The OCZ Vertex 3 Review (120GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2011 6:32 PM ESTFinal Words
This is going to be a pretty frustrating conclusion to write. I'm still waiting for the final, shipping 240GB Vertex 3 to arrive before passing judgement on it but from what I've seen thus far it looks like that may be the drive to get if you're torn between the two. I feel like if you're going to be working with a lot of incompressible data (e.g. pictures, movies) on your drive then you'll want to either go for the 240GB version or perhaps consider a more traditional controller. The performance impact the 120GB sees when working with incompressible data just puts it below what I would consider the next-generation performance threshold.
The bigger question is how does the 120GB Vertex 3 stack up against similar capacity drives from the competition? Unfortunately with only a 300GB Intel SSD 320, a 250GB Intel SSD 510 and a 256GB Crucial m4 on hand it's really tough to tell. I suspect that the drive will still come out on top given that the rest incur a performance penalty as well when going to smaller capacities, but I don't know that the performance drop is proportional across all of the controllers. I hate to say it but you may want to wait a few more weeks for us to get some of these smaller capacity drives in house before making a decision there.
It's clear to me that these SF-2000 based drives are really best suited for use with a 6Gbps interface. Performance over 3Gbps is admirable but it's just not as impressive. If you've got an existing SF-1200 drive (or similar performing drive) on a 3Gbps system, I don't believe the upgrade to a SF-2200 is worth it until you get a good 6Gbps controller.
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SolidSteel144 - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
Why weren't other controllers tested?AMD's SB850 should also be able to handle these drives at full speed.
A5 - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
If you go back and look at the Sandy Bridge launch article (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridg... you'll see that the Intel and AMD controllers have essentially identical performance. No reason to double his benchmark time for a 1% difference.acripps - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
Newegg should have one to my door tomorrow......The last drop of my yule spending authorization. It will spend the next few years drifting through various machine incarnations....till it passes out of the pool in a give-away pc....somewhere around 2014.watzupken - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
Following this issue I had with them, there won't be another OCZ product from me. Anand did point out a good thing that this issue is far from over since OCZ left buyers like myself and others out in the cold in the exchange. So other than the 60 and 120GB drives, no other drives are eligible for an exchange. Worst case, I got the affected drive back due to an exchange as the earlier drive failed. I return fast drive, get a slow drive back. How nice.devlabz - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
Last few articles I ended up wondering why random read speed in SF controllers is slower than random write. I may have missed some important article explaining all that stuff, tho i read all of them. Isn't flash technology favoring the read speeds? Or it have something to do with lookups for the random data chunks?Most likely this will be the year where I'll try to get a SSD drive, and since my main reason will be to reduce the compilation times of my projects and I think that my biggest gain will be with highest random read IOPs drive? Am I wrong here? Or will it matter that much actually?
FunBunny2 - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
I've read, don't remember where, that the IMFT 25nm NAND has on-die ECC circuitry. So:- did you find such
- is OCZ, or anyone, exercising it
???
Movieman420 - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
Yeah...Tosh also just introduced their 'built-in ECC' nand.http://www.techpowerup.com/143619/Toshiba-Debuts-S...
The thing is, from what I understand anyway, that this nand will take the ECC burden off the controller. Thing is tho that SandForce controllers actually accell at ECC duties vs other controllers. This is a major selling point because as the die process continues to shrink, the ECC burden will continue to increase. So I guess I'm saying that I'm not too sure that more expensive ecc-nand would be practical if the controller doesn't suffer from the increasing ECC issue. Someone with more knowledge about how the SF controller works could probably answer the question best...cough*Anand*cough. ;)
Movieman420 - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
The dismal performance of the Hynix nand was news to me. It does however explain why there were many users with horrid performance posting on the Ocz forums. I suspect these were the ones who where told that the problem was with their PC/Lappy. It has never once been mentioned on the forum that some drives may have low performing nand inside. No wonder they kept reminding folks not to open their drives 'due to potential warranty issues'. It seems Ocz was being less than forthcoming even before the whole 25nm nand thing blew up. I really really REALLY hope that Ocz puts an end to the shady business we've seem for the last few months...they are a great company with a great product. Omission and/or deception isn't gonna fly, especially when you cater to enthusiasts who are not exactly stupid. It's those same 'enthusiasts' who made Ocz's early success possible in the first place. I know that things have since changed and now the vast majority of their sales are to commercial and enterprise customers. They'd never think of pulling this with those customers, but they'll do it to the very people who made their early success possible in the first place? This post and my previous one come from the prospective of a die hard customer who also happens to be an Ocz shareholder as well. Just wish I could afford enough to actually have a say so in the way things go down. :Pxboxist - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
Anand,I'm a very casual hardware enthusiast, and admittedly most of the technical aspects discussed in this article eludes me.
With that said, I don't need to understand everything to continue to be impressed by your enthusiasm for the products in your industry, and the way you carry yourself as an ambassador for all of your users. The way you went after OCZ here has to be applauded.
fixxxer0 - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
after being disappointed in some way with just about every (large) company i've dealt with, whether it be insurance, auto makers, electronics, appliances, you name it... i am glad to see one finally accepting responsibility, and doing the right thing.i do not expect 100% perfection from every company at all times. i know sometime things are DOA, or defective, or flawed. but to actually have a company take that extra step and make it right without you having to sue them is commendable.
personally, when it comes time on deciding which drive to go with, it will mainly be on the numbers, but OCZ's ethics will definitely give them the edge if there is a toss up.