I agree that the price differential is perplexing. In fairness though, the prices in the review don't seem to be actual market price so there is still room for change there.

As to the cache/no cache thing - that may be the case. I'm sure it's no real trouble for (presumably Samsung) to just ship them without it... but why would they bother? And even then, the price drop shouldn't be so substantial. If they are all using the same basic box, there are a couple of options:
1. OCZ figures (correctly) that they have sufficient market share to get away with it.
2. G.Skill really wants to get themselves into this market and is prepared to take a hit on these sales to get their name out there
3. These things cost *that* little to make and we've been suckered all this time.
4. Some sort of purchase agreement between OCZ and Samsung is biting them (or the reverse for G.Skill) due to a contract stating that at time of purchase they would pay X dollars per unit, then Samsung decided they could in fact produce them for Y dollars instead thanks to some new plant or something.

I'm not sure what I'd go with. I would be interested to see an OCZ rep speak up about this. If the OCZ product is different in any way and the price points don't change, they should be letting us know how their product is different ASAP.


Quote Originally Posted by slim142 View Post
For everybody

I would like to buy a $200 SSD drive mainly for Windows. What SSD brand would you recommend? (First 3 choices), and what models would you recommend?
I'd recommend waiting for benchmarks to come out on OCZ Vertex and Apex drives. They should be out in a week at most (per OCZ), so we should have some more info by then.