Tweet
I could find no other good place to write about my 128GB Falcon SSD.
I have 1 SSD. It is a 128GB G.Skill Falcon (FM-25S2S-128GBF1) and I purchased this drive a little over 8 months ago from Newegg. It came with FW 1571.
During my G.Skill Falcon ownership I have:
- purchased a USB SATA HDD cradle/caddy thing which allowed me to attach the falcon to my laptop and run the update software.
- switched from IDE to AHCI and back.
- reinstalled 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium a couple times.
- ran WIPER a few times and never could figure out if it really did anything.
- bought 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade and installed it to have native TRIM support. (not sure if it's doing anything either)
Like others, I too noticed a drop in 'benchmark' performance going from 1571 to 1819. In the same breath, this Falcon SSD has still always been WAY faster than the Samsung Spinpoint F1 that sits below it. I mean blows it away fast. My OS loads fast, launched apps leap to the screen, plus a lot less 'loading, please wait...' in games.
There's really nothing wrong with my SSD in my opinion. I don't run in RAID-0 (cause my Falcon is getting a 7.1 windows experience index score) and I've never had any issues that would require a FW update. I don't really 'need' new firmware, but I still check every so often.
So yesterday, at work, I'm surfing the net and I see 1916 is live. I'm mildly interested because it may have Garbage Collection and improved wear leveling stuff. I get home and decide I'm gonna upgrade the firmware. Can't hurt, right?
I copy all my stuff to an external HDD cause I know it's gonna wipe my drive. I pop the SSD out and slip the jumper over the pins. I drop the Falcon into my cradle that's hooked to my laptop. I DL the upgrade, extract the files, open the program, and it doesn't see my SSD. So I shut it down and 'run as admin' and this time it does. I see the yatapdong barefoot thing, select my FM-25S2s-128GBF1, and clicky the Upgrade F/W button.
After a long patient wait (think I went and took a shower) it was finished. I exit the program, remove the jumper, and reinstall the Falcon back into my desktop computer. I put the Windows 7 dvd into the drive and in 10-15 mins I've got a fresh install of Windows 7 Home Premium running.
So I start reinstalling stuff and configuring things the way I like em. I follow ALL of the recommended tweaks (that aren't already done) in the SSD Tweaks Ver 1.2 post that is stickied in the forums.
I find my crystaldiskmark bench on the Spinpoint (secondary HDD) and decide to give it a whirl.
G.Skill Falcon gets:
223.2MB/s Read 145.1MB/s Write on sequential (230MB/s Read 190MB/s Write is advertised speeds)
160.7MB/s Read 153.1MB/s Write on 512KB random
31.73MB/s Read 16.61MB/s Write on 4KB random
Samsung Spinpoint F1 gets: (a spanking!)
83.18MB/s Read 74.91MB/s Write on sequential
37.51MB/s Read 58.58MB/s Write on 512KB random
0.489MB/s Read 1.599MB/s Write on 4KB random
Makes me wish I had kept some screenshots from 1571 and 1819. This 1916 'feels' faster than 1819 and I can't remember how it compares to the original 1571.
Overall, I gotta say that my experience, so far, has been a good one. I haven't bricked the little SSD with an upgrade or suffered any noticeable speed degradation. Thanks G.Skill.
I have 1 SSD. It is a 128GB G.Skill Falcon (FM-25S2S-128GBF1) and I purchased this drive a little over 8 months ago from Newegg. It came with FW 1571.
During my G.Skill Falcon ownership I have:
- purchased a USB SATA HDD cradle/caddy thing which allowed me to attach the falcon to my laptop and run the update software.
- switched from IDE to AHCI and back.
- reinstalled 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium a couple times.
- ran WIPER a few times and never could figure out if it really did anything.
- bought 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade and installed it to have native TRIM support. (not sure if it's doing anything either)
Like others, I too noticed a drop in 'benchmark' performance going from 1571 to 1819. In the same breath, this Falcon SSD has still always been WAY faster than the Samsung Spinpoint F1 that sits below it. I mean blows it away fast. My OS loads fast, launched apps leap to the screen, plus a lot less 'loading, please wait...' in games.
There's really nothing wrong with my SSD in my opinion. I don't run in RAID-0 (cause my Falcon is getting a 7.1 windows experience index score) and I've never had any issues that would require a FW update. I don't really 'need' new firmware, but I still check every so often.
So yesterday, at work, I'm surfing the net and I see 1916 is live. I'm mildly interested because it may have Garbage Collection and improved wear leveling stuff. I get home and decide I'm gonna upgrade the firmware. Can't hurt, right?
I copy all my stuff to an external HDD cause I know it's gonna wipe my drive. I pop the SSD out and slip the jumper over the pins. I drop the Falcon into my cradle that's hooked to my laptop. I DL the upgrade, extract the files, open the program, and it doesn't see my SSD. So I shut it down and 'run as admin' and this time it does. I see the yatapdong barefoot thing, select my FM-25S2s-128GBF1, and clicky the Upgrade F/W button.
After a long patient wait (think I went and took a shower) it was finished. I exit the program, remove the jumper, and reinstall the Falcon back into my desktop computer. I put the Windows 7 dvd into the drive and in 10-15 mins I've got a fresh install of Windows 7 Home Premium running.
So I start reinstalling stuff and configuring things the way I like em. I follow ALL of the recommended tweaks (that aren't already done) in the SSD Tweaks Ver 1.2 post that is stickied in the forums.
I find my crystaldiskmark bench on the Spinpoint (secondary HDD) and decide to give it a whirl.
G.Skill Falcon gets:
223.2MB/s Read 145.1MB/s Write on sequential (230MB/s Read 190MB/s Write is advertised speeds)
160.7MB/s Read 153.1MB/s Write on 512KB random
31.73MB/s Read 16.61MB/s Write on 4KB random
Samsung Spinpoint F1 gets: (a spanking!)
83.18MB/s Read 74.91MB/s Write on sequential
37.51MB/s Read 58.58MB/s Write on 512KB random
0.489MB/s Read 1.599MB/s Write on 4KB random
Makes me wish I had kept some screenshots from 1571 and 1819. This 1916 'feels' faster than 1819 and I can't remember how it compares to the original 1571.
Overall, I gotta say that my experience, so far, has been a good one. I haven't bricked the little SSD with an upgrade or suffered any noticeable speed degradation. Thanks G.Skill.
)
.
Comment