Acard ANS-9010 RAMdisk vs OCZ Vertex 30Gb SSD: Shootout
SSD by jmke @ 2009-05-11
We take a comparative look at the ACARD ANS-9010 ramdisk drive versus the OCZ Vertex 30Gb Drive in this video enhanced head to head shoot-out!
Review
Introduction & Test Setup
Introduction
Those looking for large storage are swimming in a pool of choice between 1~2000Gb hard drives at very competitive prices. If high performance is your goal there’s still plenty of choice but prices varies a lot.
When my colleague reviewer Massman finished his review of the ACARD ANS-9010 ram disk device he recorded some pretty amazing benchmark numbers 300-350Mb/s read speeds consistently and IO performance 4~5x as fast as a single OCZ Core SSD.
While the benchmark numbers were pretty impressive he was unable to do a side-by-side comparison of any real-world testing due to time constraints and resources. When he noticed my VGA test station he had found the perfect playground for this new expensive toy.
Test Setup
We build our test setups with the help of Tones.be (Belgian’s Largest Hardware Shop!) who helped us with the hard drives, CPUs and monitors, MSI for the motherboards, OCZ for the memory, Coolermaster for the cases and power supplies and last but not least, Scythe for the silent CPU coolers.
As you can see, I have two identical setups installed next to one another, ideal for some side-by-side action; since I still have the OCZ Vertex 30Gb SSD drive lying around, Massman was interested to see just how much faster a DDR2 based ramdisk device is compared to an already speedy SSD.
He rang by doorbell early Saturday morning…
How could anybody turn down such a proposal?
Those looking for large storage are swimming in a pool of choice between 1~2000Gb hard drives at very competitive prices. If high performance is your goal there’s still plenty of choice but prices varies a lot.
When my colleague reviewer Massman finished his review of the ACARD ANS-9010 ram disk device he recorded some pretty amazing benchmark numbers 300-350Mb/s read speeds consistently and IO performance 4~5x as fast as a single OCZ Core SSD.
While the benchmark numbers were pretty impressive he was unable to do a side-by-side comparison of any real-world testing due to time constraints and resources. When he noticed my VGA test station he had found the perfect playground for this new expensive toy.
Test Setup
We build our test setups with the help of Tones.be (Belgian’s Largest Hardware Shop!) who helped us with the hard drives, CPUs and monitors, MSI for the motherboards, OCZ for the memory, Coolermaster for the cases and power supplies and last but not least, Scythe for the silent CPU coolers.
Madshrimps VGA Test Stations | |
| CPU | 2x Intel Core 2 E8200 @ 3.375Ghz |
| Cooling | 2x Scythe Ninja 2 |
| Mainboard | 2x MSI P45 Platinum |
| Video Card | Leadtek GTX 260 & GTX 280 |
| Memory | 2 kits of 2 * OCZ 2Gb PC2-8500 Reaper |
| Other | |
As you can see, I have two identical setups installed next to one another, ideal for some side-by-side action; since I still have the OCZ Vertex 30Gb SSD drive lying around, Massman was interested to see just how much faster a DDR2 based ramdisk device is compared to an already speedy SSD.
He rang by doorbell early Saturday morning…
How could anybody turn down such a proposal?
Windows 7 Startup Timed
OCZ Vertex vs ACARD ANS-9010
We installed the OCZ Vertex 30Gb HDD in system 1, the ACARD ANS-9010 in system 2. The OCZ Vertex was hooked up to the onboard SATA 300 connector, configured in IDE mode. The ACARD was also connected to the Intel south bridge but two SATA cables were used and the ANS-9010 put in RAID mode to boost its performance. The Intel storage manager was used to configure on RAID-0 array.
Size wise the comparison is quite uneven, the OCZ Vertex clocks in at 30Gb, which after installation NTFS format leaves approximately 28Gb free. The latest firmware was used on the Vertex (1.10). The ACARD ANS-9010 was equipped with 4x2Gb DDR2 sticks, for a total of 16Gb, but with the RAID mode enabled and NTFS format, we’re left with ~14gb usable space.
We downloaded the publicly available Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 64-bit version and installed it on both systems. The latest video drivers for the NVIDIA VGA’s were installed. We were up and running in approximately an hour, with two Windows 7 setups which had identical tweaks:
Windows 7 hibernation file disabled (this saved 4gb, crucial space made available on the ACARD system)
Windows 7 page file size reduced to minimum size (again for reasons of maximizing available space)
Windows 7 automatically does some fine-tuning for SSD equipped systems, we made sure file indexer and superfetch service were disabled, we also enabled write caching and advanced performance on the hardware properties of the c:\ volume.
Intel Matrix Storage Controller was installed on the ACARD powered system and caching enabled.
The OCZ Vertex in single drive setup can measure up to 250Mb/s in read and 200Mb/s write speed with larger file blocks, at 4kb file however it’s not the fastest out there, but still plenty times quicker than any conventional HDD. The ANS-9010 which comes at a higher price premium uses normal DDR2 sticks and delivers speed above 300mb/s read and 250mb/s write, and even at smaller 4kb file blocks it flies. Windows startup time is a good benchmark to see how your new storage reacts to reading small files, a high IO means faster boot times.
We recorded the Windows 7 boot cycle from the first startup logo until the system sits idling on the desktop. We skipped the BIOS RAID initialization of the ACARD ANS-9010.
OCZ 30Gb Vertex SSD
The OCZ Vertex clocks in at approximately ~27 seconds from the time the words “Starting Windows” appear until the small “background loading” mouse pointer disappears and Windows 7 is idling.
Let’s see how the ACARD ANS-9010 handles this task:
ACARD ANS-9010
About 7 seconds faster than the Vertex (or ~26%), 20 seconds is not instant-on, but we’re definitely getting there.
Of course a fast starting PC is all fine and dandy, how does it handle other tasks? ->
We installed the OCZ Vertex 30Gb HDD in system 1, the ACARD ANS-9010 in system 2. The OCZ Vertex was hooked up to the onboard SATA 300 connector, configured in IDE mode. The ACARD was also connected to the Intel south bridge but two SATA cables were used and the ANS-9010 put in RAID mode to boost its performance. The Intel storage manager was used to configure on RAID-0 array.
Size wise the comparison is quite uneven, the OCZ Vertex clocks in at 30Gb, which after installation NTFS format leaves approximately 28Gb free. The latest firmware was used on the Vertex (1.10). The ACARD ANS-9010 was equipped with 4x2Gb DDR2 sticks, for a total of 16Gb, but with the RAID mode enabled and NTFS format, we’re left with ~14gb usable space.
We downloaded the publicly available Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 64-bit version and installed it on both systems. The latest video drivers for the NVIDIA VGA’s were installed. We were up and running in approximately an hour, with two Windows 7 setups which had identical tweaks:
The OCZ Vertex in single drive setup can measure up to 250Mb/s in read and 200Mb/s write speed with larger file blocks, at 4kb file however it’s not the fastest out there, but still plenty times quicker than any conventional HDD. The ANS-9010 which comes at a higher price premium uses normal DDR2 sticks and delivers speed above 300mb/s read and 250mb/s write, and even at smaller 4kb file blocks it flies. Windows startup time is a good benchmark to see how your new storage reacts to reading small files, a high IO means faster boot times.
We recorded the Windows 7 boot cycle from the first startup logo until the system sits idling on the desktop. We skipped the BIOS RAID initialization of the ACARD ANS-9010.
The OCZ Vertex clocks in at approximately ~27 seconds from the time the words “Starting Windows” appear until the small “background loading” mouse pointer disappears and Windows 7 is idling.
Let’s see how the ACARD ANS-9010 handles this task:
About 7 seconds faster than the Vertex (or ~26%), 20 seconds is not instant-on, but we’re definitely getting there.
Of course a fast starting PC is all fine and dandy, how does it handle other tasks? ->
Crysis Loading & Conclusive Thoughts
A Crysis crisis
With Windows 7 installed on the ACARD ANS-9010 we were left with approximately ~6gb of free space. We had already disabled the hibernation file and reduced the page file to minimum size.
Next up we started the installation of Crysis… just a reminder here are the minimal system requirements:
Our systems had 4gb of RAM, plenty fast CPUs and VGA cards. But hard drive space we had not. Minimum requirement is 12gb… we started the setup of Crysis, hopeful but a bit doubtful.
On the OCZ 30Gb SSD installation finished without incident, the smallest Vertex drive can easily host your OS and a few games. The ACARD powered system halted at 99% of the installation. We then remember the 100Mb temporary file created by the Windows 7 NVIDIA drivers, we deleted the folder and continued the installation which finished successfully! We were left with ~80Mb of free space left. Next up we launched the Crysis 1.2 patch, this updater finished ok on the Vertex system, but it wouldn’t even launch on the ACARD one. So what we did was copy the patched game folder from the system 1 to system 2. We had now only 2.16Mb free on the ANS-9010
Level loading times could be tested now, we used the build-in GPU benchmark which loads up the first level of the game and does a fly-through. Since it’s the loading times which interest us the most, the difference in GPUs in the systems can be dismissed.
Crysis Load Times
We repeated this test several times, both systems loaded the game pretty much equally fast. So loading larger game files doesn’t really get a boost from swapping to high-end ram based SSD.
Uninstall of applications and games can be considered an occasional task of any PC user; so let’s free up some space and remove Crysis:
Uninstall Speed
You gain 2~3 seconds here. Not that earth-shattering.
Conclusive Thoughts
The most impressive aspect of the ACARD ANS-9010 is when you throw multiple operations at it at the same time, scenarios where a normal HDD would struggle so hard the system would become unresponsive, the ANS-9010 doesn’t break a sweat. We used Passmark’s excellent HDD benchmark tool which allows you to launch an I/O heavy task with different file chunk sizes, read/write, sequential/random operations. We launched a random 100% 4kb write over 1Gb, combined with a 8192kb 60/40% random job and another 100% sequential read 8192kb job.
The outcome was quite gruesome to see, this heavy preset reduced the Vertex’ speed to 2~3mb/s at best, the ANS-9010 was running at 100~120mb/s throughput with no signs of slowing down.
The question is now, how often will you encounter a situation where you’ll be putting so much strain on a system to mimic this heavy workload? A full disk virus scan, DVD burning, file copying, video playing and launching game… that might put some strain on the system, but nowhere near the IO mentioned above.
This brings on to the single major drawback of these retail RAM disk devices available today: storage space. In order to benefit from all what the ANS-9010 has to offer you need to be able to place your OS on there, your programs, your work files, your games… a lot. We were able to install the OS without trouble, nearly failed installing a game on there.
Granted that we kept things on the cheaper side, 8x2Gb DDR2 is affordable nowadays.
If we were to equip the ANS-9010 with 4gb DDR2 sticks we would have twice the space, at 4 times the price. Or we can buy these 8Gb modules at $250/piece and end up at $2000 for 64Gb of blistering fast storage. For $2000 we can build a 480Gb SSD RAID setup with dedicated RAID card which will put quite a fight performance wise.
As it stands it’s extremely hard to recommend the ACARD ANS-9010 for everybody but the most over-the-top workstations or record-breaking systems. The OCZ Vertex series deserves a renewed praise for excellent price/performance.
I like to thank Massman for dropping by with his fancy ram-based SSD, but I think for the price I’ll be sticking with the Vertex SSD for the time being.
With Windows 7 installed on the ACARD ANS-9010 we were left with approximately ~6gb of free space. We had already disabled the hibernation file and reduced the page file to minimum size.
Next up we started the installation of Crysis… just a reminder here are the minimal system requirements:
Minimum System Requirements:
OS - Windows XP or Windows Vista
Processor - 2.8GHz or faster (XP); 3.2GHz or faster * (Vista)
Memory - 1GB RAM or 1.5GB RAM (Vista)
Video Card - 256MB **
Hard Drive - 12GB
Sound Card - DirectX 9.0c compatible
Our systems had 4gb of RAM, plenty fast CPUs and VGA cards. But hard drive space we had not. Minimum requirement is 12gb… we started the setup of Crysis, hopeful but a bit doubtful.
On the OCZ 30Gb SSD installation finished without incident, the smallest Vertex drive can easily host your OS and a few games. The ACARD powered system halted at 99% of the installation. We then remember the 100Mb temporary file created by the Windows 7 NVIDIA drivers, we deleted the folder and continued the installation which finished successfully! We were left with ~80Mb of free space left. Next up we launched the Crysis 1.2 patch, this updater finished ok on the Vertex system, but it wouldn’t even launch on the ACARD one. So what we did was copy the patched game folder from the system 1 to system 2. We had now only 2.16Mb free on the ANS-9010
Level loading times could be tested now, we used the build-in GPU benchmark which loads up the first level of the game and does a fly-through. Since it’s the loading times which interest us the most, the difference in GPUs in the systems can be dismissed.
We repeated this test several times, both systems loaded the game pretty much equally fast. So loading larger game files doesn’t really get a boost from swapping to high-end ram based SSD.
Uninstall of applications and games can be considered an occasional task of any PC user; so let’s free up some space and remove Crysis:
You gain 2~3 seconds here. Not that earth-shattering.
Conclusive Thoughts
The most impressive aspect of the ACARD ANS-9010 is when you throw multiple operations at it at the same time, scenarios where a normal HDD would struggle so hard the system would become unresponsive, the ANS-9010 doesn’t break a sweat. We used Passmark’s excellent HDD benchmark tool which allows you to launch an I/O heavy task with different file chunk sizes, read/write, sequential/random operations. We launched a random 100% 4kb write over 1Gb, combined with a 8192kb 60/40% random job and another 100% sequential read 8192kb job.
The outcome was quite gruesome to see, this heavy preset reduced the Vertex’ speed to 2~3mb/s at best, the ANS-9010 was running at 100~120mb/s throughput with no signs of slowing down.
The question is now, how often will you encounter a situation where you’ll be putting so much strain on a system to mimic this heavy workload? A full disk virus scan, DVD burning, file copying, video playing and launching game… that might put some strain on the system, but nowhere near the IO mentioned above.
This brings on to the single major drawback of these retail RAM disk devices available today: storage space. In order to benefit from all what the ANS-9010 has to offer you need to be able to place your OS on there, your programs, your work files, your games… a lot. We were able to install the OS without trouble, nearly failed installing a game on there.
Granted that we kept things on the cheaper side, 8x2Gb DDR2 is affordable nowadays.
If we were to equip the ANS-9010 with 4gb DDR2 sticks we would have twice the space, at 4 times the price. Or we can buy these 8Gb modules at $250/piece and end up at $2000 for 64Gb of blistering fast storage. For $2000 we can build a 480Gb SSD RAID setup with dedicated RAID card which will put quite a fight performance wise.
As it stands it’s extremely hard to recommend the ACARD ANS-9010 for everybody but the most over-the-top workstations or record-breaking systems. The OCZ Vertex series deserves a renewed praise for excellent price/performance.
I like to thank Massman for dropping by with his fancy ram-based SSD, but I think for the price I’ll be sticking with the Vertex SSD for the time being.