OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS & Patriot Wildfire SSDs Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 23, 2011 4:35 AM ESTFinal Words
This new batch of 32nm Toshiba based SF-2281 drives fixes my issue with the 120GB Vertex 3. These drives 120GB are now competitive with both Intel's SSD 510 and the 240GB Vertex 3. For desktop users looking for the best absolute performance at the 120GB price point, these are the SF-2281 drives you've been looking for. How much more are they worth than the regular 25nm IMFT versions however? Currently on Newegg you can get a 25nm 120GB Vertex 3 for $254.99 vs. $309.99 for the MAX IOPS drive. Personally I'd rather save the $55 and put it towards a future, higher capacity drive in another year or so than take the performance benefit. In the real world you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between these two, it's only in very specific, demanding IO situations where the MAX IOPS/Wildfire drives will show a tangible benefit.
Between OCZ and Patriot the performance is virtually identical. Kudos for Patriot on not only being aggressive on MSRP out of the gate, but also picking the best possible NAND configuration for performance on day one. The Wildfire is Patriot's MAX IOPS equivalent, an excellent first entry into the SF-2281 market.
It remains to be seen how aggressively Patriot pursues firmware updates on the Wildfire. Historically no company has really been as aggressive there as OCZ so it'll be interesting to see how Patriot handles the BSOD issue going forward. According to Patriot the latest 3.19 firmware it's shipping on the drives resolved the limited number of BSOD issues it saw in its testing, however it's my understanding that this is not the same firmware that OCZ just pushed out (v2.09) so the BSOD issue could still be present.
I must reiterate that I do believe the SandForce BSOD issue is fairly limited. I run a Vertex 3 in my own system and have yet to see these BSOD issues first hand. However I definitely share the hesitation to jump on board here until the root cause is completely understood and problems definitely solved. If we look outside of the SandForce world, I still believe the Intel SSD 510 is a great balance of performance and reliability. If you want something with an even lower failure rate, there's always the Intel SSD 320 although you do give up performance and 6Gbps support to get that. Note that all of these drives (excluding if you do have a platform that exhibits BSOD issues with SF-2281 drives) should be more reliable than a hard drive so it really boils down to which makes you feel most comfortable.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
112 Comments
View All Comments
PartEleven - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
Anand, I'm hoping this question reaches you but I was wondering if you can comment on the Vertex 3 oem version, the V3LT-25SAT3-240G.oem. Official specs rate it as slightly slower than the retail Vertex 3, but when people asked about it on the ocz forums the mods there say it's because of different NAND. Supposedly this drive uses the same Toshiba 32nm toggle nand used as these MAX IOPS drives. Why is it then that the oem drives are slower than the MAX IOPS drives? I thought at first they might be using higher density chips so you have less NAND dies running in parallel, but you mention here that Toshiba's NAND only gets 4GB per die. What do you think is the cause for the performance difference? OCZ seems pretty reluctant to give a detailed answer.cakeab - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
--Something unexpected surprise--
Hello. My friend
=== {{w w w }} {{be tter whole saler }} {{ u s }} ====
Dedi cated service, the new style, believing you will love it!!!
WE ACCEPT PYA PAL PAY MENT
YOU MUST NOT MISS IT!!!
thank you!!!
-- w w w . jordan forworld . c o m -
aritai - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
Has been working well (no bluescreens, no crashes, no hangs, no issues w/ sleep-resume or use of bitlocker on the drive) with a Thinkpad W520/4270CT since first week of April (W7ultimate+SP1, current w/ MS, NVIDIA and Lenovo patches and drivers).However on a restart (but not on a shutdown to power off followed by power back on) there's some SATA3/Intel/IBM BIOS issue that seems to hang on the SSD read - it eventually times out (after perhaps as long as a minute) and continues booting. Rather than wait, an option is to simply force a power off (hold power button for 5 seconds) followed by re-powering on. A minor nit given Lenovo has yet to announce support for 6gbyte/s SSDs, and other than this the 4core/8thread 16gbyte dram sandybridge machine is a developer's dream (I run a handful of VMs on a 2nd SSD in the media bay, can't even tell they're VMs).
And with the 2nd-battery (that attaches on the bottom like a mini-dock), I can work all the way to Hong Kong (14+ hours) on batteries (a good thing, since there's no travel adapter yet - and may never be given they want to support 2 hour recharge and require 170W supply that no seat power can deliver. Which is a pity because the W520 automagically switches to integrated graphics and Intel turns off cores (so power meter shows < 8 watt average use in extended battery life mode). So even a 60 watt travel adapter world work save for Lenovo's BIOS doesn't / has yet to permit it.
danrichards - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - link
MTBF, Mean Time Between Failure. Frequently advertised at 2+million hours. What kind of claim is this?Does this mean I place the drive on the shelf for 200 years, put it in to an antique computer in 200 years and it should still work? Until otherwise proven, I think so...
I bought 60GB Agility 2 for my laptop and a 120GB Vertex 3 for my desktop and both failed within two months. I'm in the process of returning one to Newegg and replacing another with OCZ (the Agility 2 for the 2nd time). The Vertex 3, I got a F4 BSOD at least twice daily (I didn't think it was possible to have 2 bad drives so I spent too many hours parting out my system and formatting it 3 times and trying different drivers to no success). Newegg was sympathetic and gave me a refund after the 30 refund period.
By the way, when one of these drive fails, there is no getting out Stellar Phoenix and recovering your data, they just pop and your data is vaporized. Do not use a SSD unless you have a solid backup plan...and don't even think using an SSD will increase your productivity. If I added up the downtime from work, frustration time, and troubleshooting time I spend with my machines, I'll give that up for a fast HDD that lasts 3-5 years (and is recoverable) and takes 4-5 seconds longer to load my Outlook.
I was extremely enthusiastic about SSDs and I'm disappointed to detail such a poor report.
PR3ACH3R - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - link
I must agree with everything you said, its sad it is up to small builders & forum members to set the record straight about the SSD situation.If theres anything you got wrong is the MTBF abbrev ..
regarding SSDs it actually means: Mad Total Bork Freakshow.
jcompagner - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - link
I was one of the first here that had a 240GB V3. That had the initial firmware of 2.02, with that firmware installing on my Dell XPS17 (SandyBridge) notebook that was quite difficult to do.But after i find out about 2 things: 1 use the latest intel rapid store driver (else BSOD directly after install with the first boot) and after install make sure you disable the LPM settings (else you will get stutter) everything was pretty smooth i had no BSOD after that and it was quite solid.
So the only problem with V3 was the install part on a laptop of Dell which is quite a high volume laptop out there. (and yes there are plenty other dell laptops that have the same problem because underneath they use pretty much the same stuff)
What i don't get is why OCZ seems to test many things on desktop boards, i hear always Asus board X or Gigabyte board Y. But who is using that? SSD are the perfect things in laptops because there is where the most gain is, and i wonder who is using desktops anyway currently (i don't know them anymore)
After that firmware 2.06 came out and then i made a mistake by upgrading to it (and let me say that the upgrade for a system drive what in a laptop almost always is the case....) is quite hard. But after that BSOD started happening.. 2.08 same stuff still BSOD, now with 2.09 BSOD stopped it is solid again, and i must say that my performance is still quite good. i don't notice in real life or with testing any real performance penalty.
So now for me everything is quite good again. I never reinstalled or did a secure erase (that really cost a lot of time!) .
But i wouldn't really recommend to none real technical users a OCZ drive at the moment. Installation, firmware updates are all quite hard and you really know what to do.
kaikaihhh - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - link
hello,welcome to www.voguecatch.us,there have more top goods,like hand bag,t shirt,sun glass and so
on ,i hope everyone will like them,thanks
doodles - Sunday, July 10, 2011 - link
You asked what I'd do if I won a Eee Pad Transformer or a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1...so many ideas came to mind that I felt my skull crack. I'd keep up with my husband's medicines, (lung cancer), set reminders, keep his appointment schedules, And it might even entertain me while I do that interminable waiting in the dr.'s office.AeroJoe - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - link
Exactly which version of Iometer are you using these days to run your benchmarks? The latest version at www.iometer.org is many years old - or am I looking in the wrong spot?Jphelps2630 - Monday, July 18, 2011 - link
I'm one of the lucky owners of a Vertex 3 that has the BSOD problems. Just can't get it stable. Besides BSODs, it disappears from the BIOS and corrupts the file system so Windows and Office are trashed a couple of hours after loading. It's been upgraded to the latest 2.09 firmware which didn't help.Very disappointing product. Spent a lot of money and it just doesn't work. Waiting for help from OCZ. Will let you know what they say.
I7 2600k on Asus p8z68 pro, 8gb Corsair RAM, Win7 64