OCZ Vertex Drives

[karateo]

thanks.
they look very good

welcome to the SSD world

[Orangeblast]

Thanks. This is my first time in RAID too lol.

So far its been a pleasure. Snappy as hell! The 2 30GB vertex drives have my Vista 64 install while my VelociRaptor has my games and such while my 1 TB Caviar Black has my storage.

There is a guy on the OCZ forums who is using the same controller as me and is achieving better performance with a 128 Stripe and Vista default alignment of 1024....here's the image:





Pretty impressive, the difference is he is using 2 120GB Vertex drives in RAID0...seems he too has vista 64 on there as well.

I'm not quite sure why the 120 is faster than my 30GB....all Vertex drives have 64 megs of cache.

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

I'm not quite sure why the 120 is faster than my 30GB....all Vertex drives have 64 megs of cache.

The controller on the 30GB and 60GB models have access to fewer channels = slower. There was an article on DailyTech and Tony confirmed this.

Still it's a nice setup, thx for sharing the result

Cheers

[Orangeblast]

The controller on the 30GB and 60GB models have access to fewer channels = slower. There was an article on DailyTech and Tony confirmed this.

Still it's a nice setup, thx for sharing the result

Cheers

Ahhh, okay, I understand now. It was my misunderstanding, I thought it had something to do with the on board cache. I see now its controller related.

thanks!

[F@32]

Flashing instructions - follow closely, I thought I bricked my drive when attempted ACHI mode.

2x32Gb Vertex on ICH10R RAID0, Native SATA mode on, write-back cache ON.

Before (sorry it was not totally reset when I benched that)


After (clean wiped by flashing)


After (clean wiped by flashing)


We will see more ridiculous speeds in the next 6-12 months. SATA wont cut it anymore - we will need straight up PCIe attached bootable devices. Seagate and WD better wake the f@ck up.

Are you all using the 128 alignment? I've read 32, 64 and 128 beeing recommended at the OCZ forums!?

Tried 128 (Vertex 120Gb) on my Lenovo T61 laptop and all it can manage is about 120 mb/s under Windows 7....

Check if your lappy controller is really SATA2. My ICH10R was bottlenecking me at 166Mb until I enabled RAID mode and writeback cache.

[Rhys]

My Results With 2x30gb Raid0 on ICH10R as Follows:
Attachment 96288

Attachment 96289

[caRpetbomBer]

How would the vertex drives run on a ICH9R in raid 0. Is it worth trying.

[Knight]

How would the vertex drives run on a ICH9R in raid 0. Is it worth trying.

It should have the same performance compared to that of a Raid 0 setup on the ICH10R.

[Orangeblast]

Wow, the results from the OCZ forum are very impressive....though I get a tad bit of diarrhea in my pants just looking at what I have to do to flash these things. 1 drive at a time....preferably in an xp32 environment, but I have vista64, compatibility mode will work according to tony.

If I don't post results after 2 hours, then you know something very bad happened.

lol

[Griff805]

Wow, the results from the OCZ forum are very impressive....though I get a tad bit of diarrhea in my pants just looking at what I have to do to flash these things. 1 drive at a time....preferably in an xp32 environment, but I have vista64, compatibility mode will work according to tony.

If I don't post results after 2 hours, then you know something very bad happened.

lol

I have to agree, I am glad OCZ customers seem to now be getting the spec'd speeds of the drives they purchased. The firmware update process does seem a bit involved for the average user, but hopefully it's not as delicate as it seems to be.

The new firmware looks better than I thought it was going to. Guess that's what happens when you take the time to do things right-

Still waiting on those new Reviews... what's goin on?

Oh, and how about some crystal mark, or even PCMark Vantage scores? I haven't seen a single PCMark Vantage score for the Vertex drives yet.. Maybe some MFT as well. Why aren't you guys posting those?

[lowfat]

Oh, and how about some crystal mark, or even PCMark Vantage scores? I haven't seen a single PCMark Vantage score for the Vertex drives yet.. Maybe some MFT as well. Why aren't you guys posting those?

I will when I get the drive next week hopefully Damn newegg takes like a week+ to get up here though.

[HDCHOPPER]

How would the vertex drives run on a ICH9R in raid 0. Is it worth trying.

yes !

[Orangeblast]

Okay, I'm back....even though I was lazy and didn't come right after the update. I ran some benchies, take a look:

2x30GB Vertex SSDs with the latest firmware update.

128 Stripe RAID0 w/ 128 Offset (alignment)

screen shot is crappy, but I'm tired, its late:

[modboxx]

Need some advice,

I have a Rampage extreme2 and a Lsi 3 Gb/s, SAS, 8-port Adapter, i currently use this adapter with my two hp 15k sas drives in raid0. I want to upgrade to two 120gb vertex drives and put them in raid0. My question is should i use the on board controller from my rampage extreme or the lsi sas controller.

Here are the specs of my of card
http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/prod...2er/index.html

P.s Will two Vertex drives in raid0 be faster then two of these in raid0? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822332008

Thanks for the help

[XS Janus]

Reviews are hard to find like legs on a snake!

[Lu(ky]

Flashing instructions - follow closely, I thought I bricked my drive when attempted ACHI mode.

Is this for Vista 32/64 or only for Windows XP new firmware? Confused a bit

[F@32]

Is this for Vista 32/64 or only for Windows XP new firmware? Confused a bit

This is Vista and XP (see Tony's updates if it runs under x64). Make sure to do 1 drive at a time, switch ICH10R to IDE mode - remove RAID, remove any overclocks to be safe. DOS version will be coming soon.

Need some advice,

I have a Rampage extreme2 and a Lsi 3 Gb/s, SAS, 8-port Adapter, i currently use this adapter with my two hp 15k sas drives in raid0. I want to upgrade to two 120gb vertex drives and put them in raid0. My question is should i use the on board controller from my rampage extreme or the lsi sas controller.

Here are the specs of my of card
http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/prod...2er/index.html

P.s Will two Vertex drives in raid0 be faster then two of these in raid0? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822332008

Thanks for the help

It all depends on controller and its firmware, here's Tony's Adaptec 2405 and RAID0 with 2x Vertex drives.


Well I did 15Gb Empire Total War install in 4min 19sec, while having three Firefox tabs open and internet radio streaming - no hickups.

[Dr.Leary]

I´m using a single 60GB vertex on my system in specs. So far very pleased. What kind of real world performance would I get if I bought another and put them in raid0? How many boot seconds would I be able to cut of approximately?

[Brahmzy]

*** Some folks are reporting possible stability problems with the new firmware. You may want to hold off - especially since there's potentially a lot of work involved.

[Griff805]

The new firmware looks better than I thought it was going to. Guess that's what happens when you take the time to do things right-

*** Some folks are reporting possible stability problems with the new firmware. You may want to hold off - especially since there's potentially a lot of work involved.

Lol, guess I spoke too soon-

[Dr.Leary]

My experiences are the opposites to what you are saying, had a hell to get my system to boot before firmware update. Tried about 10-15 times with ide, raid and switching sata cables without luck. After firmware upgrade everything went smooth.

[XS Janus]

OK I think I'll wait and see what Q3 will bring us.
Hopefully at least a clearer picture what is what and who is who in SSD.

To much fiddling around and beta testing for my pocket...

[Ao1]

It seems convenient that because the x25 'Learns' usage patterns, the drive was wiped after each benchmark. This would have also prevented the reviewer from discovering the degradation problem.
Intel say they can't replicate PCper results! Not sure I believe that.

Basically a benchmark fragments the hell out of an SDD drive and it can do it extremely quickly (within minutes benchmark results can start to drop off), but the drive will eventually recover depending on stability of future usage patterns. Read, writes and IOPS are all adversely affected by fragmentation..... and the best way to deliberately fragment your drive is to run benchmarks.

Bottom line seems to be don't benchmark unless you want to slow down your drive until it can calibrate itself again, which can be a very slow process (hence Intel's guidance to reviewers to format after each benchmark). Benchmarks would appear to be totally useless unless run on a formated non OS based SSD. I guess this is the same for an OCZ drive, but maybe to a lesser extent as an Intel controller works differently.

From Intel:

SSDs all have what is known as an “Indirection System” – aka an LBA allocation table (similar to an OS file allocation table). LBAs are not typically stored in the same physical location each time they are written. If you write LBA 0, it may go to physical location 0, but if you write it again later, it may go to physical location 50, or 8.567 million, or wherever. Because of this, all SSDs performance will vary over time and settle to some steady state value. Our SSD dynamically adjusts to the incoming workload to get the optimum performance for the workload. This takes time. Other lower performing SSDs take less time as they have less complicated systems. HDDs take no time at all because their systems are fixed logical to physical systems, so their performance is immediately deterministic for any workload IOMeter throws at them.

The Intel ® Performance MLC SSD is architected to provide the optimal user experience for client PC applications, however, the performance SSD will adapt and optimize the SSD’s data location tables to obtain the best performance for any specific workload. This is done to provide the ultimate in a user experience, however provides occasional challenges in obtaining consistent benchmark testing results when changing from one specific benchmark to another, or in benchmark tests not running with sufficient time to allow stabilization. If any benchmark is run for sufficient time, the benchmark scores will eventually approach a steady state value, however, the time to reach such a steady state is heavily dependant on the previous usage case. Specifically, highly random heavy write workloads or periodic hot spot heavy write workloads (which appear random to the SSD) will condition the SSD into a state which is uncharacteristic of a client PC usage, and require longer usages in characteristic workloads before adapting to provide the expected performance.

When following a benchmark test or IOMeter workload that has put the drive into this state which is uncharacteristic of client usage, it will take significant usage time under the new workload conditions for the drive to adapt to the new workload, and therefore provide inconsistent (and likely low) benchmark results for that and possibly subsequent tests, and can occasionally cause extremely long latencies. The old HDD concept of defragmentation applies but in new ways. Standard windows defragmentation tools will not work.

SSD devices are not aware of the files written within, but are rather only aware of the Logical Block Addresses (LBAs) which contain valid data. Once data is written to a Logical Block Address (LBA), the SSD must now treat that data as valid user content and never throw it away, even after the host “deletes” the associated file. Today, there is no ATA protocol available to tell the SSDs that the LBAs from deleted files are no longer valid data. This fact, coupled with highly random write testing, leaves the drive in an extremely fragmented state which is optimized to provide the best performance possible for that random workload. Unfortunately, this state will not immediately result in characteristic user performance in client benchmarks such as PCMark Vantage, etc. without significant usage (writing) in typical client applications allowing the drive to adapt (defragment) back to a typical client usage condition.

[jcool]

Hey guys,

sorry I didn't get around to posting benches of the 60GB and 120GB Vertex, too much hassle getting the respective rigs up and running and finally out to my customers.
I do have a direct comparison with previous Jmicron-based MLC drives w/o cache, and let me tell you, Vertex is an entirely different story. No stuttering, awesome read and very good write performance, program installs are smooth as butter, and I had no trouble un-indexing the OS drive while simultaneously installing a driver, listening to music and browsing the SSD - previous MLCs would ALWAYS stutter and freeze while doing so.

On a darker note, the ATTO and HDTach benches I did of the 120GB Vertex on a ICH10R weren't that great. HDTach showed a flawless constant 230MB/s read, but a fluctuating and very unstable write performance of about 60-95MB/s averaging in around 75MB/s.
ATTO showed 80MB write/180MB read on average, starting at about 32k. Now I am sorry I didn't save those, I just didn't have the time. I guess the Firmware was finally optimized to highly favour IOPS, not transfer rates.

Regardless of those benching issues I can recommend the vertex to anyone who wants a smooth and fast SSD.

One other interesting fact to you may be that both drives came pre-partitioned. I guess OCZ aligned those partitions with optimal values, so I didn't erase the partitions but kept them. I tried aligning one older Core SSD via the diskpar method documented in the OCZ forums, but it didn't work (partition was created but disk manager threw errors while trying to format the partition, saying it can't be done. Likewise I couldn't install Windows on the diskpar-created partition).

So you can imagine I was pretty glad those were correctly pre-partitioned

[Halk]

So far my experiences of the drive and ATTO benchmarks indicate that there's a huge difference between not just the firmwares, but different controllers, configurations and chipset drivers. I do realise that ATTO is not a great benchmark for comparing one system against another, or one drive against another, but it does seem to be a good way to compare the same drive on the same system against different configurations.

Sadly what it seems to be is yet more confirmation that there's utterly no point in comparing SSDs against each other unless it's done on the same system, with the same Windows image, and each SSD is tweaked etc with the right drivers etc...