OCZ Vertex 3 Preview: Faster and Cheaper than the Vertex 3 Pro

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• FunBunny2 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link

  If you're running a really relational database, then random performance is what matters.

• iwod - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link

  Yes, but 99% of Normal World Users dont run Relational DB. And those who ran the DB would properly search for faster Random I/O instead.

• jimhsu - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link

  It ... depends. Real world performance is really complicated:
  
  1. You can have any combination of read or writes, sequential or random, going on at once.
  
  2. You have both synchronous IO (this read must be done before that read) and asynchronous IO (this reads all need to be executed, but in whatever order).
  
  3. You have other bottlenecks coming into play - CPU, memory, GPU, ...
  
  All the basic metrics (seq read/write, random read/write) are important. As well as performance with mixed read/write workloads (this is in fact the most difficult aspect to bench). Hard drives have been around for decades, so we have well-established metrics for determining performance. Flash SSDs have been around for less than 10, and in the consumer market, less than 3 years.

• iwod - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link

  Yes Performance is Complicated. But it doesn't matter in this context. We are trying to find the bottleneck and fastest Storage Hardware within today's Applications. And the Anandtech Bechmarks, is basically just a batch script that execute common task that we do. Time and Average it as Scores.
  
  Time and Time again i have asked why some brand controller, labeled as "crap" by most of us, continuously to perform extremely well, and in many cases even better then Sandforce on Anand Real World Benchmarks ( Read Toshiba Controller in Kingston V+ aka Apple's MBA SSD)

• Chaser - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link

  As SSDs become more common and second/third generations of models are starting to appear graph bars showing numerical values are beginning to got lost in haze. How would a "PC Mark Vantage score" difference of 3 points equate to an improved and noticable user experience? So while pages of "faster, higher" values might look appealing I am more lost now than anything else.
  
  For me, I enjoy reading conclusions similar to GPU results and comparisons. Such as, "If you have a Sandforce 1200 drive upgrading to this next generation wouldn't result in much or more of a noticable change on the average desktop enthusiast or gaming computer.
  
  

• iwod - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link

  The difference of 3 Points will be the same. Because it is within Margin or Error.
  
  Read up my post about you.

• MamiyaOtaru - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link

  "prices will continue to fall"
  
  been waiting for them to become reasonable for years now, and this gets repeated when they go up?
  
  I'm hoping for great things from memristors

• Spazweasel - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link

  So here's a question. With these solid state hard drives bursting to near the maximum transfer rate of SATA3 and completely eclipsing spinning media, the Holy Grail is going to be to approach RAMdisk speed.
  
  I'd be curious to see how a drive like this compares to, say, a 4gb RAM disk which has been formatted with the same file system. I imagine the RAMdisk driver and operating system will matter a great deal for such a baseline, but if a RAMdisk driver and config can be settled upon, this would make a very interesting comparison.
  
  As far as I can tell, the SATA3 standard, with 6Gb/sec (little B) will saturate at about 525MB/sec (big B). DDR3/1333 will do so at 10667MB/sec. 20 times faster, right? Well... maybe. This is where file system and driver overhead will loom large. RAID will fatten up the pipe, and ultimately PCIE 2.0 16x will peak at 8192MB/sec (big B). Since PCIE 2.0/16x is close to DDR3/1333 in transfer speeds, in theory (that wonderful place where everything works), the aforementioned Holy Grail is at least in sight at the horizon.
  
  So yeah, I'm curious about RAMdisks vs. fast SSDs in RAID. Just as an exercise.

• iwod - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link

  I know this is old, but can you brief us on WHAT THE HELL HAPPEN to Intel SSD Controller?
  
  Was it always suppose to be a Marvel Controller + Intel Firmware? Are is there REAL G3 coming soon?

• WintersEdge - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link

  So this is a preview, right? Although it's quite complete like a full review... Nevertheless, you'll do another review when the product actually comes out? Right? Or what? If so, will you add your energy use test, like you've done for SSD reviews in the past? I know it'll be very small but then again, all the differences in performance are also very small to an end user just doing ordinary tasks.
  
  Thanks