The OCZ Vertex 3 Review (120GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2011 6:32 PM ESTOCZ Listens, Again
I promised you all I would look into this issue when I got back from MWC. As is usually the case, a bunch of NDAs showed up, more product releases happened and testing took longer than expected. Long story short, it took me far too long to get around to the issue of varying NAND performance in SF-1200 drives.
What put me over the edge was the performance of the 32nm Hynix drives. For the past two months everyone has been arguing over 34nm vs 25nm however the issue isn't just limited to those two NAND types. In fact, SSD manufacturers have been shipping varying NAND configurations for years now. I've got a stack of Indilinx drives with different types of NAND, all with different performance characteristics. Admittedly I haven't seen performance vary as much as it has with SandForce on 34nm IMFT vs. 25nm IMFT vs. 32nm Hynix.
I wrote OCZ's CEO, Ryan Petersen, and Executive Vice President, Alex Mei, an email outlining my concerns last week:
Here are the drives I have:
34nm Corsair F120 (Intel 34nm NAND, 64Gbit devices, 16 devices total)
34nm OCZ Vertex 2 120GB (Hynix 32nm NAND, 32Gbit devices, 32 devices total)
25nm OCZ Vertex 2 120GB (Intel 25nm NAND, 64Gbit devices, 16 devices total)Here is the average data rate of the three drives through our Heavy 2011 Storage Bench:
34nm Corsair F120 - 120.1 MB/s
34nm OCZ Vertex 2 120GB - 91.1 MB/s
25nm OCZ Vertex 2 120GB - 110.9 MB/sIt's my understanding that both of these drives (from you all) are currently shipping. We have three different drives here, based on the same controller, rated at the same performance running through a real-world workload that are posting a range of performance numbers. In the worst case comparison the F120 we have here is 30% faster than your 32nm Hynix Vertex 2.
How is this at all acceptable? Do you believe that this is an appropriate level of performance variance your customers should come to expect from OCZ?
I completely understand variance in NAND speed and that you guys have to source from multiple vendors in order to remain price competitive. But something has to change here.
Typically what happens in these situations is that there's a lot of arguing back and forth, with the company in question normally repeating some empty marketing line because admitting the truth and doing the right thing is usually too painful. Thankfully while OCZ may be a much larger organization today than just a few years ago, it still has a lot of the DNA of a small, customer-centric company.
Don't get me wrong - Ryan and I argued back and forth like we normally do. But the resolution arrived far quicker and it was far more agreeable than I expected. I asked OCZ to commit to the following:
1) Are you willing to commit, publicly and within a reasonable period of time, to introducing new SKUs (or some other form of pre-purchase labeling) when you have configurations that vary in performance by more than 3%?
2) Are you willing to commit, publicly and within a reasonable period of time, to using steady state random read/write and steady state sequential read/write using both compressible and incompressible data to determine the performance of your drives? I can offer suggestions here for how to test to expose some of these differences.
3) Finally, are you willing to commit, publicly and within a reasonable period of time, to exchanging any already purchased product for a different configuration should our readers be unhappy with what they've got?
Within 90 minutes, Alex Mei responded and gave me a firm commitment on numbers 1 and 3 on the list. Number two would have to wait for a meeting with the product team the next day. Below are his responses to my questions above:
1) Yes, I've already talked to the PM and Production team and we can release new skus that are labeled with a part number denoting the version. This can be implemented on the label on the actual product that is clearly visable on the outside of the packaging. As mentioned previously we can also provide more test data so that customers can decide based on all factors which drive is right for them.
2) Our PM team will be better able to answer this question since they manage the testing. They are already using an assortment of tests to rate drives and I am sure they are happy to have your feedback in regards to suggestions. Will get back to you on this question shortly.
3) Yes, we already currently do this. We want all our customers to be happy with the products and any customer that has a concern about thier drives is welcome to come to us, and we always look to find the best resolution for the customer whether that is an exchange to another version or a refund if that is what the customer prefers.
I should add that this conversation (and Alex's agreement) took place between the hours of 2 and 5AM:
I was upset that OCZ allowed all of this to happen in the first place. It's a costly lesson and a pain that we have to even go through this. But blanket acceptance of the right thing to do is pretty impressive.
The Terms and Resolution
After all of this back and forth here's what OCZ is committing to:
In the coming weeks (it'll take time to filter down to etailers) OCZ will introduce six new Vertex 2 SKUs that clearly identify the process node used inside: Vertex 2.25 (80GB, 160GB, 200GB) and Vertex 2.34 (60GB, 120GB, 240GB). The actual SKUs are below:
| OCZ's New SKUs | ||||
| OCZ Vertex 2 25nm Series | OCZ Vertex 2 34nm Series | |||
| OCZSSD2-2VTX200G.25 | OCZSSD2-2VTX240G.34 | |||
| OCZSSD2-2VTX160G.25 | OCZSSD2-2VTX120G.34 | |||
| OCZSSD2-2VTX80G.25 | OCZSSD2-2VTX60G.34 | |||
These drives will only use IMFT NAND - Hynix is out. The idea is that you should expect all Vertex 2.25 drives to perform the same at the same capacity point, and all Vertex 2.34 drives will perform the same at the same capacity as well. The .34 drives may be more expensive than the .25 drives, but they also may be higher performance. Not all capacities are present in the new series, OCZ is starting with the most popular ones.
OCZ will also continue to sell the regular Vertex 2. This will be the same sort of grab-bag drive that you get today. There's no guarantee of the NAND inside the drive, just that OCZ will always optimize for cost in this line.
OCZ also committed to always providing us with all available versions of their drives so we can show you what sort of performance differences exist between the various configurations.
If you purchased a Vertex 2 and ended up with lower-than-expected performance or are unhappy with your drive in any way, OCZ committed to exchanging the drive for a configuration that you are happy with. Despite not doing the right thing early on, OCZ ultimately commited to doing what was right by its customers.
As far as ratings go - OCZ has already started publishing AS-SSD performance scores for their drives, however I've been pushing OCZ to include steady state (multiple hour test runs) incompressible performance using Iometer to provide a comprehensive, repeatable set of minimum performance values for their drives. I don't have a firm commitment on this part yet but I expect OCZ will do the right thing here as well.
I should add that this will be more information than any other SandForce drive maker currently provides with their product specs, but it's a move that I hope will be mirrored by everyone else building drives with varying NAND types.
The Vertex 2 is going to be the starting point for this sort of transparency, but should there be any changes in the Vertex 3 lineup OCZ will take a similar approach.
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erple2 - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
I believe that the issue is scale. It would not be possible financially for OCZ to issue a massive recall to change the packaging on all existing drives in the marketplace. Particularly given that while the drives have different performance characteristics (I'd like to see what the real world differences are, not just some contrived benchmark), it's not like one drive fails while another works.So it sounds to me like they're doing more or less what's right, particularly given the financial difficulty of a widespread recall.
Dorin Nicolaescu-Musteață - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
IOmeter results for the three NAND types are the same for both compressible and uncompressible data in ”The NAND Matrix”. Yet, the text suggests the opposite.gentlearc - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
The Vertex 3 is slowerIt doesn't last as long
Performance can vary
Why would you write an entire article justifying a manufacturers decisions without speaking about how this benefits the consumer?
The real issue is price and you make no mention of it. If I'm going to buy a car that doesn't go as fast, has a lower safety rating, and the engine can be any of 4 different brands, the thing better be cheaper than what's currently on the market. If the 25nm process allows SSDs to break a price barrier, then that should be the focal point of the article. What is your focal point?
"Why not just keep using 34nm IMFT NAND? Ultimately that product won't be available. It's like asking for 90nm CPUs today, the whole point to Moore's Law is to transition to smaller manufacturing processes as quickly as possible."
Pardon? This is not a transistor count issue, it's further down the road. I am surprised you would quote Moore's Law as a reason why we should expect worse from the new generation of SSDs. The inability for a company to address the complications of a die shrink are not the fault of Moore's Law, it's the fault of the company. As you mentioned in your final words, the 250GB will probably be able to take better advantage of the die shrink. Please don't justify manufacturers trying to continue using a one-size-fits-all approach without showing how we, the consumer (your readership), are benefited.
erple2 - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
I think that you've missed the point entirely. The reason why you can't get 34nm IMFT NAND going forwards, is that Intel is ramping that production down in favor of the smaller manufacturing process. They may already have stopped manufacturing those products in bulk. Therefore, the existing 34nm NAND is "dying off". They won't be available in the future.The point about Moore's Law - I think Anand may be stretching the meaning of Moore's Law, but ultimately the reason why we get faster, smaller chips is because of cost. It's unclear to me what the justification behind Moore's law is, but ultimately, that's not important to the actual Law itself. It is simply a reflection of the reality of the industry.
I believe transistor count IS the issue. The more transistors Intel (or whomever) can pack in to a memory module for the same cost to them (thereby increasing capacity), the more likely they are to do that. It is a business, after all. Higher density can be sold to the consumer at a higher price (more GB's = more $'s). Intel (the manufacturer of the memory) doesn't care whether the performance of the chips is lower to some end user. As you say, it's up to the controller manufacturer to figure out how to take into account the "issues" involved in higher density, smaller transistor based memory. If you read the article again, Anand isn't justifying anything - he's simply explaining the reasons behind why RIGHT NOW, 25nm chips are slower on existing SF drives than 34nm chips are.
It's more an issue of the manufacturers trying to reuse "old" technology for the current product line, until the SF controller optimizations catch up to the smaller NAND.
gentlearc - Saturday, April 9, 2011 - link
Once again, why do an article explaining a new product that is inferior to the previous generation with no reason why we should be interested? AMD's Radeon HD 6790 was titled "Coming Up Short At $150" because regardless of the new technology, it offers too little for too much. Where is the same conclusion?Yes, this article was an explanation. Anand does a 14-page explanation, saving a recommendation for the future.
"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 questions remains. Why should the120GB Vertex 3 debut $90 more than it's better performing older brother?
mpx999 - Sunday, April 10, 2011 - link
If you have a problem with speed of flash memory then a good choice for you are drives with SLC memory, which doesn't have as much speed limitations. Unfortunately manufacturers severy overprice them, as SLC drives are much more than 2 times more expansive than MLC ones at the same amount GB, despite the fact that the flash is only 2 times more expansive. You can buy reasonably priced (2x MLC version price) SDHC cards with SLC flash, but you can't get reasonably priced (2 x MLC version price) SSD with SLC flash.taltamir - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
"After a dose of public retribution OCZ agreed to allow end users to swap 25nm Vertex 2s for 34nm drives"Actually OCZ lets customers swap their 25nm 64Gbit drives for 25nm 32Gbit drives. There are no swaps to the 32nm 32Gbit drives
garloff - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
Anand -- thanks for your excellent coverage on SSDs -- it's the best that I know of. And I certainly appreciate your work with the vendors, pushing them for higher standards -- something from which everybody benefits.One suggestion to write power consumption:
I can see drives that write faster consume more power -- that's no surprise, as they write to more chips (or the SF controller has to compress more data ...) and it's fair. They are done sooner, going back to idle.
Why don't you actually publish a Ws/GB number, i.e. write a few Gigs and then measure the energy consumed to do that? That would be very meaningful AFAICT.
(As a second step, could could also do a mix, by having a bench run for 60s, writing a fixed amount of data and then comparing energy consumption -- faster drives will be longer in idle than slower ones ... that would also be meaningful, but that's maybe a second step. Or you measure the energy consumed in your AS bench, assuming that it transfers a fixed amount of data as opposed to running for a fixed amount of time ...)
Nihil688 - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
Hello all,I am kinda new to all this and since I am about to get a new 6GB/s Sata3 system I need to ask this
The main two SSDs that I am considering are the Micron's C400 or the OCZ Vertex3 120' version.
I can see that their sequential speeds in both write and read are completely different with V3 winning
but their Random IOPSs (always comparing the 120GB V3 and the 128GB C400) differ with C400 winning in reads and V3 winning with big difference in writes.
I must say I am planning to install my windows 7 OS in this new SSD I am getting and what I would
consider doing is the following:
-Compiling
-Installing 1 game at a time, playing, erasing, redo
-Maybe Adobe work: Photoshop etc
So I have other hard drives to store stuff but the SSD would make my work and gaming quite faster.
The question is, C400 gives 40K of read which is more important for an OS whilst V3 gives better overall stats and is only lacking in random reads. What would be more important for me? Thanks!
PaulD55 - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
Connected my 120 Gig Vertex 3 ( purchased from New Egg) , booted and saw that it was not recognized by the BIOS, I then noticed the drive was flashing red and green. Contacted OCZ and was told the drive was faulty and should be returned. New Egg claims they have no idea when these will be back in stock.