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.
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alpha754293 - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Can you run h2benchw on the drives and post the results? Thanks.doylecc - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Anand,What write amplification did you get during your use of the SSD 510?
Thanks, and good review.
bse8128 - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
I was wondering for a moment how (128GB-120GB)/128GB can be 13%, but then I noticed that it's really 120GB but 128 GiB. It's a bit confusing to call both 10^9 and 2^30 just "GB".jwilliams4200 - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Yes, I really wish Anand would keep his GB and GiB units straight. It makes his articles very difficult to follow sometimes.Marian666 - Saturday, June 25, 2011 - link
Who the hell asks for qd32?? Like there werent enough of such tests on internet, and anand was like the only one giving us qd3 4k read test....And whats with "depth of 32 instead of 3" ?? How hard it is to test drives in both queue depths
ARGH!!!!
/ragequit
MamiyaOtaru - Saturday, June 25, 2011 - link
this site used to be like my bible for SSDs. This continued pushing of OCZ in spite of manifest and multiple failures in their drives has soured me on the whole thing a bit.That aside, I went with Intel for a Macbook (with Snow Leopard) that had seen a couple hard drives die. It doesn't seem faster at all. I'm not willing to trade reliability for a few more percentage points, so some other drive is not an option. And if an SSD can't improve on the performance offered by a laptop drive I can't imagine what motivation I'd have to put one in my desktop.
somedude1234 - Saturday, June 25, 2011 - link
I had the exact opposite experience. I replaced a 7.2K laptop HDD with an Intel 80GB G2 SSD in my Dell D810 (running XP at the time) and have since migrated that same SSD to a Dell E6400 running Win7. The difference in overall system performance after moving to the SSD was absolutely clear in both XP and Win7, across both laptops.Granted, you're working in a Mac environment, but I will never again willingly deal with a workstation that isn't running an SSD for the OS drive.
I'm currently running my G2 with less than 5GB free, so it feels a bit slower than it did when there was > 20 GB free, but it's still night and day vs any HDD.
The system is used every day for productivity apps (primarily outlook/word/excel) as well as SAP client, putty, remote desktop, etc.
Movieman420 - Saturday, June 25, 2011 - link
Over the last few days, there has been a spark that has brought on a 'meeting of the minds' in this thread:http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread...
Be warned, this is a deeply technical discussion...I only thought I was up to speed on SSDs...lol
cactusdog - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
That is just another theory in a long line of theories. It doesnt explain why people have issues on other boards without IME.OCZ have tried to blame everything from sata cables to install methods.
If its only 1% with issues i dont know why OCZ are putting so much effort into it. It would be better for them to just give those 1% a refund to move to another drive.
As it stands, the OCZ forum and staff is preoccupied with this issue that "only affects 1%". It looks much worse than that and no doubt some people will be put off by all the discussion about BSOD's
If it is only 1% with issues, OCZ are handling the situation badly.
mcg75 - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
I was getting the bsod so I was watching their forums waiting for the result. OCZ said system was setup wrong. Then there are issues with secure erase in parted magic not working properly. So I went through the hassle of doing it all over again according to Tony's guide with no rst loaded. Still got bsod. Now IME is corrupting cmos. Told Tony that IME wasn't loaded when I got bsod. He only replied that I didn't follow his guide by not installing IME. Later in the thread in response to a post, Tony said we could run without IME using MS ahci which is exactly what I was doing.I've been setting up win7 the exact same way for years. First on a X-25m and no issues. Next a C300 with no issues. Now I setup the same way on a V3 and get bsod and it's all my fault. All OCZ has to do is look around at other forums and see there are far more than 1% being effected by this and it's cross platform with the Sandforce controller being the only constant.
They said they were able to recreate the same problem on other competitors ssd beside V3. When asked, Tony pointed to stuttering experienced by c300 users that was taken care of by firmware. That was his only example, no others and no c300 bsod either.
Now with firmware that reduces performance to get rid of bsod, we're back to the same old story that none of OCZ computers are showing the slowdown just like none of their computers would do the bsod. I dropped 50 points in as-ssd after new firmware was put in then secure erase and fresh install Win7. Obviously, I must be doing something wrong again.
Never again OCZ, never again.