Report: OCZ Prepping Launch of Vertex 5 SSD

[RedundantInk]

OCZ’s 5th Generation of high-performance Vertex SSDs may arrive towards the end of May 2013.

Report: OCZ Prepping Launch of Vertex 5 SSD : Read more

 

[ragenalien]

Meh, it's difficult to get excited about sata 3 SSD's anymore. Sure they're fast; I own a 840 pro myself, but they really can't get any faster until the next gen sata 4 makes it's debut.

 

[ragenalien]

Meh, it's difficult to get excited about sata 3 SSD's anymore. Sure they're fast; I own a 840 pro myself, but they really can't get any faster until the next gen sata 4 makes it's debut.

 

[universal remonster]

Meh, it's difficult to get excited about sata 3 SSD's anymore. Sure they're fast; I own a 840 pro myself, but they really can't get any faster until the next gen sata 4 makes it's debut.

Sure, if you're short sighted and all you care about is looking at benchmark numbers.. The rest of us will be happy with the move towards increased capacity at a lower $$/GB.

 

[excella1221]

Nice, can't wait for this. The Vertex 4 was unarguably phenomenal, I hope this one kicks off too.

 

[CaedenV]

Meh, it's difficult to get excited about sata 3 SSD's anymore. Sure they're fast; I own a 840 pro myself, but they really can't get any faster until the next gen sata 4 makes it's debut.

That is so not true at all!!! There is tons of room for throughput improvement even on high end SSDs!
As awesome as SSD tech is, we need to remember that it is a tech that is still relatively in it's infancy. Just because it blows HDDs out of the water does not mean that it is anywhere near reaching it's potential. I run 2 SSDs in my main rig in RAID0. It is phenomenal getting a full 1GB/s of peak performance... but truth be told my average throughput is ~600MB/s, and my minimum benchmark throughput is somewhere around 375MB/s. Modern drives do not have the same max/min disparity as my 'ancient' Agility 3 SSDs, but they still have a long way to go to have drives that simply run flat out on any workload.

Other than raw performance there are power issues with running high end SSDs which need to be addressed as well. If you look at modern SSD power usage you will find it has been creeping up over the last few years, and now most mid to high end drives actually take the same or MORE power to run than their HDD counterparts. You still get the advantage of a much better 'race to sleep' as SSDs can better feed the processor so that it can be done and switch off faster, but those savings are beginning to be eaten into by the simple running of the drive itself. Moving to better chipsets, and better die shrinks will go a long way to getting power usage back down without sacrificing performance.
Hopefully they will get it down (and the price down) so that we can start seeing true SSD tech implemented into things like tablets before long, rather than having them rely on what is essentially a glorified SD card.

Another big issue with SSDs is their reliance on TRIM and other old garbage collection techniques. There is nothing particularly wrong with TRIM for home users where there are often long stretches of down time, but server system in much bigger enterprise environments (such as Netflix or Google) never really get much in the way of down time, and so they never get a real chance to run TRIM, which then degrades performance over time. This is something that Intel has worked a lot on, and which other SSD manufacturers are quickly trying to find ways around. Running GC in the background during use can help get more consistent performance all of the time, which will translate into massive business sales, which turns into larger volume production, which turns into lower prices for all of us.

And price is obviously the other big factor here. I picked up my first SSD for my wife's system almost 2 years ago when the old Solid 3 line hit $1/GB (that drive then died while under warranty and I got a free upgrade to a Vetrex 3 for her system), then I picked one up for my rig when the Agility 3 line hit $1/GB about a year ago, and then my 2nd Agility 3 on a crazy sale for $0.50/GB a few months later... but we are not seeing much in the way of SSDs for 50 cents per GB anymore, and higher performing drives are still sitting just under $1/GB. A good die shrink should go a long way to seeing prices come down a bit further which should help everyone on the consumer side while preserving some profits for manufacturers.

Yet another issue with today's SSDs is the 512GB limit imposed by modern controllers. Yes, you can purchase SSDs larger than 512GB, but the price is sky high because you have to pay for multiple controllers, plus some sort of on-board RAID chip to get them to work together. Newer chipsets coming out later this year should allow for 1TB of addressable space on each controller, which will cause the price of 1TB SSDs to fall in line with $/GB of normal drives, and also allow for 2TB SSDs to be made with an internal RAID scheme. Getting these bigger drives out the door is important for server applications where a minimum storage requirement is needed, and in things like laptops where you only have a single drive bay available.


Anywho, point being, there is lots of room for improvement in SSDs right now before we start complaining that SATA3 is holding drives back. A move to SATA 4 will cause the exact same problem that we have with SSDs in a RAID0 configuration. You will get very fast maximum throughput available... but the chipset will still hold 90% of your workload back to SATA2 levels like they do now. There is tons of room for improvement while we wait for SATA4 to be released in 2+ years.

 

[PlanesFly]

@CaedenV Did you pull that power consumption out of thin air? Dead Wrong. Let's take even 1 easy example. WD 1TB Caviar Black 7.8w Idle/ 8.4w seek. Samsung 840 Pro (since you said high end) 4.37w under random write. Thats also 1/2 the consumption genius.

 

[mapesdhs]

(tried to post this hours ago, couldn't until now due to forum glitches...)


Re universal-remonster's comment, it's thus a pity (from the report) there won't
be a 1TB Vertex5, as that would have been very interesting. I've had a number of
commercial users asking me recently about high-capacity non-Enterprise SSDs, and
I'd be interested too, as I could replace the last two mechanical drives in my SGI,
one of which does generate quite a lot of heat (Seagate 15K.7 600GB 15K SAS). It
would also be nice to finally have the option of a fairly dense storage setup, eg.
6 x 1TB SSD in a Thermaltake 5.25" 6-bay case.

As for SATA3 bus saturation, sure, sequential speeds max it out, but that's not the
key to a desktop-fast SSD. 4K random R/W, compressed vs. uncompressed - these
are the metrics for which no SSD has yet to max out a SATA3 link; loot at the AS-SSD
results for 4K random read in the Charts. For those with database tasks or code
compilation, etc. there's still plenty of scope for SSD improvement. I just wish they'd
get on with it and start using something a lot more impressive like holo-crystals. Seems
like commercial products are still far behind the research announcements from labs
made 10 years ago. Anyone remember the polymer device known as the Trillion Bit
Cube? Where did all that stuff go...

Ian.

 

[mapesdhs]

CaedenV writes:
> And price is obviously the other big factor here. ...

If anything I'd say prices have gone up in the last few months. The steady decline in SSD pricing in late 2012
completely ground to a halt in Jan/13, at least here in the UK anyway. I was looking forward to seeing any half-
decent 250GB/256GB SSD go below 100 UKP, but instead the Samsung 830 vanished and then general pricing
rose to silly levels (Vertex4 256GB is especially bizarre now). Some of it is currency variation, but the price
changes began before the UKP went splat.

So I gave up waiting and just bought some 120GB Vertex3 MAX IOPS which were on offer, and bagged a few
other models from eBay including a Vector 128GB for 75. I also managed to get two Samsung 840 250GB
Basics for 110 UKP each with free shipping, for which I consider myself lucky given the typical price now. How
strange that atm 135+ UKP for a an 840 250GB is considered normal when last year the 830 256GB (faster)
was as low as 110 UKP. Likewise, the prices of 64GB-type SSDs are really daft atm, and 128s haven't dropped
anything like as much as they should.


> ... drives are still sitting just under $1/GB. ...

IMO what's happened is that the dealers & manufacturers have worked out that they just don't need to sell
250/256GB SSDs below a certain price point in order for them to sell perfectly well. Hence, the pricing drops
stopped and have actually gone up. Demand for SSDs was predicted to shoot up this year as their adoption
in generic PCs greatly increased, so they're going to sell their stock even if enthusiasts don't bother because
they don't like the pricing. Ditto for 64/128GB units. No need to sell them cheap, they're selling just fine even
if the prices are whacko.

I think it's a big mistake. With the huge surge in tablets/phones/etc., re the big drop in PC sales, the higher
prices of desktop parts this year is probably going to harm builder sales badly. Many months on, the 3570K
still looks too expensive to me, while the 3770K is just crazy (why bother if one isn't going to replace the
awful TIM? 2500K/2600K/etc. make much more sense, IF one can find them), and don't get me started on
the 6-cores. RAM prices are rising, buying Win7/64/Pro on its own costs way too much, and so on.

If I'm right, this money gouging behaviour will make desktop sales even worse.


> Anywho, point being, there is lots of room for improvement in SSDs right now ...

I suppose the other thing they need to address is write endurance, given the lower no. of cycles possible
as the process size shrinks.


> ... There is tons of room for improvement while we wait for SATA4 to be released in 2+ years.

I'll be impressed when I see the 4K random read charts showing numbers an order of magnitude
better than they are atm.

Ian.

 

[iamtheking123]

I'll wait for samsung or intel to make an SSD with the same specs + reliability.

 

[ron baker]

I want same capacity at lowest price ... they are stopping production of 64gb ssd as they dont perform and they cost too much. Sweet spot is now easily 128 and moving towards 256gb. maybe they fear samsungs new combi drive ssd/hdd.