The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

[onethreehill]

The Prelude

I spent about three weeks working on my review of Intel’s X25-M SSD. Most of that was research and writing and re-writing to not only review the product but also to talk about the rest of the SSDs in the marketplace and their deficiencies. Truth be told, I spent more time working on SSDs that weren’t the X25-M than the Intel drive itself. The Intel drive just worked as it should, the rest of them didn’t.

If you read the article, you know I was pretty harsh on some of the SSDs out at the time and if you’ve ever used any of those SSDs, you know why. Needless to say, there was some definite fallout from that review. I’m used to negative manufacturer response after a GPU review, but I’m always a bit surprised when it happens in any other segment.

I took a day or two off after that review went live, I think it was a day. Afterwards, I immediately started working on a follow-up. There was a strange phenomenon a few people noticed, something I unfortunately picked up on after the review went live; if you filled the X25-M up and re-benchmarked it, it got slower. And I had no idea why.

A few weeks later, I had it figured out. But then Nehalem was right around the corner. I’d tackle it after that. But then a new batch of SSDs from OCZ and other vendors were almost ready. I told myself I’d do them all at the same time. Then CES happened .....................................

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

[Shintai]

Nice to see "working" SSDs I dont think its any news tho that you wanted either Intels or Samsungs controller in your SSD.

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

What I find most interesting is that OCZ actually listened to its customers and that they actually took constructive criticism. That's extremely rare in a company nowadays. Kudos to them. Always makes me happy when a company's engineers win out over the marketing department.

[alfaunits]

What I find most interesting is that OCZ actually listened to its customers and that they actually took constructive criticism. That's extremely rare in a company nowadays. Kudos to them.

+1!
This gives me high hopes on the Z-Drive.

[cirthix]

I doubt they were using the real latest (unreleased) firmware. http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=53212

FW 1275. Looks like 250mb/s read, 200mb/s write with some stability fixes.

[Xenogias]

I think OCZ realized that the kind of people that are interested in buying 3rd-party SSDs are going to be reading these reviews and doing their homework. Heck, most of the customer-reviews on Newegg mention random-write latency issues and JMicron. Trust me, this was a business decision--and the right one. That said, I hope the Vertex firmware maintains its latency optimization and doesn't revert to its high-bandwith/high-latency version, because after reading that article I want a vertex. Would like to see RAID-0 random write and latency performance as well.

Astounding article. I read most of it and I feel like the clouds have finally parted.

[Xenogias]

I doubt they were using the real latest (unreleased) firmware. http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=53212

FW 1275. Looks like 250mb/s read, 200mb/s write with some stability fixes.

Just saw this--wow! Looks like they kept it low-latency and increase bandwidth somehow....

[Strafe]

I haven't read the whole article yet but so far I'm loving it, and I usually have a love/hate relationship with Anandtech articles.

Whenever anyone mentions a more affordable SSD you always get several detractors saying that you could easily buy 2 VelociRaptors for the same price. Allow me to show you one table that should change your opinion.

Note: At the time I wrote this, they seemed to have the data swapped. They are trying to show that the X25 kicked the Velociraptors ass but they have the numbers backwards.

[Miwo]

Monster writeup.....good job Anand

JMicron drives are utter , but it would have been interesting to see how they perform under a dedicated hardware RAID controller with onboard memory. That probably would be way too time consuming so I can understand that

[Skyline GT-R]

Great read and a great article aswell + lot's of good info in their too, I liked it

[azza21]

Is it me or does Summit not perform that great... In most tests it is slightly behind vertex apart from the write test at the beginning, and its definitely no match for the intel e drive. So much for the Samsung controller eh. Then again it is still in early dev, maybe i expected better, or maybe it just shows what a superb job OCZ have done tuning the Vertex drive up.

[JohnMike]

I receive today 2x Vertex 60GB, but i only used one Vertex to see and feel the diference beetwin single and Raid0.

But for now i can say that my AM3 (720BE) system is way faster than with 2x VelociRaptor Raid0 and better then my I7+VelociRaptor system.

Later i will install Vertex Raid0... I'm loving it... Veloci(hard-drives) days are "over" for me.

[jtdigital]

anybody know the vertex 2 release date?

[dng]

I receive today 2x Vertex 60GB, but i only used one Vertex to see and feel the diference beetwin single and Raid0.

But for now i can say that my AM3 (720BE) system is way faster than with 2x VelociRaptor Raid0 and better then my I7+VelociRaptor system.

Later i will install Vertex Raid0... I'm loving it... Veloci(hard-drives) days are "over" for me.

may i ask where you got your vertex from? i'm thinking of going with ssd later this year when Windows 7 comes out. thanks.

[JohnMike]

anybody know the vertex 2 release date?

may i ask where you got your vertex from? i'm thinking of going with ssd later this year when Windows 7 comes out. thanks.

The Vertex are already out for sale. At least in Europe. I brought here in Portugal, but i know that these came from Ireland.

You can buy Vertex also in Germany @Alternate.de http://www.alternate.de/html/categor...+Disk&l3=SATA&

Regards

[Chevelle]

Excellent read!!

[Richard Dower]

Massive article!...i really *must* read all of it though as SSD technology is the future, but still in it's infancy...being a traditional HDD user (VelociRaptor) i had seriously considered SSD, but felt the technology is too immature at this stage. With the current enonomic crisis and R&D funds being cut i foresee that it will take another 2-3 years for more robust controllers with on chip cache and also the development of cheaper and faster NAND flash. Vertex seems the best option right now, i LOVE the fact that the firmware can be upgraded. It's something other SSD makers should do as standard, it's one thing that always annoyed me with HDD as, for example, Raptor firmware evolved and you could never guarantee getting two drives with the same firmware.

But the price/performance ratio is till way too wide for most end users, with 2TB drives for pennies you can see why people go for the old HDD, to push SSD prices *must* come down, they need to push the benefits of SSD over HDD, being overly technical is great for fanboys but the average user needs clear and understandable reasons to buy.

While i accept SSD right now is for the high end and hardware freak the market potential for SSD is huge, Netbooks are taking huge market share away from Notebooks and Desktops, the benefits for SSD in these devices is obvious...very small size and ultra low power consumption, but the current Netbook SSD are total rubbish...they are too small and slow and sutter endlessly, as such new generation SSD will be a must for Netbooks....overall i think OCZ have the potential to take alot of market share in this area, they need to keep pushing the boat out on SSD development and pricing.

[Richard Dower]

http://www.memoryc.com/storage/solid...tml?Brands=OCZ

Vertex, good price as well.

[Strafe]

Article of the year! This should be required reading. Aside from the SSD's it give a great overview of what we're looking for in drive performance.

[lowfat]

Very good read.

[Xoulz]

Yeah, just finished that article/review and hats off to Shimpi. I'm glad to see OCZ bucking the "marketing hype" and respecting intelligent people. I will be buying a 30GB Vertex SSD as an OS drive.

[Katanai]

Excellent article ! Although Anand never forgets who his masters are just kidding, this was indeed a good read.

[Olivon]

Great article from Anand

Congratz

[jtdigital]

The Vertex are already out for sale. At least in Europe. I brought here in Portugal, but i know that these came from Ireland.

You can buy Vertex also in Germany @Alternate.de http://www.alternate.de/html/categor...+Disk&l3=SATA&

Regards

The vertex is out but I'm asking about the vertex 2, anybody know the release date?

[BlueAqua]

Very interesting article that really got me thinking about buying some SSD's. Seems like 3x30gb Vertex's would be a really good setup, something I might have to try.