OCZ Vertex Review

[n7]

Originally posted by: magreen
Anand is a great reviewer. Best of the web IMHO.

I agree 100%

I love his reviews, especially when he fills in the story around things.

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
Excellent article.

Although I am now not as hopeful that the intel will drop further in price.
Darn - I was sooo hoping that the Vertex would cause another mid-March price drop.

Nevermind. The intel dropped in price!
$343 on Amazon

 

[Andrmgic]

Ahhh the joys of competition.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: magreen
Anand is a great reviewer. Best of the web IMHO.

I agree 100%

I love his reviews, especially when he fills in the story around things.

It's interesting how influential he has become. He is driving the design of products now.

I know there was another hardware reviewer who was hired by AMD. They essentially put him in charge of the development of the 4850/4870 GPUs.

Anand should have charged OCZ a fee for his opinion. By writing these reviews he's basically acting as a consultant for free for all of these companies. In his articles he's pretty much telling them what they need to do to make their products better.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: coolVariable

Originally posted by: coolVariable
Excellent article.

Although I am now not as hopeful that the intel will drop further in price.
Darn - I was sooo hoping that the Vertex would cause another mid-March price drop.

Nevermind. The intel dropped in price!
$343 on Amazon

With the 30GB OCZ Vertex at around $150, I wish I had that much cash to spare right now.

There's no way the intel drive is worth that much in light of today's AT review of the OCZ drive.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
With the 30GB OCZ Vertex at around $150, I wish I had that much cash to spare right now.

There's no way the intel drive is worth that much in light of today's AT review of the OCZ drive.

It is $108 with a $20 MIR (or $128 without it).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820227393
I almost bought it, even though I don't have a real need for it on this old computer.

 

[Sylvanas]

Just wanted to chime in, Excellent review Anand! Definitely the best on the net, thats why I have been reading here for years. Very pleased with how the OCZ Vertex worked out, they sold out here in a day and are due back on the 23rd, I think it's time I make the switch and pick one up.

 

[Itchrelief]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: magreen
Anand is a great reviewer. Best of the web IMHO.

I know there was another hardware reviewer who was hired by AMD. They essentially put him in charge of the development of the 4850/4870 GPUs.

Dave Baumann, formerly of Beyond3d?

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Itchrelief

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: magreen
Anand is a great reviewer. Best of the web IMHO.

I know there was another hardware reviewer who was hired by AMD. They essentially put him in charge of the development of the 4850/4870 GPUs.

Dave Baumann, formerly of Beyond3d?

Yep I think so.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: kensiko
Well, if people missed it, http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

I'm impressed by the size of the article!

Quite the backstory Anand pieced together there for our benefit.

Where's the hand-clapping emoticon? Good job Anand!

Have to agree here, well done.

I also have to say that OCZ has gained a great deal of respect from me. I've been EXTREMELY critical of the sub-standard SSD products they (and others) have put out but from the sounds of it they are listening to what the community wants and putting out better products because of it. I just hope their willingness to work with us pays off financially. We have the power to kill their sales by exposing their flaws, the reverse should be true as well. If they put out the product we say we want we owe it to them to buy it.

Viper GTS

Well, based on that article I am now telling people that the only SSDs that beat out a velociraptor are the intel X25 AND the OCZ vertex.

This article really makes we wanna resurrect some threats for a good "I told you so"... but that will be immature and childish of me .

But its good to see I Was right. From bits and peaces from pcper and anands and others I figured out the 512KB erase block is the main problem here, and was arguing the point on the forum. Then again, its just me figuring out the forshadowing of professionals here in anand and pcper, not doing any testing / investigating myself.

I am really impressed with OCZ fixing the firmware on the vertex. If I was marketing I'd make sure every box had FOUR numbers on the cover, sequential read/write, and random read/write. And a chart in the back showing exactly how their drive compares.

Seeing that the vertex is half the sequential read of some other drives, but orders of magnitude faster in random writes should raise some questions for some people...

 

[alcoholbob]

The problem with the vertex is, the new firmware only came out 2 days ago, which means for most people, you are running on pre-review firmware meaning your latency is still pretty significant and runs more like a JMicron-based SSD. The retail/e-tail stock is still going to be the older firmware until they 1) go through their stock and 2) actually get the new drives shipped to them.

If you don't happen to read the OCZ forums you wouldn't even know this, plus you do have do the jumper toggle in order to flash the bios. Even worse, the actual flashing program gives you the WRONG instructions at multiple points and you actually have to do the opposite of what it says...

Basically you are beta testing their product here, except unlike Windows 7, you pay to play. Unless you are willing to jump through hoops and do all the tinkering with this drive, this thing isn't even close to an Intel SSD.

 

[taltamir]

and there is the whole issue of potential data loss in case of firmware bugs.

obviously waiting a bit is in order. But so far it seems good.

 

[dighn]

From some sources it seems like these drives have their capacities reported in base-2? That is, the 60GB is actually ~60*1024^3 bytes instead of ~60*10^9 bytes. Could anyone confirm or deny this?

 

[usernamereserved]

The 30GB drives have 32GB of NAND.
The 60GB have 64GB of NAND
The 120GB have 128GB of NAND
The 250GB have 256GB of NAND

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: usernamereserved
The 30GB drives have 32GB of NAND.
The 60GB have 64GB of NAND
The 120GB have 128GB of NAND
The 250GB have 256GB of NAND

Thanks. I tried to get this from their official website but it remains inaccessible to me for some reason.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Anand should have charged OCZ a fee for his opinion. By writing these reviews he's basically acting as a consultant for free for all of these companies. In his articles he's pretty much telling them what they need to do to make their products better.

Gary Key has been doing that for a while with Anandtech motherboard reviews, helping motherboard manufacturers "beta test" their products and BIOSes. The manufacturers definately make out with Anandtech reviews above and beyond the typical good (depending on product) press.

Originally posted by: usernamereserved
The 30GB drives have 32GB of NAND.
The 60GB have 64GB of NAND
The 120GB have 128GB of NAND
The 250GB have 256GB of NAND

From reading the excellent Anand article, it appears that SSDs reserve extra bits to help preserve performance a bit longer.

My Windows XP install with a handfull of apps and a ton of games takes up 3/4 of my VelociRaptor 300GB, and I don't even have close to all my games installed. VelociRaptors are around 3x the $/GB over a normal 320GB 7200RPM drive. For a proven SSD I may be willing to do 6x the $/GB over a normal 7200RPM drive as long as I get the capacities I need. This means a 300GB SSD without any performance flaws for around $400-500 (compared to drives available today).

Guess I'm still waiting.

Maybe in a year or two.

 

[jimhsu]

Basically FW 1199 causes the drive to be unreadable (requiring a secure erase) after the drive is stressed at near maximum capacity. (copying and deleting files from an 80% full drive, for example)

http://www.ocztechnologyforum....showthread.php?t=53290

Notice FW 1199 is no longer offered on the site. Use 0112 or wait for 1275.

 

[faxon]

I opted to send OCZ a personal email about my thoughts on the anandtech article (which were glowing), so I wont bother going into that here, other than to say good job Anand! I wish we had more hardware reviewers who could wield that kind of power in advancing technology forward. As for buying one myself, the $/GB isnt quite there yet. The 150GB Vraptor I bought at christmas has 42GB of free space left on it, and I only fill my drives to 3/4ths capacity if I can help it to help with performance a bit, meaning that out of the 40GB OS/99.7GB Apps partitioned my drive is "at capacity" as far as i am concerned. I am already looking into buying a 300GB velociraptor for my next build, which will be sometime after SB800/AM3 are out and DDR3 is nearing price parity with DDR2, but if i can get at least a 250GB Vertex SSD for the price of the 120, the price/performance/GB ratio will be just about in line with where i want them, though i might just wait for another generation for 2x the density as well, since my needs for apps storage are growing frequently. I have a habit of never deleting anything if i can help it, and instead just getting more storage since it's easier than deciding what i dont want anymore and then reinstalling it again some day when i upgraded my storage anyway. as it stands i only have 1/5th of my games installed, and im going to have to reinstall some more storage drives that i took out since they were going unused just to make space for new games. my biggest space hog though isnt my OS, its everquest 2, which with logs takes up a whoppiong 33.8GB, including a test server install which im not willing to go without for another 12GB of space. im glad to see things are progressing well though in the SSD market, and keep up the good work Anand!

 

[alcoholbob]

Originally posted by: jimhsu
Basically FW 1199 causes the drive to be unreadable (requiring a secure erase) after the drive is stressed at near maximum capacity. (copying and deleting files from an 80% full drive, for example)

http://www.ocztechnologyforum....showthread.php?t=53290

Notice FW 1199 is no longer offered on the site. Use 0112 or wait for 1275.

Oh wonderful...

and some dudes were hyping up 1199 big time on this forum.

(on the record, I have 1199)

 

[jeffbui]

Wow, after reading that OCZ forum topic, I've decided against buying the Vertex. To me, a hard drive is like an automobile tire, there should be absolutely no chance of failure from normal usage. Another thought has come to mind: with all of these problems occurring within weeks of release, how are they going to hold up in the long run? It seems like the drives were rushed to market. I'm willing to bet their wear leveling algorithms are not up to par as well. Time to start saving for the Intel.

 

[shabby]

Originally posted by: jeffbui
Wow, after reading that OCZ forum topic, I've decided against buying the Vertex. To me, a hard drive is like an automobile tire, there should be absolutely no chance of failure from normal usage. Another thought has come to mind: with all of these problems occurring within weeks of release, how are they going to hold up in the long run? It seems like the drives were rushed to market. I'm willing to bet their wear leveling algorithms are not up to par as well. Time to start saving for the Intel.

I agree, after lurking on the ocz forum for a while it almost seems like they're all beta testers. I'll plunk down the cash for the next gen intel ssd.

 

[jimhsu]

As I learned with apple ... "never buy rev 1".

I'll personally be waiting until I see at least a month of no show-stopping problems on OCZ forums. That's not too long is it?

For the intel, 50% more money for the space gets you 1) A proven track record, 2) A known, consistent performance profile, and 3) slightly slower sequential writes.

 

[shabby]

Originally posted by: jimhsu
I'll personally be waiting until I see at least a month of no show-stopping problems on OCZ forums. That's not too long is it?

They'll probably have to close the forum to accomplish that

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: jimhsu
As I learned with apple ... "never buy rev 1".

I'll personally be waiting until I see at least a month of no show-stopping problems on OCZ forums. That's not too long is it?

For the intel, 50% more money for the space gets you 1) A proven track record, 2) A known, consistent performance profile, and 3) slightly slower sequential writes.

This probably highlights the different business model and customer base that intel is dealing with, as opposed to ocz. When your customers are corporations and professional IT analysts who have to justify their purchases to boards of directors, you have to have a whole different kind of statistics of reliability to support your product, and that necessitates a whole different kind of testing. (Not that Intel is the only company to operate like that -- I'd think it'd be the same with AMD if they were to produce an SSD.)

As opposed to when your buyers are individual computer enthusaiasts, like OCZ.

I'm sure there are others here who could fill in lots more specifics than I'm able to do.

 

[jimhsu]

It seems like there are three classes of corporations as far as SSDs are concerned:

A. Enterprise/Business: Intel, Samsung
B. Enthusiast: OCZ (tries to be A, but fails)
C. "Value": Supertalent and the rest

The price differences are something like 50% between each tier.

Of course not all big corporations in A are immune to failure (the best example being the whole IBM 75GXP business)