Comparing SSD Performance to Mechanical HDD Performance in a Dell Laptop

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First and foremost, I'm going to start with my conclusion on my switch to using an SSD drive in a laptop, “I LOVE IT!”. Sorry to be loud but this review covers why I feel this way.

As a bit of a background, I just received my crimson red Dell XPS M1330 which has the following specs:

• Processor: Intel T7300 2Ghz C2D processor
• Memory: 2Gb 667Mhz SDRAM
• Drive: Sandisk 32Gb SATA 5000SD
• Display: True Life LED
• Graphics: NVidia 8400m GS Graphics
• OS: Windows Ultimate
• Wireless: 355 Bluetooth, Dell 1505 Wifi 802.11n
• Audio: Soundblaster Audigy
• Warranty: 3Yr Complete Care Next Business Day onsite
• Optical Drive: 8x DVD-RW
• Fingerprint reader
• Accesory: Dell SE198WFP 19” Widescreen monitor

I love the system as much as I love the final Canadian price of $1,339, taxes included, which was a direct result of a lot of telephone conversations, cancellations and very polite interactions. They cut my original price by $200 and threw in a free Dell 19&quot; widescreen monitor for various hassles and delays I had. With the extra $200 I picked up a Lacie 500Gb external drive.

SanDisk 32GB SSD (view large image)

I’m one of the lucky ones to receive a system of the XPS quality one would expect. No issues with bad paint jobs, whining processors or an OS that wasn't installed properly like some have had. I’ll concede it got even easier to love the XPS M1330 as soon as I hit the power on switch for the first time. After my initial setup, I switched it on and started it again for a Vista boot time of just under a minute, which I was happy with in any case.

The top of the Dell XPS M1330 (left) next to the XPS M1210 is on the right. (view large image)

To get even better performance I uninstalled programs and configured the OS to my preferences and it is now at a point where Vista startup takes only 27 SECONDS! This in itself to me is beautiful. I don’t think I ever really noticed how long a bootup took until I put my older XPS M1210 beside the XPS M1330 machine and started them up together. It's like a phone line internet connection compared to cable. I actually find myself continuously checking bootup time and get anywhere from 27-34 seconds, I had to quote the best time though!

Having played with it, I can relate that there are so many advantages that one can’t understand until they use an SSD drive. When you are using Vista for normal tasks everything is instant. For example, when I turn the system on and click on Word to start a document, it starts in less than a second. I can't even test this. It’s the same with all the desktop movements you can think of, whether it be going into control panel or system devices; it is just intensely quick.

I have also noticed how silent this machine is with SSD, not only from the lack of hard drive noise but also because the fan is hardly ever in use. The only time the fan seems to run is when I am using the DVD extensively. It's actually a bit uncomfortable because, coupled with the speed above, you find yourself sitting and being caught off guard waiting when the task has been completed already. So many times I remember sitting and waiting while my M1210 started up and listening to the hard drive activity followed by the fan start up that pushed out the heat; that’s just not there now.

The SSD also results in far less heat build up in the system and, in fact, the only real heat I notice is when its dissipating out the fan port and the fan isn’t running. It's just a warm feel and not intense by any means. This is a very noticeable thing to me because my laptop sits on my leg or the arm of my leather chair most of the time. The lack of heat on the leather that used to be there from my M1210 is were I really noticed this.

Now to get into the area of tests, the most difficult and calculated of these is, of course, the Windows Experience index which calculates the subscore on the disk data transfer rate. It rates at a 5.9. (This para was a bit of amusement; you can laugh now.

Next I will detail the HDTune benchmark scores comparing my XPS M1330 with the SSD to my M1210 with a 100GB 7200RPM drive (2Ghz Core 2 Duo / 2GB SDRAM):

Transfer Rate	XPS M1330 SSD Drive (SanDisk 32GB)	XPS M1210 Spinning Drive (100GB 7200RPM)
Minimum	29.3MB/sec	22 MB/sec
Maximum	53.0MB/sec	42.1 MB/sec
Average	49.2MB/sec	35.4 MB/sec
Access Time	.2ms	17.2ms
Burst Rate	53.0MB/sec	68.3MB/sec
CPU Usage	3.2%	21.4%

I think these results should quiet the herd of hard disk drive lovers who don’t believe this will eventually become the main stream form of storage. Did you check out the access time? Further, I noticed that the graph line in the SSD chart was steady across from beginning to end, whereas the hdd graph line eventually faded from an average of 40mb/sec to a low at the end of 23 mb/sec. It was a steady decline in the HDD.

Battery

I also received a few requests to comment on the difference in battery life that an SSD drive has in comparison to a similar laptop.

The XPS M1330 and XPS M1210 systems are very similar in that they are both Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz with 2GB RAM, Bluetooth, SoundBlaster software, same Antivirus, Explorer, Windows Vista and both have 9 cell batteries. The difference is that my XPS M1330 has an LED display rather than the CCFL that my M1210 has. The other, and most important difference is that the M1330 has a Sandisk 32GB Solid State Drive whereas the M1210 has a 100 GB 7200HD.

A bit of a background on the tests… Both systems are on balanced battery mode with brightness set up to the ¾ mark on Dell Quickset. They have Windows mail checking the mail every two minutes and I have been playing on the Internet all along. I added some things as I played two songs on each, one video of 6 minutes in length, re-installed the camera packages which created about 10 minutes of DVD usage, and I worked on two documents for work on MS Word. Each is about a page in length. I also had Vista Auto Update click in and downloaded a new update in each. The battery in the m1210 is also relatively new as I had it replaced on 18 Jun 2007 by XPS Support.

Time	XPS M1330	XPS M1210
Hour One End	79% left	75% left
Hour Two End	61% left	48% left
Hour Three End	40% left	21% left
3 hours 35 minutes	30% left	Dies
Hour 4 End	21% left	Dead
4 hours 47 minutes	Dies	Dead

I think its worth merit to explain that while both systems were running, my services were divided on each whereas now I am concentrating exclusively on this m1330 which should be recognized as being put under twice the workload now that the other system is retired.

In conclusion I am really shocked. I expected the M1210 to compare, but it's not even close. The combination of the SSD and LED backlit screen do wonders for the M1330, which actually has a larger sized screen at 13.3&quot;. Since I got almost 5 hours using the M1330 in this test, I am absolutely positive I can get close to seven hours using it for basic functions like notetaking or reports when all the goodies are shut off such as Sidebar, Bluetooth and whatnot.

Conclusion

In the end, for the most part at least in my mind, it puts to rest the benefits of the SSD as it has no moving parts, uses less power and creates less heat which reduces fan use. Now if the cost would just come down.

 

Looks like a serious performance bump. I'm so jealous. Nice work.

 

I just configured a nearly identical system for $3,269.22 USD with tax. Subtract $200 from that and we get about $3000... which is still $1600 more than yours. They had to have cut your price by more than $200, right? I'm confused... I sincerely doubt anyone else will be getting that good of a deal.

I'm glad you like your SSD. I don't think 32 gigs is enough to justify the cost, however.

 

I'm not sure I see this as a completely valid test. The best way to do it would have been to set up vista on the SSD, then back it up. Then do a certain test. Then restore the backup to a mechanical drive (keep the partition to the same size, though) and do the same test. That eliminates hardware and software issues, essentially isolating the hard drive, which this test doesn't completely do. Good work though.

 

Great review. Maybe you can do some large file transfers and whatnot to see the difference there. Or some loading times in games such as hl2 or bf2, which typically have long loading periods.

 

The LED backlit display variable looms quite large in saving on battery life, but considering the XPS M1330 actually has a larger screen than the M1210 that's negated somewhat allowing for the variable of the SSD to obviously be a factor in saving on battery.

I agree, though these might not be precise scientific results, they're pretty clear in showing SSD is in the future of many of our notebooks.

 

I don't care how fast it is, $550CDN for a 32gig harddrive is too much.

 

Can you be a little more specific about how to get such a great deal on this machine? I just priced it at Dell.ca for $2,868 before and $3269.52 after Ontario and GST taxes. I'm sure a lot of people here will be happy to save that kind of dough.

 

Great review and even better deal!

 

To clarify a bit.... my system was originally purchased at 1/2 off during the "Dell Coupon Daze" in Canada. From there I was subdued to several cancellations as nobody believed I got the system for that price which then added a number of complimentary upgrades.

Thank you for the positive feedback and I understand that the test is a bit unfair as the systems are different.

The noticeable difference which is very obvious is the startup times of programs such as Office. I cannot even measure the start time because Word or Excel will start in less than a second. This is the same when using Vista included files such as MovieMaker, Media Player, Outlook Express and so on.

Thanks again for the responses and I'll keep looking back to field questions. Feel free to PM.

 

If you shut off sidebar you'd probably save another half hour easy.

It's just too bad these SSD drives are priced far out of reach of most consumers. I can't wait until you can get a 128 gig or 256 gig for a couple hundred bucks.

 

You have fallen in love with your laptop, my friend.

 

It would be interesting to see how a 200GB 7200RPM drive compares with the 32GB SSD drive. I bet it would beat it in transfer speeds. But the SSD no doubt would do better on battery. Does anyone know the specific difference in watts between a regular 5400 or 7200RPM drive and a SSD HD. I believe SSD uses less than 1/2 the power...

 

What am I missing here? That price is waaaaaaaaaay too low. You mean $3359?

 

Nope actually its a misprint...$1338 after the last discount of $200.

 

Well, transfer speeds are more or less meaningless unless you're actually transfering a lot of data between the different partitions of one drive or multiple drives.

I'd much rather have a low seek time an relatively low transfer speed than high seek time and relatively fast transfer speed if I'm opening and running applications.

 

wow thats cheap, with the money saved on that deal I'd be able to quit my job and live off the savings.

some people have all the luck, or are just lying jks. good review

 

Wow great deal! I didn't think the ssd would perform *that* well!

 

Great review! SSD drives are the way of the future -- no doubt.

Personally, as tempted as I've been this year, I will wait for a 64GB SSD. Why? Because I would fill the 32GB too quick just with all the apps and documents I have. That said 64GB will be more than enough for the next 3 years, no need for 128GB at all. Pics, music and video can go on an external drive (which will also serve as backup for the primary SSD).

And, no need for faster transfer rates. If you're just opening apps and files, it's all about the seek time. If apps open in 1 second, there's no point in gaining another 0.5 sec. The drive bottleneck is gone and I'll rather look at a nice backlit display or other meaningful upgrades.

Cheers
Nick

 

I find your 100gb 7200rpm results a bit odd, The Seagate 7200.2 2.5" 100gb drive has a max internal transfer speed of 59mb/s alot more than the 45 your quoteing, My 5400rpm 160gb seagate in my V1S beats your 7200rpm drive.

 

wow, nice. im pretty jealous

it's so expensive though, hopefully soon they'll become mainstream.

 

Very interesting to read, but as others pointed out, it would have much more interesting if you used the same laptop to perform the tests on. Now it is hard to draw any conclusions, other than that SSDs of course looks very promising.

 

Great review, flamenko! Can't wait to get my hands on mine.

Does anyone know if it would be possible to switch a mechanical hard disk with an SSD in the m1330?

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, PM me!

 

Thanks for the effort Flamenko !
But sadly, the battery life results are not much valid. Because Santa Rosa itself saves a lot of power, plus the LED screen (though as Andrew said, the larger screen might make up for the difference).
Apart from that, the review is very useful

 

does the SSD flash drive still suffer from that degradation effect? i'm talking about after its been written for a million times that it began losing its reliability/memmory holding capability?

and yes, i think if they cover that and any other reliability issue (if any), they are the way of the future. thumb drive nowdays are pretty much bullet proof, and i would presume that the LED backlighting are also a lot more durable than the fluorecent light that is standard on today's laptop. so in the not-so-long future we might very well have a very rugged laptop

 

This is what I found from Wikipedia in the SSD article.

 

hmmm... 10 years.... thats allright... i guess. but i don't like the bit where they say that the data needs to be periodically refreshed. whats that mean i wonder... do they mean something like accessing the data or scan disk or something else?

coz if i remeber correctly the HDD has very similar limitation/flaw like this don't they?

 

If you take platter density into account, your 160GB 5400RPM drive will be faster in some tests. The platter on your 160GB drive is 37.5% more dense than his 100GB 7200RPM HD. 7200RPM's however spins ~33% faster than 5400RPM's. The 100GB 7200RPM HD will have faster seek times, but in large file transfers the 160GB drive should top the 100GB drive. I'm not sure exactly how HD tune tests your HD speed but it runs for quite a while, so transfer speeds on the 160 drive should be a little better...

 

That's all I was waiting for.. someone to say just how awesome SSD is.. now to go and count my penny jar!

 

Do u get 27 sec without Vista SP1 ? Cuz i remember i read another member saying after SP1 he booted vista in 40 sec VS 70 sec b4 SP1

Also it would be interesting to see how fast you can boot win XP maybe 15-18 sec

 

Penny jar? You mean hundred dollar bill jar.

 

Typically my Vista starts at 27-34 seconds. This is with all the updates and system tweaked.

 

Just normal updates or SP1 ? cuz it differes

 

SP1 isn't out for Vista, what are you talking about?

 

Great stuff flamenko. I know I've already pretty much seen these results and commented in the Dell sub-forums, but I thought I'd speak out here, as the results may be slightly misleading.

I don't know if it's the M1330 itself, but boot-up times have been extremely quick, as in something around 1/2 the time it takes for my desktop to boot up (granted, the desktop's been building up crud for the past year, probably time to reformat). Average 'cold' boots take 44-47 seconds. That's accounting for logging in and reaching a state on the desktop where the system is usable. This is with all the updates installed (no SP1 for Vista yet, I'm not in the beta)
. The SSD is faster for certain, ~ 33% faster.

In terms of power consumption, SSDs definitely have the advantage, but when you consider the fact that hard drives typically only make up ~ 10% or less of a notebook's power consumption, savings on top of that are going to be rather small in the overall scheme of things.

Most SSDs tout somewhere around 0.15W at idle and 0.6W under 'load'. According to this very in depth analysis of 2.5" drives at Digit-Life, 5400RPM drives hit around 0.75W at idle and 2.5W under load (reading, writing, seeking). 7200RPM drives bump those numbers up to 0.85W and 3.5W respectively (on average).

Let's take the idle comparison first. 0.75W - 0.15W is a 0.6W power savings. For the M1330 where idle power consumption is around 12W, this is a 5% power savings. Under a typical hard drive transfer load (with CPU also bumped up from its lower power states) the M1330 uses ~23W. With the 5400RPM drives, this translates into an 8% power savings for the SSD. Numbers for the 7200RPM would be 6% and 12.6% respectively. So that would be the battery life savings. I'll let you decide for you own situation whether those savings are worth the cost. I've already covered battery life and power consumption in detail in my review, and I came to the conclusion that the M1330 in general is a power efficient machine. To note, I did not have an SSD and my battery life tests showed extremely long battery life.

As for the HDTune benchmarks you posted. I can't speak for the 100GB 7200RPM drive you used, but even my 120GB 5400RPM drive easily beats you 7200RPM drive. I've attached the HDTune screenshot for comparison, but in case you're wondering, it had a higher max, higher average, higher burst and lower CPU usage. If my 120GB non-PMR drive can do that, I can only wonder what the 160GB and 200GB PMR drives are doing.



I can understand your enthusiasm as the SSD does bring some improvements and will eventually be the future of laptops. However, it is extremely cost prohibitive at this point. Your perspective on the matter is a little different from most people as you got a hell of a deal on the M1330 (SSD or no SSD, that price is insane). With NAND prices stilll falling, buying SSDs at this point will lead rather quickly to being outdated, with both higher capacity and higher performance drives being released in rapid succession these days.

 

Its not out officially but you can get it as torrent as I did.

 

Flamenko, could you post your boot time for the M1210 with the normal drive and your system tweaked. That would give us a good comparison.

 

why even quote that price? Nobody else could get it for that cheap....

In reality its +$550 for that harddrive and that is NOT worth it at the current time, its like buying a Blu-Ray Player for $1500 when it first came out yet in a few years they will be down to $200.

 

I'll start from the bottom and answer upwards...

link1313: I quote the price because, as you can see by my articles below, i am very active in assisting others to get the best price/options that they can. I guess I believed this might assist others in establishing confidence in my ideals. As for getting close to this, one other has that I have read on the site and I think one other has in this thread but I believe he/she is sworn to secrecy because I havent even been provided the info. I believe, however, that the articles have assisted immensely.

ppen1: Unfortunately I cant. I received a replacement system at the same time as this which had to leave my hands sealed. Conversely, I had to send the M1210 back. I had it tweaked to just over a minute if I can recall; it had been so long since I worked with that system...Sorry.

chuck232: Thanks for your input. Its great to be able to put this more on a level playing field as it is obvious I have high regard for the disk and system as a whole.

The one thing I have always noticed with the HDD graphs in comparison to the SSD's graph is that with steady work, it is declining to find its low point at the end of the graph. With the SSD, it is continuous right across with a few low bumps during the test.

 

Does that article of getting good prices apply mostly to XPSs? Because My dad needs a laptop and I'm considering a Vostro I configured for $679 or so. I doubt you can squeeze massive savings out of a Vostro system. (Other option is to get a fairly basic XPS 1330 and use your method to get the price way down to around 700-800 USD)

 

I would believe it would work for any system where you are looking for more than just the basic system.. I would figure at 679...there is not much room to get huge savings in the first place.

Traditionally though, the most savings are achieved from mid to high priced systems.

 

Oh, so I figure the bottom of the 1330 is going to fall at 800 USD or so? Because my dad is declining pretty much everything thrown at him because he doesn't think he needs one enough to justify one. (even though he does)

 

There's extremely little chance you'll get a XPS M1330 for $800, especially considering the base price is $1299.

 

And it would be relative to the m1210 if you want to examine pricing historically. the m1210 stayed much the same until the day they decided to phase it out and introduce the m1330. Only thencould you find marginal drops in proce...you will never get an XPS at 800.

 

Excellent! Well put together comparison.

 

There is an even faster SSD drive but it's even more insanely priced...

Check this article by Anandtech who does a comparison between SSD, hybrid and mechanical drive.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3067

 

as someone said already (i think it was one of the first people to reply to your article) i think that you should have backed up your drive and put it on the HDD too. and, put the swap HDD into the M1330 to test battery life...

 

Ive contacted Dell and am hoping they will send me a 5400 and 7200 in order to make this review more complete.

Lets hope for the best.

 

My Inspiron 9100 boots up in around 1 minute compare to your SSD drive. Not bad for 4yrs old. Here is a video:

Dell Inspiron 9100
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz with Hyper Threading
1GB Ram
40GB Hard Drive (8.2GB Free)
Windows Vista Home Premium

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Hear the power!

 

Recently, I did yet another re-install to try and tweak my system a little further and was puzzled as my test results had dropped and I couldn't get them up again.

I went through the drivers that I had re-installed and realized that I hadnt re-installed Intel Matrix Storage Manager.

Re-installed and voila...actually tested higher than ever (Im a tweak nut.)

Diagram 1 - Before Intel Matrix Driver install
Diagram 2 - After install