OCZ’s Vertex Limited Edition Review & SSD State of the Union
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 19, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
What’s Intel Doing?
From now until Q4 2010, the X25-M G2 appears to be the best we’ll get from Intel. In the 4th quarter of the year we’ll get the first 25nm ONFI 3.0 based MLC NAND SSDs from Intel.
25nm IMFT 2-bit MLC NAND Flash, 8GB, 167mm2
Available in 600GB, 300GB and 160GB configurations these drives will finally address Intel’s uncompetitive sequential write speeds. Not to mention see a healthy boost in random performance as well. The 300GB and 160GB drives will also be available in 1.8” form factors. The X25-V will also get a bump up to 80GB thanks to 25nm NAND.
Around the same time we’ll see a refresh in the X25-E space with 34nm MLC flash. Yep, you read that right. Intel appears to be going after the enterprise market with MLC flash. Which means that Intel’s third generation SSD controller is going to have write amplification under control in a serious way.
Until then, we won’t see anything new from Intel. These next couple of quarters will be spent ramping up 34nm NAND production and watching newcomer SandForce duke it out with Crucial/Micron.
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v12v12 - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
"To calm your fears, OCZ is selling the Vertex LE with a 3 year warranty."Umm 3yrs is CRAP! It's the industry standard among ALL HDs... again, how many times do I have to catch Anand-staff soft-wrist-slapping these con-artist manufacturers?! Who's "assured" with a 3yr warranty vs what? I haven't seen any manu offering lower? So how's that a selling/assurance point... let alone if it's even VALID to list in this article?
What you should have said (if at all) was:
"To calm your fears, OCZ is selling the Vertex LE with a STANDARD 3 year warranty (just like everyone else)." Hahaha.
I just don't get how you can continue to soft-scold (more like a notation) these manufactures when you and I KNOW it's crap. Well Okay I DO know; you're smart and running a business/review site (pro-business) and you don't wanna bad mouth these guys like you OUGHT to do. So instead you'll give them wrist slaps at the end of all the journalist-sensationalism in order to wash over the apparent chicanery of these businesses, so they'll keep sending you beta/new samples... Yes I know how the POLITICS of "business" works these days; sucks for the avg-minded consumer who totally misses keystone issues like this for all the hype and grandeur laced commentary... Sigh, the consumer-cattle loses again.
OWC Grant - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
FWIW to this discussion thread and wasn't covered in the brief mention, the OWC Extreme Enterprise comes with an enterprise class level warranty...FIVE years. So, based on pricing and other similarities, will leave it up others to decide what the best value/performance ratio is in SSDs.kunedog - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Let's also not forget that he *never* acknowledged the near-immediately stratospheric pricing of Intel's G2 X-25M, right after he praised its affordability:http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=36...">http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=36...
He mentioned the firmware problems and lack of stock once but never the pricing.
ONLY now, over 6 months later, do we see prices anywhere near what he predicted at release:
80GB for $220
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
160GB for $430
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
The 160GB comes with a free Apricorn USB enclosure, the same one "randomly plugged" here by Anand. It's a strange coincidence to see two sites decide to associate it with SSDs (why would you put an SSD in an USB enclosure?).
shin0bi272 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
I thought I saw a review on anandtech a few months ago about the corsair p128 which was supposed to be a great ssd. But its not included on these benchmarks. Its supposed to have 220mb seq read and 200mb seq write. yet its not included? why?OWC Grant - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Glad to see so much interest in SSD!As Anand was made aware, our earliest units went out to reviewers and we contacted him and other reviewers to get these units back upon learning of a firmware revision that became available early Feb. In direct communication with him, he noted that neither firmware version had any effect on the performance.
All other OWC SSD units in the field (and available with same day to 1 day delay shipping from OWC) do have the latest firmware revision.
So, we are not "a bit behind OCZ" in this regard.
Hope this clears up the matter...and that you get an OWC SSD for yourself!
smith11 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
There's something that I'm not getting...If there's 0.5x write amplification because of real-time compression, why wouldn't the effective capacity be a good bit higher than (the non-reserved part of) the physical capacity ???
GullLars - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
When i was reading this test, i couldn't help but think on several occasions that a cheap RAID of 3-4 intel x25-V from ICH10R would beat many of the drives tested here, and at a lower price.4 x25-V in RAID 0 gives 160GB capasity, roughly 600 MB/s seq read (limited by ICH10Rs bandwidth), about 140-150 MB/s seq write, around 100.000 4KB random read IOPS (400MB/s) at higher queue depths, and about 40.000 4KB random write IOPS (120MB/s). At a price point around $400-450, wich is about the same as Intel x25-M G2 160GB costs...
I think it would be great if Anand could do a test with 4 x25-V in RAID 0 from ICH10R to demonstrate a budget concious enthusiast setup.
semo - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Hi Anand,Great article. Any word on PCI-e SSDs? Are you leaving them out because of high costs or other reasons?
Also, good to know that you have our backs if those SSDs start crapping out. Without people like you companies get away with it for a long time.
rubbertoe - Sunday, February 21, 2010 - link
Looks like Amazon is also selling the 100G version:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035RQZSG/ref=pd...">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035R...X0DER&am...
Can someone confirm this is the drive that was reviewed? With selling only 5,000 does anyone have any idea how they will be distributed into the retail channels?
RT
neoflux - Sunday, February 21, 2010 - link
The OCZ Agility uses Intel 50nm or Toshiba 40nm flash.The OCZ Solid 2 uses Intel 34nm flash.
The OCZ Vertex uses Samsung flash, but what SIZE?
And based on that size, if the controller is the same as Anand mentioned a few articles ago, is the Solid 2 faster or at least the same speed-wise as the Vertex?
I did find that the Solid 2 may actually have some sort of 'crippled' Indilux controller, but that was just some forum, not an article.
I have gone back through all the Anand articles and googled everything I could think, but could not find the answer.
Someone enlighten me as to the size of the flash and the speed compared to the Vertex?