OCZ Vertex 3 Pro Preview: The First SF-2500 SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 17, 2011 3:01 AM ESTFinal Words
I didn't really believe that SandForce could pull it off when I first heard how fast the SF-2000 line would be. Even after CES, I didn't really believe the drives would be this good in real world use cases. Consider me pleasantly surprised.
When connected to a good 6Gbps controller, the Vertex 3 Pro is significantly faster than anything else on the market today. Obviously the V3P itself is an unreleased drive so things could change as its competitors show up as well, but the bar has been set very high. The Vertex 3 Pro is the first SSD to really put 6Gbps SATA to good use. In fact I'd say its the first drive that really needs a 6Gbps interface. Whenever you Sandy Bridge owners get replacement motherboards, this may be the SSD you'll want to pair with them.
Even writing incompressible data the Vertex 3 Pro is faster than current SandForce drives running full tilt. The performance gains we see here are generational, not a simple evolutionary improvement. SandForce has also successfully addressed the limited shortcomings of the original SF-1200 controller with regards to writing incompressible data.
Clearly performance isn't going to be a problem with this generation. The real unknowns are how well will the Vertex 3 (non-Pro) perform and how reliable will these drives be? Intel is still king of the hill when it comes to drive reliability, however OCZ has been investing heavily in improving its manufacturing. I suspect that this next SSD war will be fought both along performance and reliability lines. Unfortunately for us, the latter is very difficult to quantify without a significant sample of drives.
With new controllers from SandForce, Intel and Marvell due out this year we're going to see SSD performance go through the roof and SSD prices to continue to fall. We're still a couple months away from knowing exactly what to buy, but if you've been putting off that move to an SSD - 2011 may be the year to finally pull the trigger.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
144 Comments
View All Comments
PubicTheHare - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Anand,Would this be the drive to pair with a Sandy Bridge Macbook Pro, or do we still need to wait for native TRIM support in OSX?
I'm really eager to buy a Sandy Bridge MBP and do this if the V3P is the one to get. I can't recall which controller you recommended for Macs.
markjx1 - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Why no mention of the fact this was originally slated for the SF-2000, and now its got the enterprise class SF-2500 with disclaimers of "hardware not final" all over the article?The truth is they had major problems with SF-2000 and nobody wants to talk about it - of all people I'd think you would have. Now go ahead and delete my post again.
markjx1 - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Resorting to using the enterprise-class SF-2500 means I worry about cost competitiveness against other upcoming Gen3 offerings from Intel and Crucial/Micron.OCZ took a $25 mil bank loan recently so they need a winner. I worry about the "hardware is not final" disclaimers in the article. Sending these samples out for some buzz smells like buying time while they work out production dilemmas since originally they were going to use a different SF controller.
bplewis24 - Friday, February 18, 2011 - link
Why are you trolling? You have 3 of essentially the same posts on this page. We get it, you think he "sold out" for not mentioning that it's using a different controller.Brandon
vol7ron - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Does this mean a higher QD, might improve performance.It looks like QD of 16 might be the sweet spot in terms of latency vs IOPS
DJMiggy - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Thanks for the great article and thank you OCZ for making my Vertex 1 even more obsolete. That's ok though! Not a complaint! lol Just looking forward to my next upgrade!Rasterman - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Since the drive is 400MB/s read, if you use two in RAID-0 are you going to get 800MB/s or the realistic max of 6gpbs of ~700MB/s?If you use RAID-0 X4 are you going to get 1600MB/s or ~700MB/s?
jwilliams4200 - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
With a decent RAID card, then RAID 0 of N drives will give you slightly less than N times the performance of a single drive.For on-motherboard RAID, you will also get approximately N times the performance of a single drive, but there is usually a ceiling to total performance on motherboard RAID. It is around 600 MB/s for ICHR-10.
myterrybear - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
I've been a loyal reader of this sight, but what realy myths me if you's use EVERY other controler but those found on the AMD platform .... especialy more so with a Sata 6.0 SSD like this it would match up well for those of us amd users whom have paid money to upgrade the motherboard to have that sb8xx controler onboard to utilize hard drives & other devices that run on the now becoming Sata 6.0 standard.Per Hansson - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Hi, has the much talked about hibernation problem with the Sandforce drives been solved in the 2xxx series?Loosing Hibernation is pretty much a deal killer for me in a laptop :(
http://www.google.se/search?hl=sv&safe=off&...