This Just In: OCZ's Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 120GB, The New Mid-Range King?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 15, 2011 5:53 PM ESTI mentioned in our Mid-Range SSD Roundup that most SSD vendors like sampling the best balance of capacity/performance when it comes to SSD review samples. For the SandForce SF-2281 with 25nm NAND that just happens to be 240GB. Unfortunately there's a pretty big fall off in performance when going from 240GB to 120GB due to the decrease in total number of NAND die (8GB per die x 32 die vs. 16 die). I've explained this all before here.
Enter OCZ's MAX IOPS drive. Using 32nm Toshiba Toggle NAND instead of 25nm IMFT ONFI 2.x NAND the die capacity drops to 4GB, which means you get twice as many die per NAND device. The end result? 240GB Vertex 3 performance for slightly more than 120GB Vertex 3 pricing.
I ordered the 120GB MAX IOPS drive at the beginning of the week and just got it in yesterday so I've only had a small amount of time to test with it thus far. Check out the 120GB MAX IOPS drive vs. the Intel SSD 510 in Bench using our 2011 storage test suite. Expect the full review in the coming days.
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Jeff72 - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
OCZ Vertex 3 looks great on benchmarks. I wish I didn't have the blue screen issue on my Sandy Bridge system with them. I bought the OCZ Vertex 3 because of the great benchmarks. And after I had the blue screen issue on the first one, the benchmarks convinced me to exchange it at first in the hopes that it was an isolated incident instead of getting a refund right away. However, after getting the blue screen issue on a second new OCZ Vertex 3 SSD, and then seeing others having the same problem on the OCZ forums, and then seeing one of the OCZ forum moderators close a forum thread about the issue when people were trying to document the problem and troubleshoot and solve it, that's when I got the refund and went Intel 510 series 120GB SSD.This was my first SSD drive. I learned from the experience and value reliability and stability now much more than a bit more speed. Through this experience I now prefer Intel SSDs.
As I mentioned before, if you want to get the OCZ, just get it from somewhere you can return it for a full refund if needed, in case you get the blue screen issue.
I really hope OCZ can solve the issue and acknowledge it being solved and hopefully it is just a firmware fix. Their product works great when it works.
Movieman420 - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
Yes my posts seem supportive...this is because I am a well informed member of the support forum that has taken the time to read past the first few posts of a thread and actually understand the why's and how's of the issues. @e-drood Staff deleting posts? Get real...at worse, some posts get moved to the complaints/recommendation section as they are purely complaints, not customers seeking actual support with an issue. One look thru the forum and you will find LOADS of complains about this issue...how can this be if Ocz is censoring their own support forum? Dude, you couldn't be more clueless if you tried. My advice..go and take the time to actually go thru and read, understand, and fully comprehend what is happening and why. And these 'disastrous and mega-disastrous' SF controllers out perform and out sell any and every comparable controller on the market..and every review you'll find, esp here at Anandtech, ranks them the best. btw...corair's recall is due to physically defective hardware with only the 120gb model. You really should get your facts straight before having a bash at things that you clearly do not understand.Beenthere - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
I don't want to get in the middle of a pointless pissfest but I can confirm that OCZ and other websites do remove some negatives posts and do ban some folks even when their posts are proper and appropriate. It seems like you really need to tip-toe around some website when you report a legitimate problem that should never exist if the product was properly qualified before being released to market.Certain hardware and software suppliers have a history of shipping half-baked crap and using consumers as un-paid beta testers. It's not difficult to see who these companies are as many of them are high profile and obtain glowing reviews even when the products are in fact documented to have defectives.
caseyse - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
Well informed member of the support forum? I see 60 reviews for this drive at Newegg, and a third of these (17) provided a rating of 3 or less. Those that provided a rating of 3 were overly generous as I see they too are experiencing BSODs. These reviewer stats have not been censored and would appear to provide a better view of this drive's performance. I agree with others in this thread that reliability and safeguarding data is what's important, speed is a far distant second. This new controller was SF's opportunity to overcome its prior SF12xx product issues. This potentially could have a very serous outcome to both SF and OCZ.e-drood - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
"Tony The Tiger" OCZ UK Support has now posted Sandforce Forums "Heads Up - Check Your SATA3 Cables & Use Best Cables Re: BSOD's"!?!This is a joke and insult to buyers of OCZ V3 / V3 Max IOPs SF2000 SSD's AND OCZ doesn't give a toss about customer growing frustration with this newest and greatest Sandforce controller failure debacle AND Is It Too Much To Call This Fraud For Failing To Recall These SSD's From Market???
The OCZ SSD's using Sandforce Series 2000 Controllers DO NOT HAVE STABILITY, ARE NOT RELIABILE & HAVE NON-FIRMWARE/MARCHITECTURE FLAW SATA3 INTERFACE ISSUES.
Enough is Enough with this garbage hardware/SSD trash -- Issue Recall Now!
Coup27 - Monday, June 20, 2011 - link
I've just spent the last half an hour reading various threads on OCZ's forum in their Indilinx, but mainly Sandforce section and the whole affair seems quite a shambles.Users are being asked to try all sorts of things which they should simply not be forced into attempting. I was reading the thread about them saying you have to buy quality cables to use on SATA-3 and it was deleted while I was even reading it.
I do deffinately get the impression OCZ rely a lot on their user base to iron out problems for them. Intel drives may not have the benchmark scores on the graphs, but work they do. I have bought 3 Intel drives, one 80GB G2 for my personal machine and 2 40GB 320's for work and none have ever missed a beat in any way.
As much as I love this website and Anand's articles personally, I am dissapointed by his response to OCZ's business practices and substandard validation procedure. The Spektek issue was not publically addressed until long after the horse had bolted and even then it was wrapped up in a lengthly article diluting down the message. And whilst articles like this exist which are one page suggesting there is a new midrange king in down, to not even update this article to warn readers that they maybe treated with a BSOD when they plug their AT recommended purchase into their new machine is very dissapointing.
I have only ever purchased or recommended Intel drives and I cannot see that view changing at all.
xzynp7 - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - link
I will take the Intel drive. Intel firmware updates on the mail drive easily. Reliability is the most important criteria for me. The differences between these 2 drives are barely noticeable in real life use. I lost 500.00 on a similar high performer last year. Now all my drives are Intel SSD's all reliable and fast enough.