware that the NCQ enhancement is the major performance upgrade in this update. Not that this will impress the sequential R/W speed demons, but I don't care. Seeing how those specs dominate most SSD marketing, to sell to the less informed consumer, I'm pleased to see Intel is not going in that direction. OTOH, the specs of the new 510 SSD do seem to be going in that direction. I can understand doing that, but it's a shame they feel they need to do so, if that is the case.

[idata]

Retiredfields, those are some amazing numbers, most of them nearly exactly twice that of a single 80GB G2 Intel SSD. I see you are using iaStor, so I imagine your mother board has an ICH10R chip. Do you do anything to your SSD to compensate for the lack of TRIM due to RAID? Do you have an OS on your RAID setup? If so, was it compromised by the update, or was it untouched?

Although you aren't seeing increases (actually, slight decreases) in some of the standard SSD performance specs, like sequential read and write speeds, Intel's SSD performance philosophy is to tune for real world performance enhancement. The ability to perform multiple simultaneous I/O requests via NCQ at a greater rate then before with this update is more tuning for enhanced real world use. Although it is more difficult to relate to or appreciate increased speed with multiply queued commands vs sequential speeds, the former will actually be of more benefit to a user, IMO. We need to train ourselves to see beyond the simple "drag race" numbers and appreciate the complexities of these devices.

[idata]

Yes, ICH10 on an EVGA X58 motherboard.

I posted this http://communities.intel.com/thread/14568 http://communities.intel.com/thread/14568 about my work around for no TRIM. Still seems to be working fine. I also leave about 1/3 of the array unallocated to give the drive firmware plenty of room to perform its cleanup.

/thread/14568 http://communities.intel.com/thread/14568

I am using Win7 64 and there was no problem doing the firmware update. Changed BIOS to IDE legacy mode, did the update on each drive, and then changed back to RAID mode. I did have a current image backup, just in case......