Understanding SandForce's SF-1200 & SF-1500, Not All Drives are Equal
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 16, 2010 11:30 AM ESTWhere Do We Go From Here?
Corsair is under no obligation to ship drives with the 3.0.5 firmware. Assuming there are no other problems with the 3.0.1 firmware, Corsair could presumably keep shipping the higher performing OCZ-like firmware. The problem is that if you ever need to upgrade your firmware, you could lose performance.
As I've mentioned in the past, customers of whatever company or companies work closest with the controller manufacturer will undoubtedly get access to firmware quicker than anyone else. We've seen this work both in favor of and against the best interests of the consumer. Sometimes you get features/performance early (e.g. TRIM support for Indilinx drives) and other times you get early, untested firmware. Your best bet at this point is to hold off on any SF-1200 purchases unless you're willing to accept the risks that comes with.
The case isn’t closed on this issue however, not by a long shot. It’s my understanding that the SandForce/OCZ exclusivity agreement is currently only a short term agreement. While the companies are in the process of negotiating a long term agreement, nothing is final yet.
There are some measures in place to ensure that you can’t flash an OCZ firmware on a non-OCZ drive (and vice versa) but there’s nothing saying that at some point this won’t change either.
We also don’t know what the real world impact of the standard SF-1200 firmware will be. I’m hoping to have a standard SF-1200 drive with production firmware very soon and I will report my findings as soon as possible.
I’ve also communicated to SandForce that this should have never happened. It was well aware that there would be a performance difference between the Vertex 2 and all other SF-1200 drives, and there’s absolutely no reason any company other than OCZ should have had 3.0.1 with that exclusivity agreement in place. It’s simply not right to give your partners performance that you know for a fact will later be taken away. SandForce indicated to me that everyone was aware that performance could change between firmware revisions, but in my opinion this is still not being totally transparent. The moment a review based on Corsair’s Force drive went live, SandForce should’ve had a discussion with Corsair and the reviewer. We weren’t the first to review the Force drive, but it wasn’t until after our review went live that SandForce contacted us.
SandForce is a very young company and this just sounds like a bad case of partner mismanagement. Thankfully there haven’t been that many SF-1200 drives sold, but if you’re considering one you have to keep in mind that you could see performance drop in one metric with a firmware update. Note that the drive will still perform as specified, the SF-1200 controller is only rated for 10,000 sustained 4K random write IOPS.
There’s also the issue of SSD makers shipping drives based on firmware that’s not MP ready. I’ve established a more direct line with SandForce so I’ll at least be made aware of what firmware is ready for shipping and what isn’t. I’ll also be putting more pressure on manufacturers to only ship MP ready firmware. Let this serve as a warning to SSD manufacturers. I haven't been keeping close tabs on shipping firmware revisions since I never recommend any brand new, unproven SSD controller. But clearly I'm going to have to start docking points for not following controller manufacturer guidance. This stuff is serious guys, you're playing with our data here - I can't stress that enough.
As I keep mentioning in my coverage of SandForce and any other new SSDs, if you jump on board you’re assuming a risk. These drives and controllers are largely unproven. While I’m doing my best to put them through their paces, I can’t test every system combination. On top of that, many of these companies are newcomers to the industry and as an early adopter, you might find yourself in the middle of a situation like this.
This is unfolding in real time so I’ll keep you posted as I come across any new developments.
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Barshj - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
Great info, Anand! I have been a reader of yours since the beginning and have appreciated all your work! This is my first comment. I have been thiinking about getting a Sandforce drive since your first vertex 2 article and quickly decided to go get the ocz limited edition for a good price from newegg before they sell out. You probably did ocz a good service by talking about this as they will probably sell out quickly now.One thing I continually wonder regarding ssd reviews is why you need to publish the "new" drive test results rather than just testing and publishing your findings on a "used" drive. Soon enough all of us ssd owners will have their drives in the "used" condition so the "new" drive results are somewhat irrelevant to us buyers. It would probably make your job easier and tend to force vendors to ensure their drives hold up well after use, if you just conditioned the drive into a "used" state and only publish those results.
529th - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
Does the OCZ Toolbox now work with the Vertex LE ??ClagMaster - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
I always though firmware was the Achilles heel of these SSD’s and have a profound effect on performance. I expressed in earlier posts that it’s a bad situation when the many SSD vendors do not have a clue how their firmware works and rely on third-party vendors. Although, to be fair, Corsair knew enough about this Release Candidate Firmware to turnoff the power bug, then sold their SSD's as if the Release Candidate Firmware was the Production Firmware.Are you sure SandForce is culpable here. SandForce gave Corsair the Release Candidate Firmware so they could do development work with their SSD’s and perfect them for market. But its Corsair who decided to ship this RC firmware on its SSD’s. I am not satisfied the key players in the SSD industry have their configuration control together.
krazyderek - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
where does OCW stand in terms of firmware? i had one of their 50gb drives at the top of my list, did they just disable the power saving feature as well, can anand include the OCW drives in the power draw metric and make an educated guess?in terms of "new technologies" and reliability, i've had a 2007 raptor and a foxconn retail motherboard both die in two different machines in my office this week, i don't think SSD's are any less an option then your typical HDD, i mean just look at the reviews on newegg to see how many HDD's arrive DOA, or brick after a month, granted, it's probably a lower percentage since it's a bigger market then SSD right now, but i think trying new controllers just comes with SSD territory right now, as you've pointed out in the past, every controller manufacturer worth looking at in the enthusiast field has had problems, and they're always covered under warranties, like you say, just keep a clone image of your drive ready for a couple of months when you first give SSD's a go.
willscary - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
I am sorry to those readers and also to Anand, who may be tiring of this, but I just read my new (arrived today via mail) PCWorld. The inside back cover is a full page OWC advertizement touting the Mercury Extreme SSD. The specs are clearly the SF 1500 specs, incuding 10 million hr MTBF and less than 1 sector per 10^17 bits read. I know how long ago they finalized this ad (a few weeks) and how long since print (perhaps a week), but still.I only wish that everyone knew the true facts as this is dishonest. Again, I will also say that OWC was great when I ordered and quick to RMA, even though the guy who set up the RMA seemed VERY annoyed with my questioning of the controller.
cditty - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link
I can't see why anyone would want a Sandforce drive... It is more expensive per Gigabyte that the Intel. That is crazy. The Intel drives are proven (as proven as an SSD can be) drives that deliver great performance. I use G2's in my laptop and desktop and have been using their 40 Gigabyte value drives for boot drives in systems at work that need an extremely fast boot time. I would never trust my data to a 'new' controller. I don't even fully trust it to Intel yet, as I keep a nightly backup on a platter based RAID 1.iwod - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
Do you actually feel the difference between an C300 SSD, Intel SSD and a SandForce SSD?Ofcoz on paper SandForce would be the best, but does it actually gives anymore precipitable performance difference? From HDD to SSD was like from Horse to Racing Cars. But what if i already had a Intel SSD?
Also, any news on when are we expecting SATA 3.0 ( 6Gbps ) based SSD? It seems SATA 2.0 is the bottle neck right now.
soundseeker - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
can some onem please make clear: Are these points about the self cleaning aspects of the drive relevant to MAC OS. The big worry about getting a macbook pro with a SSD is you pay crazy amounts and then it deteriorates because Mac doesnt support TRIM.Anand and the guy with the 3 ssd's on order, are you installing the drives in Macs????
thanks
willscary - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
All of the SSDs that I have plus the 3 that I have on order are for PCs and all of the PCs are running Windows 7 Professional. I am sorry, but I can not help you with their long term health in a Mac environment.soundseeker - Sunday, April 18, 2010 - link
thanks for your answeranyone help verify the mac thing. is there no answer coz you are mostly pc users?
Im confused about the best approach for mac.- fill issues, controller issues and there's been no verification yet as to who manufactures the Apple stock SSD's. so this is a minefield of speculation