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OCZ's Vertex 3: Second-Generation SandForce For The Masses

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February 24, 2011 12:30:03 PM

Last week we had our first look at OCZ's Vertex 3 Pro drive, based on SandForce's impressive second-generation controller. Smoking-fast, our sample was also very expensive. Now, OCZ is ready to show off its desktop equivalent, which is every bit as quick.

OCZ's Vertex 3: Second-Generation SandForce For The Masses : Read more

More about : ocz vertex generation sandforce masses

February 24, 2011 12:41:15 PM

SSD prices are really down slow and that is because HDD is still selling.
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February 24, 2011 1:17:37 PM

I agree and it is time for HDD to be retired. We don't need them anymore, but Servers.
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February 24, 2011 1:18:16 PM

A far cry as far as "the masses" are concerned. Still, over $2/GB is too much. Getting closer however. I'd pay $200 for a 256GB SSD with these speeds.
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February 24, 2011 1:19:15 PM

I am sure price will really drop by end of this year.
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February 24, 2011 1:20:24 PM

mayankleoboy1the fact that they use ~15% of a quad core SB CPU, is amazing.with the mechanical drives, they were just sitting idle. this more than anything, makes the SSD worthwhile.


Well what I didn't mention in the review is that the benchmark starts as ~20% across all cores during the first 10 seconds, which is from PCMark setting up the disk trace. After that, the IO activity throttles a single core up to 100% for almost all SSDs. For the hard drives, we see ~60-80% utilization of a single core.

Cheers,
Andrew Ku
TomsHardware.com
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February 24, 2011 1:23:38 PM

I say keep your desktop active all the time. I am running i980x overclocked to 4.0Ghz and there is no way i will put my computer into any type of power saving mode, it is useless and power saving is just mimick. We are talking about very small amount of money over a year. Having Turbo option makes sense from certain point of view but bottom line is that it is just wasted silicon and pretty much useless.
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February 24, 2011 1:24:17 PM

"The problem is that any price above $2/GB is going to be a hard sell unless you're an early adopter by nature. Our choices in recent System Builder Marathon stories reflect this. Look at our December $1000 PC."

Overall a good article. Anyone into MTBF's will find that one page uninforming and anyone not into it is likely lost.

I would disagree with that statement only in the sense that a $1000 PC is not going to be filled with high-end superior performing parts. So I dont see a reason to apologize for its price. The person who can afford a $3000+ PC isnt going to blink buying the 240G model and will likely see it as entirely reasonable.

Me? I think I have found my next ex-drive.....

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February 24, 2011 1:35:01 PM

Quote:
so as i said, will OC increase the scores a bit?

and what about power saving enabled?


None of our tests were executed in an environment that allowed any idling. Furthermore, we disabled CPU throttling. Power saving was enabled in the sense that the display was allowed to turn off, which is part of the default profile in Windows.

OCing may increase performance, but only to the extent that the bandwidth will support it. As I mentioned, PCMark throttles a single core up to 100%. It isn't a sustained trend.
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February 24, 2011 1:39:49 PM

on your 1000 dollar gaming system, I'd rather have a vertex 3 than two 460's hell even an agility 2... and still afford better than a 460.
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February 24, 2011 1:42:23 PM

But then that's me, and to quote the great Inigo Montoya, "I hate wait" and most games I play are not bleeding edge, I also work on my computer, play HD movies and copying time makes me angry when I'm moving files. Buy an ssd, and later spend 60 bux on a 1tb drive down the road.
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Anonymous
February 24, 2011 1:45:09 PM

There is a minor typo in the vertex 3/ vertex 3 pro comparison table - sequential read performance appears twice instead of sequential read and sequential write (the accompanying text sorts it out though in the end).
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February 24, 2011 1:49:18 PM

Quote:
There is a minor typo in the vertex 3/ vertex 3 pro comparison table - sequential read performance appears twice instead of sequential read and sequential write (the accompanying text sorts it out though in the end).


Sorry about that. Fixed!
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February 24, 2011 1:56:38 PM

bto said:
on your 1000 dollar gaming system, I'd rather have a vertex 3 than two 460's hell even an agility 2... and still afford better than a 460.


I completely understand that sentiment. Keep in mind that 460 prices dropped after our December System Builder Marathon. The fact remains that a decent CPU along with a SLI or CrossFire config will likely put the kibosh on any SSD choice. With a gaming rig, you are going to want a performance SSD, which means those lower end options almost go out the door. In any case, if you end up choosing a graphics card that runs at least $200, you'll hard to fit a SSD into the budget. It isn't impossible the way prices are falling, but you will likely be relying heavily on rebates or special deals.
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February 24, 2011 2:00:20 PM

Quote:
@ Andrew Ku

thanks for the clarification. :) 


No problem! We're here to answer any question.
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February 24, 2011 2:16:39 PM

ackuI completely understand that sentiment. Keep in mind that 460 prices dropped after our December System Builder Marathon. The fact remains that a decent CPU along with a SLI or CrossFire config will likely put the kibosh on any SSD choice. With a gaming rig, you are going to want a performance SSD, which means those lower end options almost go out the door. In any case, if you end up choosing a graphics card that runs at least $200, you'll hard to fit a SSD into the budget. It isn't impossible the way prices are falling, but you will likely be relying heavily on rebates or special deals.


Forgot to mention: Thank you for the article!
I love SSD info I used to have 4 of the gigabyte I-RAM cards that were bootable in RAID 0 to get some similar results (two I-RAM were double stick taped to my case wall with pci flexible riser cards to make them all fit. I was hooked long before that obviously. Silence is also a golden feature that you do not realize until you have an already quiet system and remove the HDD.

also to quote myself: "I hate Rebate" as probably everyone else does.
Even the Vertex 2 60GB is down to $105 so for $35 more (which now you'd probably save more than $35 getting same components) You get a good ssd, later (if immediate budget did not permit) you can drop in a 1-3 TB hdd for storage. Since you already have 60GB it can wait a paycheck or two. replacing main drive later with SSD requires imaging which doesn't always work well, well at least it didn't used to. I had to try three different imaging programs before it came across properly (acronis, ghost, active disk image) I have an idea also for a fun article. Build an extremely small pc. Possibly with a 1.8" SSD to go in a car. with mii itx it would be doable and with ssd you'd not have to worry about the HDD crashing over speed bumps. Or do an article of a mini itx that lan party gamers could stick on the back of their monitor. I've replaced a case door on a silverstone with a 24" samsung before (wiring it in and all) like an Imac.
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February 24, 2011 2:52:44 PM

If there was a time to save my money for a pc build, it was the time that Sandy Bridge launched. OMG! LGA 2011 will be the "GOLDEN AGE" for pc enthusiast!

- A superfast SSD
- Thunderbolt(Lightpeak)
- 4-8 cores Ivy Bridge CPUs

And I just hope that Bulldozer will come out w/ a BANG so prices will be lower!
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February 24, 2011 3:00:02 PM

Am i the only one this article and then rundown to anandtech to read their version? :S
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February 24, 2011 3:07:37 PM

notsogosuAm i the only one this article and then rundown to anandtech to read their version? :S


Probably not, but so far, you're the only person that seems to be impressed enough with themselves to post about it...
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February 24, 2011 3:59:55 PM

I love how they boast about AES 256-bit protection. I'm no expert, but considering the recent attacks on AES 256, I think think AES 128 is more secure.

http://eprint.iacr.org/2009/317
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February 24, 2011 5:01:31 PM

thanks for incorporating the SATA 3Gb/s configurations. i think there were some interesting numbers, at least when considering that while in 6Gb/s the drives preformed better, but when moved to 3Gb/s other 3Gb/s drives preformed better, still a bit tired from just waking up, ill go through it again later to see if i missed a reason for this happening.
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February 24, 2011 5:12:26 PM

I don't get it. Why do the C300's on Page 11 PCMark Vantage first, fourth and sixth charts have a score of zero? They can't be that bad, the 256MB is not a slow drive, especially on reads. No commentary on that, either, at least not on Page 11.
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February 24, 2011 5:15:18 PM

The price keeps coming down, but the die size is shrinking, and more layers of MLC put in.

I run a small business, and we run RAID right now for our database. SSD's look so tempting, but I'm really concerned about longevity in an actual live DB environment.

How well do these drives (Pro or otherwise) really hold up? SLC seems almost nonexistent at this point, are the newer MLC really that good, or do people just not use these in production environments???
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February 24, 2011 5:20:02 PM

hangfirew8 said:
I don't get it. Why do the C300's on Page 11 PCMark Vantage first, fourth and sixth charts have a score of zero? They can't be that bad, the 256MB is not a slow drive, especially on reads. No commentary on that, either, at least not on Page 11.


Page 11 - "Furthermore, we were unable to get the C300 to finish a complete run, which is why we lack a overall HDD Suite score." The overall score is based on the geometric average of the individual tests times a constant. The lack of a overall score stems from failing individual tests.
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February 24, 2011 5:20:50 PM

phate said:
The price keeps coming down, but the die size is shrinking, and more layers of MLC put in.

I run a small business, and we run RAID right now for our database. SSD's look so tempting, but I'm really concerned about longevity in an actual live DB environment.

How well do these drives (Pro or otherwise) really hold up? SLC seems almost nonexistent at this point, are the newer MLC really that good, or do people just not use these in production environments???


I'll look into that for you.
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February 24, 2011 5:23:28 PM

alidan said:
thanks for incorporating the SATA 3Gb/s configurations. i think there were some interesting numbers, at least when considering that while in 6Gb/s the drives preformed better, but when moved to 3Gb/s other 3Gb/s drives preformed better, still a bit tired from just waking up, ill go through it again later to see if i missed a reason for this happening.


The 3Gb/s drivers were always tested in the 6Gb/s ports. The only time we used the 3Gb/s ports were to force the 6Gb/s drives into a 3Gb/s configuration.
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February 24, 2011 5:54:01 PM

I appreciate the MTBF discussion, and the math is not lost on me. Like Phate, the burning question for me is how long can these drives realistically be expected to last under typical usage scenarios?

I have seen SSD products with >10% failure within the first month on Newegg's forums. Even though that is not conclusive, and possibly skewed, it is troubling, given that a failed drive can represent substantial loss of time getting back up and running, and possibly permanent loss of data/work/play. As far as I am concerned, the jury is still out on reliability and longevity of SSDs.
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February 24, 2011 6:10:11 PM

boletus said:
I appreciate the MTBF discussion, and the math is not lost on me. Like Phate, the burning question for me is how long can these drives realistically be expected to last under typical usage scenarios?

I have seen SSD products with >10% failure within the first month on Newegg's forums. Even though that is not conclusive, and possibly skewed, it is troubling, given that a failed drive can represent substantial loss of time getting back up and running, and possibly permanent loss of data/work/play. As far as I am concerned, the jury is still out on reliability and longevity of SSDs.


Well it is important to separate wear from reliability. You could have a drive that doesn't fail but uses up all its PE cycles (that is why write amp is so important). In the opposite scenario, the drive could completely fail because the controller or NAND device had a fab error. When we talk about MTBF, we are talking about reliability. This would be the equivalent of a HDD suddenly start suffering from motor and head errors (that dreaded click click).

I'll try and look into reliability and see if we can get some concrete answers.
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February 24, 2011 6:20:35 PM

boletusI appreciate the MTBF discussion, and the math is not lost on me. Like Phate, the burning question for me is how long can these drives realistically be expected to last under typical usage scenarios? I have seen SSD products with >10% failure within the first month on Newegg's forums. Even though that is not conclusive, and possibly skewed, it is troubling, given that a failed drive can represent substantial loss of time getting back up and running, and possibly permanent loss of data/work/play. As far as I am concerned, the jury is still out on reliability and longevity of SSDs.


Wondering which SSD's you speak of. I have had an OCZ core 2 fail on me within 3 months and I have another both bought black friday when they came out for 99 bux each. (30GB) one I beat to hell, half the paint is missing used it for USB storage medium, 40% and laptop hard-drive about 30% of the time since then, and a desktop hard drive (primary) for about 10% of the time. another 20% spent banging around the center console of my 02 WRX wagon in the Texas hot sun, (I define the car due to how much jostling a bit of spirited driving in an AWD car can create) I just took it out of the console a week ago and through it in a Core 2 duo 2GB RAM Sony Vaio laptop with windows 7. Woke that sucker up. and it hasn't had 1 hiccup.

What I'm trying to say here is, if it's going to fail I would think it will relatively quickly (within 4 months or so up to a year) if it was not a "lemon" it may last 20-100 years.
Out of the 5 I bought that day only one failed, although the other stories are not quite as colorful.
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February 24, 2011 6:27:55 PM

bto said:
Wondering which SSD's you speak of. I have had an OCZ core 2 fail on me within 3 months and I have another both bought black friday when they came out for 99 bux each. (30GB) one I beat to hell, half the paint is missing used it for USB storage medium, 40% and laptop hard-drive about 30% of the time since then, and a desktop hard drive (primary) for about 10% of the time. another 20% spent banging around the center console of my 02 WRX wagon in the Texas hot sun, (I define the car due to how much jostling a bit of spirited driving in an AWD car can create) I just took it out of the console a week ago and through it in a Core 2 duo 2GB RAM Sony Vaio laptop with windows 7. Woke that sucker up. and it hasn't had 1 hiccup.

What I'm trying to say here is, if it's going to fail I would think it will relatively quickly (within 4 months or so up to a year) if it was not a "lemon" it may last 20-100 years.
Out of the 5 I bought that day only one failed, although the other stories are not quite as colorful.


That has actually been the convention, to assume that there is an "infant mortality effect." According to the studies (see the links in the article), we actually know that doesn't occur with HDDs. The limited data that I've see on SSD (all NDA so I can't release it quite yet) also suggests that there is no infant mortality effect.
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February 24, 2011 6:45:44 PM

btoWondering which SSD's you speak of.

For example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... ,
which is not atypical.

ackuWell it is important to separate wear from reliability. You could have a drive that doesn't fail but uses up all its PE cycles (that is why write amp is so important). In the opposite scenario, the drive could completely fail because the controller or NAND device had a fab error. When we talk about MTBF, we are talking about reliability. This would be the equivalent of a HDD suddenly start suffering from motor and head errors (that dreaded click click).I'll try and look into reliability and see if we can get some concrete answers.


Of course both are important, but reliability is my biggest concern at this time. Thanks.
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February 24, 2011 6:51:47 PM

boletus said:
For example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... ,
which is not atypical.

Of course both are important, but reliability is my biggest concern at this time. Thanks.


I'm glad you raised the issue. I've long wondered this myself. Most people assume that because there are no moving parts, the failure rate is lower. However, this is just an assumption without any hard data. We know that mechanical doesn't mean less reliable -- i.e. first gen hybrid cars.
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February 24, 2011 6:57:17 PM

acku said:
That has actually been the convention, to assume that there is an "infant mortality effect." According to the studies (see the links in the article), we actually know that doesn't occur with HDDs. The limited data that I've see on SSD (all NDA so I can't release it quite yet) also suggests that there is no infant mortality effect.


Out of about 30 SSD's used in various deployments only 1 died, So I obviously don't have enough data to compile something of the scale that you can look at. In all honesty I think your right, but this infant mortality that we see may ghosting due to power fluctuations/surges, and also static discharges during installation or during upgrades. in fact It died when I re-implemented it so it is possible that may be a big factor, these are more susceptible to discharge than a regular HDD; Which I find DOA quite often, much more so than SSD's in general.

Static discharge can happen without you noticing many times, just because it doesn't jump, or the fact you couldn't feel it just means it's under 1000 volts and hadn't built up to a noticeable discharge. I find this same rate in RAM and flash drives.
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February 24, 2011 7:27:27 PM

bto said:
Out of about 30 SSD's used in various deployments only 1 died, So I obviously don't have enough data to compile something of the scale that you can look at. In all honesty I think your right, but this infant mortality that we see may ghosting due to power fluctuations/surges, and also static discharges during installation or during upgrades. in fact It died when I re-implemented it so it is possible that may be a big factor, these are more susceptible to discharge than a regular HDD; Which I find DOA quite often, much more so than SSD's in general.

Static discharge can happen without you noticing many times, just because it doesn't jump, or the fact you couldn't feel it just means it's under 1000 volts and hadn't built up to a noticeable discharge. I find this same rate in RAM and flash drives.


Well I can't speak off SSDs, but we know that for HDDs those ghosting effects had no impact. In the paper by Bianca and the subsequent Google paper they looked at thousands of drivers deployed at big data centers in huge clusters like the High Performance Computing Division at Los Alamos National Lab, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Google's paper was based on thousands of drives in its own lab. The drives they analyzed were deployed once then just monitored. Secondary variables (ghosting as you refer to it) were accounted for in the statistical analysis in both studies. Since we are talking about national labs and huge data centers, I'm ready to discount static discharges and other factors that may be an issue within the home.
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February 24, 2011 7:53:07 PM

this is basically the same price as getting 2 OCZ Vertex 2 and putting them in Raid 0..it's still way to expensive for me :( 
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February 24, 2011 7:53:58 PM

Yes, if it was a professional lab then, you can rule it out I'm sure google has them all strapped in to minimize such issues as they would become apparent rather quickly. Even in a small computer shop years ago I set up mats and straps wired to an isolated ground. As an Administrator, I keep one hand on the case (or elbow) during the installation and during any touching of the inside.

All that said, what is the issue based on your experience? Honestly I think they are 3-4 times more robust than a standard HDD about 20 times more robust than Maxtors (had to throw that one in there). Experience or opinion what is "your" verdict?
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February 24, 2011 8:15:58 PM

Why does the Vertex 2 beat the Vertex 3 when both are in a 3Gb/sec configuration? Specifcally in application loading using PCMark, the Vertex 2 wiped the floor with the Vertex 3. But then when the Vertex 3 is put into 6Gb/sec it gets an amazing score. I would think that if the Vertex 3 can get a great score while connected at 6Gb/sec it would max the bandwidth when connected at 3Gb/sec, but it is not the case. Any ideas why?
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February 24, 2011 8:21:17 PM

Given the numbers, I now feel a bit better about getting that Agility 2 120 for $139.
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February 24, 2011 8:58:30 PM

wayneepalmer said:
Given the numbers, I now feel a bit better about getting that Agility 2 120 for $139.


where did you buy that for $139?
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February 24, 2011 8:58:57 PM

BloodyBonzai said:
Why does the Vertex 2 beat the Vertex 3 when both are in a 3Gb/sec configuration? Specifcally in application loading using PCMark, the Vertex 2 wiped the floor with the Vertex 3. But then when the Vertex 3 is put into 6Gb/sec it gets an amazing score. I would think that if the Vertex 3 can get a great score while connected at 6Gb/sec it would max the bandwidth when connected at 3Gb/sec, but it is not the case. Any ideas why?


It's usually that they are tuned to a certain throughput, backwards compatibility sometimes can cause this.
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February 24, 2011 9:07:29 PM

Bigmac80 said:
where did you buy that for $139?


The current price for that drive is on the Egg is $219. Egg had a Gorilla Deal for 20% off of all SSD's (-$44 = $175 + shipping = $179). OCZ has a $40 rebate going (gets me to $139).
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February 24, 2011 9:08:56 PM

bto said:
Yes, if it was a professional lab then, you can rule it out I'm sure google has them all strapped in to minimize such issues as they would become apparent rather quickly. Even in a small computer shop years ago I set up mats and straps wired to an isolated ground. As an Administrator, I keep one hand on the case (or elbow) during the installation and during any touching of the inside.

All that said, what is the issue based on your experience? Honestly I think they are 3-4 times more robust than a standard HDD about 20 times more robust than Maxtors (had to throw that one in there). Experience or opinion what is "your" verdict?


I try to be agnostic. I get the sense that SSDs (in terms of reliability) have caught everyone a bit off guard because there is no data to draw conclusions from. We are still in the first/second generation, so there has hardly been enough time to collect relevant data. Everyone is basically playing the game of "SSDs should...." I'm interested in the raw numbers.
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February 24, 2011 9:24:23 PM

I understand your point, honestly, if it's built with good components and the build process is proven (which is what we are both watching) then the only other factor is NAND wear which in some implementations can be mathematically proven.

As they get better at building them, early adopters sometimes get the brunt of the issues. I'd like to think we are past that now that windows 7 plays nice with them among other maturing reasons; I still have an
Apple II E that the kids play with. Hell, it works great! The components used to make this were built to last. When you rule out mechanical failures, things are then based off of component quality. (Not that it's anything like it was when the Apple II E was made LOL)!
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February 24, 2011 9:27:11 PM

BloodyBonzai said:
Why does the Vertex 2 beat the Vertex 3 when both are in a 3Gb/sec configuration? Specifcally in application loading using PCMark, the Vertex 2 wiped the floor with the Vertex 3. But then when the Vertex 3 is put into 6Gb/sec it gets an amazing score. I would think that if the Vertex 3 can get a great score while connected at 6Gb/sec it would max the bandwidth when connected at 3Gb/sec, but it is not the case. Any ideas why?


bto hit the nail on the head. But to add to his explanation, there are so many variables we can't actually draw a definitive conclusion beyond saying using a Vertex 2 in x works better than Vertex 3 in y. There are so many cases where you can back a SSD into behaving a certain way.

We secure erase our drives before every test to limit the affects of garbage collection, but there are other issues specific to changing ports. Remember, the 6Gb/s and 3Gb/s ports have different controllers. I'm not even sure that the ports use the same driver AHCI driver. It is possible that the Vertex 3 was simply optimized to the 6Gb/s. Second PCMark, as we explained in our results, has a wide variance when we move to the C300, Vertex 3, and Vertex 3 Pro, and I suspect this has to do with the insanely high throughput compared to older drives. Furthermore, when PCMark sees a number that it deems odd, it just tosses it out the door rather than use it. How the host controllers prioritize requests with the CPU, all add additional variables to the the question of why.
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February 24, 2011 9:40:21 PM

A novel could be written as to why something benchmarks differently than it's "supposed to"

I've seen a weak power supply affect a benchmark negatively (not overclocked)

I've seen an overclocked cpu positively affect an SSD. Actually my results to this sparked OCZ to make a Vertex "Turbo"
When I found you could literally overclock your SSD via the port clock speed (around 8-10% increase anything else just wouldn't work). The SSD gets it's clock from the port
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February 24, 2011 10:01:44 PM

Article should say ...For (Hollywood) masses.
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February 24, 2011 10:10:11 PM

FloKid said:
Article should say ...For (Hollywood) masses.


I'll second that. However, technically, this is what OCZ considers the "near mainstream version" There should be an Agility 3 out at some point, but like the Vertex 3, it will be priced higher the the 3Gb/s version (Agility 2).
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February 24, 2011 10:12:45 PM

bto said:
A novel could be written as to why something benchmarks differently than it's "supposed to"

I've seen a weak power supply affect a benchmark negatively (not overclocked)

I've seen an overclocked cpu positively affect an SSD. Actually my results to this sparked OCZ to make a Vertex "Turbo"
When I found you could literally overclock your SSD via the port clock speed (around 8-10% increase anything else just wouldn't work). The SSD gets it's clock from the port


Ha. That novel would be a definite snooze. There would be so many footnotes; I'm sure we would clear an entire forest for enough paper.
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February 25, 2011 3:28:48 AM

I thought the $250 drives were supposed to be 120GB, not 100.
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February 25, 2011 3:45:54 AM

To expand on my previous comment. I think you got the size of the Pro confused with the regular drive. The Pro is the one available in 100GB.
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