OCZ Vertex Review

[cliftonite]

Originally posted by: 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

I think it is a credit to them that they have kept it open despite all the problems with Vertex and the previous drives.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: 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 enthusiasts, like OCZ.

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

That's actually a pretty succinct observation/statement. I had not really thought about it like that but now that you mention it this is 100% true.

Intel's SSD teams get to leverage the lessons learned of their seasoned sales and marketing teams from years past whereas OCZ's team is kinda operating in a vacuum in this regard and are actively generating the lessons learned as they progress.

In years to come the OCZ teams will benefit from these experiences of today (if it doesn't kill OCZ in the process) but until then the "know how" when it comes to designing products from the ground up that will have as few "oops" under the hood as possible is going to be play to Intel's existing strengths (hard earned from prior catastrophes of their own).

 

[Old Hippie]

Originally posted by: 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

:laugh:

Some people would bitch if ya hung 'um from a new rope!

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: 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.

and good for them, capitalism isn't just competition, its also product diversification to appeal to different tastes.
More choices are better, even if the choice is cheaper but less reliable, for many it is worth it.

 

[Andrmgic]

For what it's worth, I am not having any trouble with my 30Gb vertex.. but I'm not installing massive applications while running drive benchmarks at the same time.

I'm using it fairly gently.. I've loaded OSes a few times, copied a few sizable files, installed mirror's edge from steam and played the game for a while, and I've run a few ATTO benchmarks.. and mine is plucking along fine with FW 1199.

I have 10GB left free on the 30GB. I'll probably wait for some results when people try FW 1275 and decide if I want to upgrade it or not.

From Tony's testing, it looks like 1275 may not exhibit the problems that some people are experiencing with 1199.

The fact is, the drives have only been on the market for a couple months and have had two firmware revisions already. 1199 increased performance, but obviously some issues with that firmware have been exposed as more people got their hands on the drives and started using them in different ways.

They have yet another firmware revision being targeted for release this week and have since pulled 1199 since people are having issues with it and reposted the older firmware that is more stable.

No drive is perfect, but at least they are working on the issues and are addressing consumer concerns as best they can.

Hopefully the new firmware will fix the issues that some are seeing and bring even better performance to the rest of us.

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: 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 enthusiasts, like OCZ.

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

That's actually a pretty succinct observation/statement. I had not really thought about it like that but now that you mention it this is 100% true.

Intel's SSD teams get to leverage the lessons learned of their seasoned sales and marketing teams from years past whereas OCZ's team is kinda operating in a vacuum in this regard and are actively generating the lessons learned as they progress.

In years to come the OCZ teams will benefit from these experiences of today (if it doesn't kill OCZ in the process) but until then the "know how" when it comes to designing products from the ground up that will have as few "oops" under the hood as possible is going to be play to Intel's existing strengths (hard earned from prior catastrophes of their own).

Hey, thanks. I was actually inspired by what you wrote in the other SSD thread that in the IT industry people actually report on standard deviations and not just averages, as opposed to on enthusiast review sites. I figured you'd already thought long ago of my point about business models, and would be able to flesh out the details I was lacking. I guess it turns out I was able to take the ideas floating around and develop them one step further.

Thanks for the support, it means a lot coming from you.

 

[kensiko]

Yes you discovered the truth, don't buy a new tech toy if you don't want trouble!

SSD are still new in general public. Testing are not enough long, it takes many months to have a good idea of the compatibility with different hardware.

Anybody here thinking of having a SSD should know that WE DON'T REALLY KNOW what is the life span of a SSD (MLC or SLC).

NOBODY should buy a SSD and think the data in it is safe. Backup backup backup!

 

[taltamir]

nobody should think data on any media is safe, optical, magnetic, or ssd. Alway backup and make sure to test / update backups as they can also break.

 

[imported_jed]

NOBODY should buy a SSD and think the data in it is safe. Backup backup backup!

Well, to be fair, " NOBODY should buy any storage device and think the data in it is safe."

 

[taltamir]

and the data in the SSD is safer then other medias... The tech isn't THAT new... we have had it since the... was it 1970s? it just now started appearing in HDD, but we had usb pen drives with flash media for a long while too.

 

[deanx0r]

Anandtech's review was really outstanding. Beyond the speed advantage, I believe one of the biggest selling point of SSDs is predictable failure with the assurance that your current data won't be lost. I had my eyes on the Vertex after reading the review, but I now have my doubts after dropping by the OCZ forums. There seems to be too many tweaks to apply to the OS to make the drive work (partition alignment, disable page file, indexing etc). Does the Intel SSD suffer the same fate? (As far as tweaks to be performed to make it works).

It doesn't seem like the Vertex is ready for prime time if it doesn't behave like the hdds of today.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: deanx0r
It doesn't seem like the Vertex is ready for prime time if it doesn't behave like the hdds of today.

Yeah it is definitely safe to say no SSD is ready to be used in the mainstream so long as tweaks need to be manually implemented.

Raid-0 for the boot drive never became mainstream and all that took was a floppy disk and the user being capable of pressing F6 at the proper time during the OS install.

All these hoops the OCZ (and others) drives require does make the subsequent price/performance a compelling offering, but it comes at the expense of precluding the drives from becoming mainstream.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: deanx0r
Anandtech's review was really outstanding. Beyond the speed advantage, I believe one of the biggest selling point of SSDs is predictable failure with the assurance that your current data won't be lost. I had my eyes on the Vertex after reading the review, but I now have my doubts after dropping by the OCZ forums. There seems to be too many tweaks to apply to the OS to make the drive work (partition alignment, disable page file, indexing etc). Does the Intel SSD suffer the same fate? (As far as tweaks to be performed to make it works).

It doesn't seem like the Vertex is ready for prime time if it doesn't behave like the hdds of today.

I thought the whole point of the intel and vertex is that neither of them NEEDS you do apply any tweaks..
The pagefile and indexing for example should be (from fastest drive to slowest drive):
Intel > Vertex > velociraptor > samsung SLC > regular spindle drive > crappy spindle drive > > > > > Dual Controller JMicron SSD > Single controller Jmicron SSD.

Only the bad SSDs need such disabling to not stutter.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: taltamir
I thought the whole point of the intel and vertex is that neither of them NEEDS you do apply any tweaks..

It's getting closer...with Vertex you still get to dicker around with firmware updates. Nothing your average enthusiast would shy away from but your best buy customers aren't likely to want to be bothered.

 

[taltamir]

ah yes, some people might have a crappy firmware on it where it is slower... point.

 

[usernamereserved]

Originally posted by: taltamir
I thought the whole point of the intel and vertex is that neither of them NEEDS you do apply any tweaks..
The pagefile and indexing for example should be (from fastest drive to slowest drive):
Intel > Vertex > velociraptor > samsung SLC > regular spindle drive > crappy spindle drive > > > > > Dual Controller JMicron SSD > Single controller Jmicron SSD.

Only the bad SSDs need such disabling to not stutter.

That is the whole point. Vertex is like Intel in that respect you can just drop the drive in and use it without any tweaks and it will work well. that is what Anand done with his review, he did not make any tweaks. but that does not mean that some tweaks wont make things better.

There are two reviews out with the 0112 shipping Vertex firmware. one over on cd freaks one on Anandtech. on the cdfreaks one the drive was aligned as per Microsofts instructions. the one on Anandtech was not aligned. just look at the Vantage disc suite scores. the one on cdreaks scored 24,000 on a drive with an OS installed while Anands drive scored 20,000 on a new drive.

For fun as I now have my Vertex drives ready to install so I removed my x25m to put in my lappy but first thought I would mess around with partition alignment. cleaned the drive first then aligned it then ran Vantage on it and the score was up nearly 3500 points from the last time I tested it with a clean drive. so I do not think there is any harm in doing some tweaks that improve performance as far as I can see the other tweaks that OCZ recommends are for drive preservation rather than performance. this all seems sensible for folks who want to tweak and for those who do not want to tweak they still have a drive that works well out of the box.

I see firmware 1275 is out and it looks like it fixes the 'drive full' bug that some folks had reported.

 

[jimhsu]

I'd give it at least a week for the disk full bug to be gone on FW 1275 (assuming that no new bugs come up).

After what happened with firmware 1199, I'm less than willing to trust OCZ's word on that.

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: 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.

This is the best product review since the hd48xx review, which had this same kind of depth and backstory. These kinds of articles are what keeps me coming back to anandtech, need moar please!

 

[jeffbui]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: taltamir
I thought the whole point of the intel and vertex is that neither of them NEEDS you do apply any tweaks..

It's getting closer...with Vertex you still get to dicker around with firmware updates. Nothing your average enthusiast would shy away from but your best buy customers aren't likely to want to be bothered.

The thing is, updating the firmware of the drive requires a complete wipe of the data store unlike any other hardware firmware updates. I consider myself an enthusiast but I'm sure no one likes reinstalling their operating system and program files. Also, for those of us running notebook computers, a firmware update is much more difficult to perform.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: jeffbui

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: taltamir
I thought the whole point of the intel and vertex is that neither of them NEEDS you do apply any tweaks..

It's getting closer...with Vertex you still get to dicker around with firmware updates. Nothing your average enthusiast would shy away from but your best buy customers aren't likely to want to be bothered.

The thing is, updating the firmware of the drive requires a complete wipe of the data store unlike any other hardware firmware updates. I consider myself an enthusiast but I'm sure no one likes reinstalling their operating system and program files. Also, for those of us running notebook computers, a firmware update is much more difficult to perform.

Hey Debbie downer, I was trying to be as generous as possible with my upbeat view of the drive

But you make great points, I for one have zero desire to get involved with firmware updates on my drives.

If it takes firmware updates to make a product already in the field to function to expectation then me wonders what else is amiss under the hood and not addressable by mere firmware patches.

I am NOT in that big of a rush to adopt this new technology. I recognize that others are, and for them it appears Intel remains the benchmark.

But until then the OCZ fans are treading on well trod ground from the AMD fans as they recycle the oft spoken phrase "just wait till the next generation SSD/CPU/doohicky is released, it will dominate Intel's then aging flagship product like no other!...unless Intel, you know, updates their product line in the meantime as well...cuz then, then the new stuff from my fav non-Intel company might not exactly, uh, dominate, you know...".

 

[Viper GTS]

Firmware updates for hard drives are not an uncommon thing in the enterprise world. Granted they aren't supposed to wipe the drive, but to say that firmware updates are inherently a negative is a little harsh.

Of course everyone would prefer that a drive be perfect with no updates, but it just isn't a reality. I am testing SSD's that cost many times what these do, & we're still having firmware issues. One recent firmware update (which required a new drive to obtain) doubled random write performance, halved average latency, & dropped max latency by 90%. And this is on a drive that two months ago cost $8,000.

Viper GTS

 

[usernamereserved]

I was an Intel fanboy I could see nothing wrong in the x25m right up at the point where speeds went down to 30MB/s write I then waited and waited and waited for Intel to bring out something to fix it, but nope, nothing, zero, siltch. Oh sorry they did. HDDEraze nice as it brings the speed of the drive back up for a few weeks. so what is the catch? IT HAS TO WIPE THE DRIVE COMPLETELY. hahahahahaha.

Will Intel offer a firmware that supports TRIM? Does the Intel controller even support TRIM?
Indilinx supports TRIM and there is also firmware in developement to support it.
I am no longer an Intel fanboy as you already guessed. quite glad of that fact now. as a lot of Intel fanboys have closed minds.

The x25m has better IOP performance over the Vertex. what no one ever asks is. how much IOP performance do you need can you even get close to max out the x25m as far as IOP's are concerned? IF not that performance is just wasted and could be used to speed up sequential write performance where the Vertex creams the x25m. and that is a fact. No one has yet maxed out the Vertex IOPS. Go figure which one makes the most sense and offers the best value for money.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: jeffbui

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: taltamir
I thought the whole point of the intel and vertex is that neither of them NEEDS you do apply any tweaks..

It's getting closer...with Vertex you still get to dicker around with firmware updates. Nothing your average enthusiast would shy away from but your best buy customers aren't likely to want to be bothered.

The thing is, updating the firmware of the drive requires a complete wipe of the data store unlike any other hardware firmware updates. I consider myself an enthusiast but I'm sure no one likes reinstalling their operating system and program files. Also, for those of us running notebook computers, a firmware update is much more difficult to perform.

Hey Debbie downer, I was trying to be as generous as possible with my upbeat view of the drive

But you make great points, I for one have zero desire to get involved with firmware updates on my drives.

If it takes firmware updates to make a product already in the field to function to expectation then me wonders what else is amiss under the hood and not addressable by mere firmware patches.

I am NOT in that big of a rush to adopt this new technology. I recognize that others are, and for them it appears Intel remains the benchmark.

But until then the OCZ fans are treading on well trod ground from the AMD fans as they recycle the oft spoken phrase "just wait till the next generation SSD/CPU/doohicky is released, it will dominate Intel's then aging flagship product like no other!...unless Intel, you know, updates their product line in the meantime as well...cuz then, then the new stuff from my fav non-Intel company might not exactly, uh, dominate, you know...".

Bolded for reference, I couldn't agree more. I was thinking how I do NOT want to take this sort of risk and would rather just buy an intel.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: usernamereserved
I was an Intel fanboy I could see nothing wrong in the x25m right up at the point where speeds went down to 30MB/s write I then waited and waited and waited for Intel to bring out something to fix it, but nope, nothing, zero, siltch. Oh sorry they did. HDDEraze nice as it brings the speed of the drive back up for a few weeks. so what is the catch? IT HAS TO WIPE THE DRIVE COMPLETELY. hahahahahaha.

Will Intel offer a firmware that supports TRIM? Does the Intel controller even support TRIM?
Indilinx supports TRIM and there is also firmware in developement to support it.
I am no longer an Intel fanboy as you already guessed. quite glad of that fact now. as a lot of Intel fanboys have closed minds.

The x25m has better IOP performance over the Vertex. what no one ever asks is. how much IOP performance do you need can you even get close to max out the x25m as far as IOP's are concerned? IF not that performance is just wasted and could be used to speed up sequential write performance where the Vertex creams the x25m. and that is a fact. No one has yet maxed out the Vertex IOPS. Go figure which one makes the most sense and offers the best value for money.

WOW! I didn't think I'd see the day that FUD is used AGAINST intel.

 

[kensiko]

For firwmare update, just use an imaging software.

Yesterday I updated to FW1275, used Snapshot and got my Windows back within 25 minutes.

For the tweaks, I have done 0 tweak, disable defrag is not a tweak. Partition alignment is part of Windows Vista or Seven. I gained 40 seconds at boot time over my previous SSD (OCZ Core V1), this one after tweaks gained 1 minute over my previous 10krpm HDD.

I love the Vertex.