discussion Corsair Force F100 100GB SSD Review

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IOMETER / Controller Stress Test

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.

<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/F100/IOM.jpg" border="0" alt="" />​

While the numbers the Force posts are very good, they don’t blow away the competition like you would think. IOMeter -even when tweaked and tuned to replicate home user usage patterns- is still a tough test. This by itself wouldn’t mean much except that the other controller manufactures have gone for a different approach and basically build ONE controller for the various markets and use different quality NAND to differentiate them.

At an even more basic level, the SF-1200 controller has a LOT of things to juggle at one time. Between real time compression / decompression, to hash writing this drive’s controller has a lot more overhead then a typical controller does. This obviously takes up a lot of cycles which are thus not available to handle the steady stream of read/write commands being sent its way.

IOMeter Controller Stress Test

In our usual IOMeter test we are trying to replicate real world use where reads severely outnumber writes. However, to get a good handle on how powerful the controller is we, 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 past we found this tests was a great way to check and see if stuttering would occur. Since the introduction of ITGC and / or TRIM the chances of real world stuttering happening in a modern generation SSD are next to nill; rather the main focus has shifted from predicting "stutter" to showing how powerful the controller used is. By running continuous small, random writes we can stress the controller to its maximum, while also removing its cache buffer from the equation (by overloading it) and showing exactly how powerful a given controller is. In the .csv file we then find 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 350ms to be a good indicator that the controller is either relying heavily on its cache buffer to hide any limitations it possess or the firmware of the controller is severely limiting it.

<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/F100/stutter.jpg" border="0" alt="" />​

While the average speed is merely good, the maximum write response time is just bloody impressive. To be honest if we didn’t know better we would say (based on these results) that is was using more expensive SLC NAND and not MLC. They really are that good. Simply put, this all new controller really is a beast which can easily juggle all the tasks SandForce has given it and STILL handle the IOMeter crucible with aplomb.

 

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XP Start Up / Adobe CS3

XP Start Up

When it comes to hard drive performance there is one area that even the most oblivious user notices: how long it takes to load the Operating System. For our tests the clock starts as soon as the system “beeps!” and stops when our Anti-Virus splash screen disappears. While all the other tests were run with a streamlined XP image this particular image is the test bed's “day to day” OS and it has accumulated a lot of crud over the months from installs and removals. We chose the Anti-Virus splash screen as our finish line as it is the last program to be loaded on start up.

<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/F100/boot.jpg" border="0" alt="" />​

While a single second over the Agility EX may not seem like much, this is still an impressive result.

Adobe CS3 Load Time

Photoshop is a notoriously slow loading program under the best of circumstances, but when you add in a bunch of extra brushes and the such you get a really great torture test which can bring even the best of the best to their knees. Let’s see how our review unit fared in the Adobe crucible!

<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/Storage/F100/adobe.jpg" border="0" alt="" />​

Once again the Force just plain dominates the competition. A couple seconds may not sound like much, but at the high end of the spectrum seconds do indeed make or break a flagship drive.

 

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Real World Data Transfers

Real World Data Transfers

No matter how good a synthetic benchmark like IOMeter or PCMark is, it can not really tell you how your hard drive will perform in “real world” situations. All of us here at Hardware Canucks strive to give you the best, most complete picture of a review item’s true capabilities and to this end we will be running timed data transfers to give you a general idea of how its performance relates to real life use. To help replicate worse case scenarios we will transfer a 4.00GB contiguous RAR file and a folder containing 49 subfolders with a total 2108 files varying in length from 20mb to 1kb (1.00 GB total).

Testing will include transfer to and transferring from the devices, timing each process individually to provide an approximate Read and Write performance. To then stress the dive even more we will then make a copy of the large file to another portion of the same drive and then repeat the process with the small one. This will test the drive to its limits as it will be reading and writing simultaneously. Here is what we found.

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There is no denying this drive is fast. In fact, it is so fast we are going to have to seriously consider changing our real world tests and making them much more difficult. As expected the large sequential read/write speed is lower than the small file numbers for the simple reason that the Force’s firmware and / or controller has been tweaked for the all important small read/write performance. Also noteworthy was how insanely apt this drive is at reading from itself and writing to itself at the same time. The SF-1200 controller may “only” be the mainstream orientated version, but it is one FINE controller.

 

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Value

Value

The term “Value” is such an amorphous term that it truly has different meanings for different people. For some a hard drive is only as good as its performance potential, for others it is how quiet or durable it is; for others still it’s how effective it is for its cost. We here at HWC try to provide as many answers as possible for the term “Value”. Hopefully by this point in the review people looking at performance potential will have a fairly good idea of what its Value is. For the “best bang for the buck” crowd we have included a chart below showing how much a give drive costs per GB . No consideration has been made for performance, “durability” or any other extraneous factors; this is just raw space vs. monetary cost. All prices (in USD) are based on an average of the lowest price found on various price search engines at the time of this review. Short term sale prices were not taken into account.

There is no getting around the fact that the Force is an expensive drive for the amount of storage space you get. However, there is no denying it has the performance to back up the price. Just remember: as we have seen with both the Intel and Indilinx based solid state drives the prices will invariably come down as time goes by.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

There is no doubt in our minds that if you are looking for an SSD that offers extremely flexible performance in nearly every discipline, the buck stops at the Corsair Force 100. Throughout our tests, it exhibited class-leading performance and simply blew the competition out of the water in some benchmarks. Write performance in particular is one strong point for the Force series but reads are held back somewhat due to controller overhead. However, even the lowered read performance comes with a silver lining since it goes hand in hand with increased data failsafes through file compression.

As we saw in the real world testing, the SandForce controller is not some synthetic “benchmark only” star. Indeed, its synthetic performance translated directly into meaningful gains within programs which people use on a daily basis. We also don’t mind the F100’s reduced sequential speed since we aren’t going to be pushing and pulling gigabytes worth of data to and from it all day long. That’s a job for a traditional hard drive. Solid State Drives on the other hand are for OS environments and here the extremely low latency of Corsair’s new drive combined with great small file performance makes it an absolute winner. For the first time ever we are seeing a controller which is powerful enough to overheads which would crush more typical units without needing to resort to off-chip cache. This in itself is simply amazing.

Is this a perfect SSD? Unfortunately it isn’t but this doesn’t stop the Force from being one of the better products we have reviewed so far this year. One of our main concerns is of course the firmware situation since the current situation is far from clear. As we mentioned in the introduction, Corsair is in a bit of a precarious position after SandForce purposely hamstrung their SF-1200’s performance in order to offer a “higher end” controller to OCZ for their Vertex 2 line. To their credit, Corsair has done the equivalent of bitch-slapping their competition and SandForce by shipping their F100 line-up with pre-retail firmware. This firmware allows the Force series to achieve nearly the same theoretical small file write performance as OCZ’s Vertex 2 while retailing for a fraction of the cost. The downside: if you want access to the latest firmware updates, expect hamstrung IOPS numbers once you update.

When it comes to price, there is no getting around the fact that Corsair is asking for a lot of coin for 100GB of space. This could come back to bite them since we know all to many consumers who will compare the capacity of the F100 to a typical 128GB drive and decide to go with capacity over performance. However, for enthusiasts in particular the price per GB factor should be a non issue considering the blistering speeds the F100 can achieve. This drive is all about performance and if 28GB of lost space is the cost of the impressive results we got, we consider it a good deal.

Firmware issues aside, there is no reason why you shouldn’t take a serious look at this SSD. The Corsair F100 is simply full of innovative technology which helps deliver truly stunning performance and as such it receives our Dam Innovative Award for controller and our most coveted Dam Good Award.


Pros:

- TRIM capable
- Best in class write performance
- Good read performance
- Heightened data reliability
- Legendary Corsair customer service


Cons:

- Price
- Potential future firmware issues

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