something SSD you didn't know about from OCZ

[Tony]

VALUE matters to us at OCZ, you all know we have a new SSD coming called Vertex which we are positioning as a high performance part; what you didn't know is we have also been working on a new budget/value part.

I get questions about Core V3 all the time, the drive I will talk about here was destined to be Core V3 but we decided it needed a new name...hence enter Apex

Now I am going to be very clear about this new drive and where we think it will shine and where we are positioning it.

Apex is based off Core V2...now before you all shout crappy Jmicron again please listen up. We wanted to bring a cheap fast drive to market, one for the hardware raid fanboys but also one for those who don't mind a little OS tweaking so they can run 1 drive in a laptop etc or run SB raid with 2 or more drives. The point here though is this drive will be very affordable.
I have been watching forums for 2 months now and hardware/software raid is starting to gain momentum, people are liking what they see with SSD on it.

so:

What we have done with Apex is create a drive with internal raid0

So what does this mean in terms of speed? Well it depends on the sata controller on your motherboard but I can tell you I saw 180+ (actually touched 200) reads and 140+ writes on ICH8m (OCZ DIY Laptop), and on my HP Pavillion 9000 which uses an NVidia chipset, I am seeing 140writes and 160+ reads. Now i can't run any write tests as im actually real world testing this drive every day for 10 hrs, my system here has had 50 to 80GB of data on it at various times over this week while I have been testing... so when I bench it i get what you guys will see..IE this drive is in use.

I will post the ATTO from this laptop for you all, remember i saw higher than this on ICH8m, final speed is very controller dependent hence why I have been cautious

To finish....we are positioning Vertex for performance OS use, Apex will and does work fine for OS use also although helping the drive with a few OS tweaks makes it shine...Its a value part, one for those looking to build 4 with hardware raid or 2 with SB raid or even 1 drive with a few tweaks if they are on a budget.

We think Apex is a good fast budget solution and will suit many people.

I hope this is OK with you guys, i have tried to be honest here..i love the drive, its in a 2 yr old laptop running vista32 and it flies.

[zanzabar]

so will it be priced less than or more than the v2

[cegras]

What I'm curious about is that will I be able to to buy this drive, stick it in, follow your 'tweak guide', and enjoy better performance overall? Or is there fine print? Like the system freezing when I want to type a message on MSN ..

[Helmore]

Now for the big question.....When will it be available?
Or should the big question be about pricing or capacity?

[Tony]

I am running Vista32, all tweaks from my guide, 4GB ram and I have not seen 1 pause yet all week. I even have a config file for IOmeter that loads the drive for 20 mins with random reads and writes (really heavy load) and i was watching hero's off the same HDD without pauses.

Now im NOT going to say no one will have an issue and see a stutter, i see stutters on my workstation which uses Raptors when im pushing the drive really hard...i will say for normal everyday use this is a really good option.

[PrometheusCon]

Niiice. I've been wanting a small SSD for my OS.

[Tony]

We are looking to launch in the next 10 days, drives are inbound but it is holiday season Sizes I will have to check on but i think 30 60 120 are 100% for sure, larger I need to check.

[Gambit_2K]

I haven't read much about SSD except it seems to have some issues and stuff. But why aren't people recommending me to use it with Vista64?

[FischOderAal]

What I'm curious about is how Apex and Vertex will perform under OS-X (especially Tiger as I'm still using that "old" version). Most reports on the internet are about Windows and SSD and you can barely read about someone who uses an SSD with OS-X. For instance if you should and how to deactivate indexing. I'm getting tired of my slow notebook drive...

If someone has more info about OS-X and SSD please inform me via PN or something else. Thanks in advance

P.S. Yes, I deliberately used the same beginning as cegras SCNR

[Tony]

its fine with Vista64...same as v32, I just like the option of Steadystate to really speed up the drive if needed and there is no V64 support...yet

[Tony]

Sizes to start look to be 30, 60, 120, 250GB

[Jazzy jeff]

What about the prices?

[Tony]

Prices = Core V2 ish, maybe a touch more to start

[Serra]

Kudos to you guys at OCZ for bringing this to market. I've been wondering how long it was going to be until someone started making these, and they're finally here.

Out of curiosity, will the drives be bundled with any software or pamphlets pointing to resources such as SteadyState and your tweak guide? If not, maybe something to think about going forward. The 2 cents it would cost to include a small piece of paper explaining something like that would probably go a long way for a lot of people.

I appreciate the way you and OCZ have presented this product. Very straightforward, laying the cards all out without any marketing bull. When I was thinking about a product like this I had thought about how it would be hyped up as the best thing ever invented, I'm glad to see you were up front with its limitations as well as its benefits.

I also look forward (probably very far forward) to you releasing this kind of product but based on the Vertex (or similar) platform .

[dengyong]

VALUE matters to us at OCZ, you all know we have a new SSD coming called Vertex which we are positioning as a high performance part; what you didn't know is we have also been working on a new budget/value part.

I get questions about Core V3 all the time, the drive I will talk about here was destined to be Core V3 but we decided it needed a new name...hence enter Apex

Now I am going to be very clear about this new drive and where we think it will shine and where we are positioning it.

Apex is based off Core V2...now before you all shout crappy Jmicron again please listen up. We wanted to bring a cheap fast drive to market, one for the hardware raid fanboys but also one for those who don't mind a little OS tweaking so they can run 1 drive in a laptop etc or run SB raid with 2 or more drives. The point here though is this drive will be very affordable.
I have been watching forums for 2 months now and hardware/software raid is starting to gain momentum, people are liking what they see with SSD on it.

so:

What we have done with Apex is create a drive with internal raid0

So what does this mean in terms of speed? Well it depends on the sata controller on your motherboard but I can tell you I saw 180+ (actually touched 200) reads and 140+ writes on ICH8m (OCZ DIY Laptop), and on my HP Pavillion 9000 which uses an NVidia chipset, I am seeing 140writes and 160+ reads. Now i can't run any write tests as im actually real world testing this drive every day for 10 hrs, my system here has had 50 to 80GB of data on it at various times over this week while I have been testing... so when I bench it i get what you guys will see..IE this drive is in use.

I will post the ATTO from this laptop for you all, remember i saw higher than this on ICH8m, final speed is very controller dependent hence why I have been cautious

To finish....we are positioning Vertex for performance OS use, Apex will and does work fine for OS use also although helping the drive with a few OS tweaks makes it shine...Its a value part, one for those looking to build 4 with hardware raid or 2 with SB raid or even 1 drive with a few tweaks if they are on a budget.

We think Apex is a good fast budget solution and will suit many people.

I hope this is OK with you guys, i have tried to be honest here..i love the drive, its in a 2 yr old laptop running vista32 and it flies.

That's the way to do it.

[dinos22]

price and when (its a rhetorical in case you didnt get it )

[flopper]

Seems like a nice touch.
what does internal raid0 mean?

[Tony]

2 nand controllers, 1 raid chip in 1 drive.

split the nand in 2...half to each controller and then raid the output in raid0 to sata. The controller on your board sees it as a standard drive.

[cegras]

So this would be a good replacement for my raptor OS drive?

[zanzabar]

is there extra cash on the raid controller, or is it the same as the nand controllers

[Tony]

does your raptor hit the speeds I showed in ATTO? Does the raptor seek in 0.2ms ?

[Tony]

is there extra cash on the raid controller, or is it the same as the nand controllers

cash?? you mean cache

no there is no cache on the raid controller.

[Macadamia]

Tony that means this raid0 is without any intervention then?
No need to install crappy drivers and etc? It always works as a virtual single drive?

If so BIG KUDOS. I use a SB700 AMD board and controller config is a royal pain.

[shogo_ca]

Sounds good tony, i understand the mess you ran throught with the other thread... This one makes it clear that OCZ cares.

[SetteUltras]

My first thought...

Tested from OCZ
or
WE test it for OCZ?