Corsair P64 64GB SSD Review

IOMETER

IOMeter is heavily weighted towards the server end of things, and since we here at HWC are more End User centric we will be setting and judging the results of IOMeter a little bit differently than most. To test each drive we ran 5 test runs per HDD (1,4,16,64,128 que depth) each test having 8 parts, each part lasting 10 min w/ an additional 20 second ramp up. The 8 subparts were set to run 100% random, 80% read 20% write; testing 512b, 1k, 2k,4k,8k,16k,32k,64k size chunks of data. When each test is finished IOMeter spits out a report, in that reports each of the 8 subtests are given a score in I/Os per second. We then take these 8 numbers add them together and divide by 8. This gives us an average score for that particular que depth that is heavily weighted for single user environments.


At this point performance numbers like this are not unexpected. It seems that this Samsung controller relies heavily on its large cache buffer to perform as well as it does; however when it is either overloaded or not totally utilized, things tend to go down hill fast. With all that being said, the larger cache does make a difference at deep que depths and at is seems the deeper the que the better it does.

This is not something you want in a consumer grade unit as most users do NOT do 128 que depths no matter how much of a power user they are. Please don’t get us wrong, in the consumer arena both the Intel and Indlinx solutions eat the P64’s for lunch irregardless of que depth and its improvement only helps it beat the old internally Raided, JM602b class of SSDs. Once again, this is far from being impressive. If this drive had been out BEFORE the Indilinx Barefoot controller we would cut it a lot more slack but this late 2009 and these numbers are not in line with the best of the best.

IOMeter Stutter Test

In our usual IOMeter test we are trying to replicate real world use where reads severly outnumber writes. However, to get a good handle on how well a Solid State Disk Drive will handle a worse case scenario (and thus how likely the dreaded stutter issue will happen) we have also run an additional test. This test is made of 1 section at que depth of 1. In this test we ran 100% random. 100%writes of 4k size chunks of information. In the .csv file we then found the Maximum Write Response Time. This in ms is worst example of how long a given operation took to complete. We consider anything higher than 333ms (one third of a second) to be a good indicator that stuttering may happen, with the higher the number the worse the duration of the stutter will most likely be.


Relying on off die cache does cost this unit when it comes to stutter performance. This is a perfect example of what happens when a manufacturer like Samsung relies on work arounds to give their NEW kit a performance boost over their old product.

This is not Corsair’s fault, rather it is a classic example of the 800lb Gorilla being side swiped by a younger, more hungrier competitor and making some rash decisions. It really must sting Samsung’s pride that they are being beaten at their own game by the first generation controller from former employees. The only positive thing we can say is at least the P64's numbers are better than the older Apex generation SSDs and at least here we can say its numbers are tolerably adequate.