OCZ Vertex 2 Review - Huge Improvements with SandForce

admin — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 01:30:09 +0000

@vt: I totally agree. It’s ridiculous to tout them as a new generation when in fact they will perform worse (in the long run) than older devices! We have gotten used to that a smaller production process is always beneficial, but not so for SSDs, apparently. This whole marketing strategy is very misleading.

OCZ Vertex 2 Review - Huge Improvements with SandForce

vt — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:39:00 +0000

WARNING !
Lately OCZ started shipping OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs with “new generation” 25nm NAND memory.
As expected and despite deceiving statements from OCZ, this “new generation” is actually WAY WORSE than the previous 34nm. It has only 3000 erase cycles compared with 5000 for the previous 34 nm parts !
It means that under constant load your SSD will last only 60% of time it would for the previous generation. If you know that it is using 25nm NAND and see that its price is higher than 60% of the previous generation (older prices before 2011), it is definitely NOT WORTH BUYING !

OCZ Vertex 2 Review - Huge Improvements with SandForce

vt — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:54:49 +0000

There is also a way more reliable OCZ-manufactured SSD Vertex 2 EX, which is way more reliable version of Vertex 2 SSD build using SLC NAND parts. In terms of performance it is going to be most likely the same as the cheap and not so reliable MLC mainstream part, but in terms of reliability it is way more superior (and way more expensive).
http://www.ocztechnology.com/res/manuals/OCZ_Vertex2EX_Product_sheet_1.pdf

Even with its high price, its long-term maintenance expenses under heavy enterprise tasks load are actually lower than those of its “cheap” MLC-based counterparts.

OCZ Vertex 2 Review - Huge Improvements with SandForce

Doug B — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:47:52 +0000

The latest Sandforce drives are the best MLC consumer drives so far IMO. I didn’t hesitate going with one of these instead of the semi-reliable realSSD.

OCZ Vertex 2 Review - Huge Improvements with SandForce

vt — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:31:48 +0000

It seems that that SSD is using Intel/Micron 34nm NAND chips “29f64G08camdb” of “mass storage” class (lowest lifetime and cheapest ones (“F” letter in the marking), replace 64 with the actual capacity chips used in the particular model) with erase cycles limited to 5000 cycles, with total of 8-16 chips per SSD (16 for 120 gb model).

Total amount of data which can be written on this drive before its sure failure is (capacity)*5000. Divide that by 2 for more realistic value.

Its SandForce controller enables very decent performance within the (short under heavy load) lifetime of this SSD, which is expected to be shorter than the lifetime for those drives with DRAM buffer (due to higher amount of actual NAND read/write operations).
Also, it lacks a decent on-board capacitor, which would prevent power-related failures.

Hence the conclusion about their marketing strategy is that they intended to introduce a high-performance “mass model” SSD for usual consumers. Sounds like “performance over everything at minimum price”, though it can possibly be an excellent choice for notebook and netbook computers.

OCZ Vertex 2 Review - Huge Improvements with SandForce

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:13:41 +0000

Thanks Daniel for the comment. And I agree it’s weird. I’ve also seen other tests and noticed the discrepancy. The new SandForce controller is nearly always better than Intel’s, but for some reason this particular system didn’t see it that way. For what it’s worth, I’m personally convinced that a long-term test would knock out both the Intel and Crucial drives in terms of “enduring performance” (an aspect that the RealSSD in particular has had problems with.)

OCZ Vertex 2 Review - Huge Improvements with SandForce

daniel watkins — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:45:55 +0000

The PC mark vantage benchmark results are very very interesting. I thought the vertex 2 (and all sandforce-1200 controller SSDs) really went beyond the Indilinx controller and Intel. From all the reviews I have seen, you are the only one that does not show the Vertex 2 as having dominant random read/write values (pcmark)