OCZ Onyx SSDs Start Under $100
On Wednesday OCZ Technology Group, Inc. revealed its new line of Onyx SATA II 2.5-inch solid state drives. The new series targets customers looking for both high performance and "exceptional value," with prices starting just under $100 for the 32 GB model. This should be ideal for consumers leaving the traditional HDD scene and wanting to test the SSD waters without sinking a load of funds into the new technology.
OCZ's new Onyx SSDs are MLC-based and use the Indilinx Amigos controller. The series also features read speeds of up to 125MB/s, write speeds of up to 70MB/s, 64MB of on-board cache, 3.0Gb/s interface, and TRIM support, rounding out an attractive-yet-cheap package.
“Designed to offer the best of both worlds, the new OCZ Onyx SSD delivers the speed and reliability of solid state storage to mainstream consumers at an aggressive price point that makes the technology more accessible to customers who want to take advantage of all the benefits of the SSDs without incurring the high cost normally associated with the solution," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group.
This may be the way to go for Windows XP users ready to upgrade their laptops, tossing out the clunky HDD for this super-fast 32GB drive. Granted that's not the best storage capacity for downloading media or installing over-stuffed games, it should at least provide an impressive performance boost on the go.
You could install several Windows installations on a drive of this size, what the h4ck are you smoking n00b? with 32 gigs I could nicely install both Win7 and Xp with adequate room for page files and tons of pr0n
Reason - It's equivalent to reporting a new car for sale and stating how big the brakes are, but neglecting to say how fast it can stop.
Randoms please.
and 32GB is not enough. While it can work bot booting windows. it doesn't help for much else.
wow so windows boots in about 10 seconds instead of the usual 15 seconds (windows XP boots in about 15 seconds for me on my 1TB western digital black drive)
If I get a SSD, I want enough space for the OS to make it boot faster and I also want to be able to install my games on it. A ssd is great for gaming as you can load maps faster. (great for games like battlefield 2 where if you load first, you get first dibs on the jets and tanks and stuff)
I also want to improve the loading speeds and responsiveness of programs like photoshop, maya 3d and my various video and audio editors
(when working on a large project, you can easily wind up with image files that are multiple GB in size each and I will have multiple files in the 1-3GB range open at the same time in more than 1 program (especially since many of the programs that I use can detect changes in the file and update to reflect the new changed, I will have multiple editing apps opened, each opening some of the same file and each doing their own memory and hard drive caching of the data. This is not a easy problem to fix with RAM, you need a fast hard drive.
my current solution is to put their scratch disks each on their own hard drive (photoshop gets use of the 1TB drive, and the other apps get use of my 120GB, 500GB 80GB and 60GB drive)
I would love to have photoshop, maya3d and adobe aftereffects use a SSD while also being installed on one, but there just too small and large ones cost too much
Agreed, but still far better than just a few months ago! The light at the end of the SSD tunnel is getting bigger
Overall I find this encouraging, other drive manufacturers will take notice and build more products at lower price points. Its time for SSD to hit mainstream. Even Western digital is getting involved, although I don't think their claims of better reliability will equal good sales. Not at the current prices they're charging for lackluster performance anyways..
I too have a modest boot drive, I have Win7 x64, Office, avg, firefox, thunderbird, and a bunch of other small apps plus Heroes V and all the expansion packs. 15 Gb free of 40GB. Turned off the usual stuff and moved my page file to my data drive.
My modest 40 Gb Intel SSD-v with its measly 35Mbps write speed scores a 7.3 on WEI. It also performs well in gaming and other real world tests. I paid $100.
A $100 drive that kicks the snot outta any mechanical drive looks like a good investment to me. And its not about booting into windows faster, its about faster overall system performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220455
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139134
Both have free shipping and better performance than this new ocz line
pass.
Also as matt87_50 points out, even the sequential speeds aren't that impressive, in particular the write speeds. A 7200.4 has much better capacity, decent performance, and is dirt cheap, for example. In the 2.5" form factor, anyway. It would be a lot more competitive in a 1.8" form factor though! Plus there are a few things that even a basic SSD like this does have over a HDD, like access time and power consumption. The real competition for Onyx is other SSDs on the market - including other OCZ drives.
At $100, this Onyx drive will have to compete against their own Agility and Vertex series (especially if you look at the MIRs on those drives), and even Intel's entry-level 40GB X-25V is only $30 more.
No. No no no. C'mon really... Will someone please smack me in the face and show me this VALUE!!
OCZ Onyx 32GB - 3.13/GB
OCZ Solid 2 Series 60GB - 2.65/GB and right now after rebate 2.15/GB
Heck the Egg even has the Agility series 30GB drives for $89.99 right now after rebate. Both of these are much faster drives than the Onyx as well. I vote that no drive manufacturer be aloud to attach the word value to any product that is not at least $2/GB. I'm sorry but a $100 price point does not automatically make it a 'value'. What next? a Super Value $40 10GB SSD?
The fact that you said you "could" do it doesn't mean nor imply that you have done it. Windows 7 default installation is more than 5GB in size. Add Microsoft Office or whatever floats your boat for third party applications for another 1GB or more. Tack on hibernation file typically 1GB or more and virtual memory file's maximum size of 4GB in 32bit mode or a lot higher in 64bit mode. My personal Windows 7 machines swap file for virtual memory ranges from 8GB to 12GB on most days. Combine that with the degraded performance of flash memory when you pass the 50% capacity mark.
Why do you think its hard to find netbooks with 16-32GB SSD's when Windows 7 came out? It's about capacity and performance. Average consumer will use up 32GB in just surfing the internet in roughly two months. They will not use the built in "Disk Cleanup" utilities nor third party ones on a consistent basis unless they are getting messages about the hard drive being to full.
As far as a GUIless Linux, have you seen some of the distros out there? The base install might be 5GB for Ubuntu/Fedora/insert your flavor here. Once you start to add on other graphical apps, I've seen Ubuntu with MythTV installed and no media balloon up to 20GB for all the support files and such.
So please refrain from calling someone a "n00b" before you actually know their expertise in the subject matter. Lay off the l33t speak please; your lack of maturity and inexperience is showing there.