...now let's wait what Indilinx has learned from the Barefoot fiasco. The performance looks good - so does the performance of the competition. The only things that matter now are 1) reliability, 2) price and 3) performance over time.
I work at quite a large computer shop, and we sell a heap of OCZ drives. Unfortunately we see 12-14% of these come back compared to 2-4% for out corsair force 3 and Silicon Power drives, until this works its self out, I will neither buy or recommend a ocz drive.
Comparing last gen SSD with this Gen of SSD is hardly fair. But I guess Vertex 3 series had suffered earlier this year from a firmware bug, but it''s solved now. Should be smooth sailing from now. I would probably get Vertex 3 over Octane though.
Definitely going to wait for reliability results before I jump back onto OCZ. They still have the best performance / $ but that has little meaning when data security is at risk. Was hoping after yesterday's preview that you would have more than just the 512GB drive benched :( , I hope the speed doesnt degrade too much going down to 256 and 128
I would love to see a lot more tests runs on SSDs with less storage. Many of the drives have higher performance in the higher capacity models, and it's pretty obvious that your even your above average tech savvy user isn't going to be dishing out one thousand dollars for the 512GB version of the drive.
You should perhaps try to keep all of the tests in the same size range (IE, test all 120/128GB drives, all 250/256GB drives, etc in a single batch).
Anand, do you have any insight into how the SSD industry's volume breakdown goes WRT size?
I would be shocked if drives > 128GB made up more than 5% of shipments of consumer-class SSDs. I realize that hardware vendors want their product seen in the best possible light, but this 512GB drive might move a couple thousand units total globally whereas the 128GB version might see a couple orders of magnitude more.
I echo both the request-for-info-on/suspicion of the breakdown in shipments between 128gb models and 512gb models. I also very much echo the desire for more reviews of 128gb drives.
I get this is what you get sent, but one of the reasons I love Anandtech is that you guys will actually play hardball with the manufacturers. I'm not telling you to refuse to review 512/256gb drives unless you're sent a 128gb model too, but at the same time I doubt you'd only review Extreme Edition CPUs or dual-GPU video cards.
Thanks a bunch Anand, it's amazing how the perception for OCZ has changed, I remember the days when it was a "stay away from" company. Personally I still haven't bought an OCZ product after getting stuck with dead RAM modules (one outright, one with errors) years ago and having no recourse.
Still, competition is good, and OCZ has done a lot to bring prices down for SSDs. Hope they succeed in the long term. I was also really tentative about the Indilux acquisition, but so far it's a definite success.
Well I do not know how much it has changed overall I would say I still have a negative view of OCZ. They just seem to be a decent marketing machine but they put out alot of garbage. They constantly have sales on bad products which people jump on to try and then get burned. Right now and for months their SSDs which have reliability and firm ware issues are all going on sale for hard to resist prices. I had ram from them that while it still works had a sticker that was so thick it had to be removed in order to fit in the slots. Of course that was on sale too which is why I tried it. Instead of really fixing problems or avoiding them they tend to just drop prices and sell more of it. We also just went through the whole different slower nand on the same part fiasco.
Ah, ok. As someone looking into buying a new SSD soon, I sure would like to see how the 128GB version pairs up vs other SSDs in the same range. Hopefully you will extend the review at some point if you get different models :P
hum, still seem to like the vertex 3 better. This could be good, but the other day newegg had a nice sale for the vertex 3 120gb max iops for 150. Really cannot beat that. I think the key though is benchmarks are getting overrated because these drives are so fast especially compared to hard drives. They need to have a reliability chart, that would be lol. I know I went through 4 vertex 1 drives before ocz upgraded me to vertex 2 so I am somewhat hesitant.
Given that the vast majority of people (according to top sellers at NewEgg) buy drives in the 60 to 128 GB range, it seems odd that they're rarely represented in benchmarks. It'd be interesting to know what percentage of their sales are 512GB drives.
"OCZ sent us a 512GB version with sixteen NAND packages and four 8GB die per package. We typically don't see any interleaving benefits beyond two die per package, so I'd expect similar performance between the 512GB drive and the 256GB version (despite the significant difference in specs)"
What a strange thing to say. Do you really mean that you think that despite OCZ quoting a 270MB/s sequential write speed for the 256GB model (vs. 400MB/s for the 512GB model), that the two sizes will actually have the same sequential write speed?
If so, I'd be willing to be a lot of money with you that you are wrong.
The only reason I said that is because I wasn't really able to hit OCZ's "400MB/s" in our Iometer tests. Instead I got 280MB/s, which is closer to what OCZ specs the 256GB version at.
I'm 100% ok with being wrong and I'll be sure to point it out if I am in the next review :)
But you measured 395 MB/s for the 512GB Octane sequential write with AS-SSD.
It seems that the Octane sequential write speed varies a lot (other review sites have measured 348 MB/s with AS-SSD). Maybe it depends a lot on the block size, or on the size of the test file (span), or on whether the SSD is in a used or fresh state.
I think it just shows how Random Read is EXTREMELY important to Real world workloads. Since we have already establish Random Write over 40 - 50MB/s doesn't make any difference, And Seq Read Write matter a lot less then Random Read.
So while hopefully pulling Seq Read Write Further until we reach the same point of the curve as Random Write, which should be fairly easy, SSD needs to Significantly improve Random Read
Anand - why don't you also test Random Read with a queue depth of 32? I agree that QD32 isn't as important as below-10s, but I don't quite understand why there is no QD32 Random Read but a QD32 Random Write?
Anand always gets his GiB / GB wrong. I don't think I have seen him get it entirely right in any article. So I tend to ignore his mistakes now. But you are correct that his NAND flash capacity row is wrong in this article. He wrote "GB" when he should have written "GiB".
I was just responding to the line where you said the user capacity is 443.5 GiB (no, it is 476GiB, Anand at least got that right). Anyway, I think we are in agreement.
I'm not sure if the OCZ name is really recovering. I have purchased many of the Vertex 30GB and Vertex 2 40GB drives for workstations in my organization as well as OCZ RAM. I had an ongoing fiasco on getting the RMA'd RAM back. In addition about 10% of the Vertex 30GB's have failed and 2 of the Vertex 2 40GB's that were purchased about 4 months ago just failed today. As soon as my supplier can get a contract with Kingston or SanDisk SSD's, I believe that I will switch over. OCZ was always good for my personal PC, but in large volumes for the organization that I work for, they fall way short.
...from OCZ's 3-series drives (Vertex, Agility, etc.). They were basically inoperable for a large chunk of their client base, and even after seven months now, although their current firmware is a vast improvement, issues still persist for some. Couple that with the dismissive (and sometimes worse) attitude displayed by their 'customer service', and you have a company with a badly-damaged reputation. I'll be steering clear of them for the foreseeable future, particularly with so many comparably-priced options with far better stability available from their competitors.
In all honesty OCZ as a company has never impressed me. I never found their tweaked RAM to be all that great. It was a niche product that eventually made them a lot of money when review sites hyped it but the performance gains were really more in benchmarks than in system performance.
Then OCZ moved on to PSUs. As history has shown this has been a mixed bag for them too. Lots of QC and design issues from their suppliers didn't help. Then they bought PCPC to try and figure out how to produce quality PSUs. Today they still have a mixed bag of PSUs under the OCZ brand with only PCPCs stuff always be top quality.
Now OCZ is flooding the market with SSDs. Needless to say all SSD suppliers have had issues with the immature tech they have been dumping in the market for naive consumers to gobble up. There has been a pretty high price to pay for being naive and jumping on these half-baked SSDs, especially OCZ's.
It would appear that OCZ is trying to stay one step ahead of the competition with all sorts of variations in SSDs be it SandForce based, Revo or now Octane. This "shotgun approach" may work for sales but as we know, OCZ's SSD quality and compatibility resembles that of their RAM and PSUs... NOT very inspiring.
So the watch word is WAIT and let other folks be UNPAID Beta testers on these half-baked products - as Anand so rightly suggested.
A little correction to your claim that OCZ is becoming jack of all trades, practically failure at all of them.
Almost ALL of OCZ new lines of PSUs have been garnering really great reviews over reputable review sites like Jonnyguru and Hardwaresecrets. Personally I'm running an OCZ StealthXStream II 600w and I did my review searching, seemed good, it's running my rig excellently. 80+ Cert which actually meets bronze level!
Newest lines: ZX, Z, ZT, ZS series. I recall seeing ZS reviews, ZX reviews and ZT reviews all glowing, >9/10 ratings on Jonnyguru!
PSUs doing well, their SSD lines are suffering granted. The particular Vertex Plus line got crippled by data corruption issues when used with SATA I, instead of Sata II or III aka, lower than Sata 3GB/S standard.
They didn't loudly warn people about it nor did they loudly advertise the fix which was included in the 3.55 firmware update. I helped my roommate get one and it works great but I had to research and double check to see if all the 50%+ negative reviews on NewEgg were because of a controllable issue. It was true! And now his netbook is lightning fast.
Just because of late OCZ's PSUs have improved, doesn't mean that they have resolved their QC/design issues any more than fixing one SandForce BSOD issues means SSDs are now free of reliability and compatibility issues. I just call it like it is and OCZ has and continues to have a very checkered history on product quality.
Corsair has also had issues with their PSUs, SSDs and closed loop coolers. This is what happens when companies rush crap out the door for quick profits without doing proper qualification of the goods. As long as "enthusiasts" buy this half-baked crap and make these companies huge profits, that's what they will continue to deliver - crap.
True. Everything you say is true. You know how emphasizing the bad without talking about anything good tends to give people the wrong ideas about how things really are.
If OCZ's PSUs continue to be good from here on out, then their past is still checkered but they've spent enough effort to show they're good. Which we're seeing if they will do.
It's not about being right or wrong but whether or not if people who don't know much who read in can really get the same sense of "it as it really is". I wanted to correct you a little bit to clarify that PSU lines can possibly be improving.
To be perfectly fair OCZ would not be at the top of my list for any product at the moment. Maybe five years down the road they will be selling reliable, trouble-free products, but right now I wouldn't touch their stuff. Same goes for Corsair other than their RAM. You couldn't pay me to use a half-baked Asus mobo either. All of this stuff is rushed out the door for profit before it's ready for prime time, IME.
Unfortunately the PC industry is rifle with crap products - because people are naive enough to buy them.
Oh yeah? My stealthxstream blew in a spectacular manner 6 months after I purchased it and it filled my whole house with that burnt electronics smell that you can never seem to get out of your nose.
That combined with the nonexistent support I received for a set of DDR3 dims that required lowering the speed and upping the voltages every few months has me avoiding OCZ for the 12 months Anand spoke of at all costs.
I didn't even attempt to rma my power supply.
How many people have decided just to junk their hardware after being nickeled out of a manufacturers rebate or hounded on by ocz support for months with useless questions, I don't know. And we'll probably never know.
Great review Anand, reading your comments on passing up on this drive for use on OS X makes me wonder if those hacks that supposedly allow non-Apple SSDs to use Trim actually work. I've been using an Intel G2 160 GB SSD in my 2010 13" MBP for over a year now and I've done the hack but I've never seen any testing to confirm that it actually works. I would love to see some testing on this as real Trim support would open up a lot of SSD options for OS X.
Surely you'd notice if your enabling OS X TRIM on a (non-Sandforce) SSD wasn't working, at least unless you had a quite large amount of spare capacity to start with. Even then you'd eventually start reusing storage and would see a slowdown.
I think it's worth making clear that although OS X only turns on TRIM by default for Apple supplied SSDs, it's trivial to enable it for third party units. It also seems reasonable to suppose that anyone motivated to install their own SSD on a Mac would also know to do that.
We're currently running four of our Macs with SSDs, two laptops and an Xserve that I ordered that way, plus a Mac Pro that I retrofitted.
Would have really liked to see a throughput vs transfer size for this drive :( some of us move around large compressed movies for editing and i'd like to know how the octane fairs against the m4 in such cases.
also, where is the avg access time, and max latency?? could also be good points to have about a new controller!
Thanks for the article. That was quite interesting hearing about your personal interactions with OCZ and your perceptions. Of course, the number crunching data is always appreciated as well!
I'm not sure they've ever "turned a new leaf"... ? Their SSDs also have issues which is why people should WAIT for 6 months or so to see how many firmware updates are required and if they actually fix all of the OCZ SSD Octane issues discovered.
Which SSD do you use for your personal computer at home Anand ? or i guess the real question is if you had to purchase an SSD with your own cash..which would you go for?
My personal system(s) all use SSDs I recommend. It's a part of the review process to be honest. I put in months of use case testing on top of the normal review to help me formulate exactly these types of opinions.
I've got both the Intel SSD 510 and Samsung SSD 830 in my main work computer at this point. If I had to spend money on one right now it'd probably be the Samsung.
There have been lots of issues in both the OCZ and Corsair forums when they get over-protective of even mentioning a competitors brand/product. I understand the challenges and bickering that can occur in these forums but the moderation of these forums leaves a LOT to be desired IME and is often counter-productive to supporting the brand.
Components returns rates - SSD's (page 7), Memory (page 4) If i'm reading this article right, I see from the stats provided by Behardware that OCZ still have very poor return rates for their SSD drives currently at 4.2%. In contrast Intel has a ultra low 0.1% return rate whilst Corsair (their nearest competitor) has only 2.9% fail rate. I appreciate this could be attributed to the controller bug nightmare that seemed to drag on forever but how do they explain why other competitor brands, using the same chip, seemed to have no problems at all? In addition to this why their memory return rates are the highest to date at 6%?
If these stats are to be believed then OCZ product failure rates are still not very reassuring, especially when you consider the prices of their products and all the consumer hasstle when dealing with component failures. Intel and Kingston seem to be the better bet at this time.
You need to carefully check the dates on that data. It takes a while for this kind of data to trickle in, so you are mostly looking at returns that were sold about a year ago.
I don't think anandtechs claims about a turn around took place in the last year.
OCZ has a low rank in most areas it plays in. This reminds me of the fiasco with the different nand in the same product for OCZ and it seemed that alot of people were unhappy with how anandtech was dealing with that. IMO OCZ still has a bad name and I do not touch anything they make unless it is significantly less expensive and reviews fine. I guess the turn around is that OCZ was worse than terrible back then. The amazing thing is that being a bad company seems to pay off because OCZ is aquiring major players in multiple fields meaning they must be making money I guess.
Sigh. I did not say that OCZ stats will look better for parts sold after April 1, 2011. They may very well look worse. I was just pointing out that the data he was looking at may not reflect what he thought it did. For one thing, it will include very little of the SF22XX BSOD issues.
What a great article. Not only a good technology review, but a great story about the transformation of OCZ. The perspective of this article could only be told by Anand because it was his own story and experience. This was a fantastic piece of writing that gripped me, interested me, and left me feeling good about OCZ. Great job!
This drive is very slow and relies poorly if you compare it with the Plextor px-m3s. In fact, that drive is probably the best SSD on the market yet Anandtech has never reviewed a single Plextor drive. It comes with a 5 year warranty, and uses a marvel controller. The specs for the 128GB alone are Random Read (IOPS 4K) 70,000, Random Write (IOPS 4K), 50,000 which hands down owns this drive and probably the Crucial M4 variant as well. Yet there has not been a single Plextor review, sadface. Note, Plextor also does a 20 hour burn-in on all drives. Also I remember reading the octane uses exclusively designed nand scaled for capacity at the cost of reliability therefore having much shorter lifespan than competition. This is a positive step for OCZ though.
It would be useful to see a proper review of the Plextor PX-M3 SSD. Perhaps Plextor hasn't shipped any review drives yet as I don't see any online reviews for them.
The Dutch site appears to have tested an MP2 model not the M3S - unless Plextor is using odd model numbering in Europe?
The test data showed the MP2 to be faster in some benches and slower in others. I think we'll need to see Anandtech's or StorageReview.com results to get a clear picture on SSD performance for the M3S.
I'm not so interested in speed as I am in reliability and compatibility. I have no interest in being an Un-Paid beta tester for PC companies.
It turns out that the MP2 is not the M3S. SR reviewed the MP2 and it's a middle-of-the pack SSD based on performance. The M3S may actually be slower based on the specs Plextor is quoting. The M3S may be geared more toward enterprise?
I echo the echo about seeing more smaller capacity SSD reviews. I personally have one 120 GB Intel , one 128 GB Samsung 470 and two 128 GB Plextor SSDs. I am very happy with them but would love to see all the technical stuff you folks here and Anandtech extract from this gear.
I am also interested in percentage of drive sizes shipping to consumers (IE: what capacitie(s) are consumers buying most and ratio of brand to units shipped for sale, if at all possible).
I have stayed away from OCZ like it was the next coming of the plague. As a matter of fact, 1) I posted recently on another article I wouldn't touch OCZ until they could make a reliable drive and prove it and... 2) When someone around me started talking Sandforce and OCZ I would run. Your 12 month idea of watching and waiting for reliability results is right along the lines of my thinking.
Other than those requests, thanks for a great article. It was so interesting, the wife is annoyed I stayed up to finish reading! =O I had better order those roses, come up with a real good verse for the card and get the dinner reseverations ready at some place we can't afford! If I didn't leep doing this, I could afford some 512 GB drives!
Hopefully a year from now SSDs will be reliable and trouble free. Right now they ain't worth the hassles IMO. Marvel and Samsung controller based SSDs hold a lot more interest for me than SandForce or Indilinx, so we'll see how their reliability turns out.
"Most of my suggestions were obvious, just to go above and beyond the call of duty in taking care of his customers and our readers. He agreed to do everything on the list, with one exception."
I bought a $220 Vertex 3 Max IOPS 120GB a couple weeks or so ago. It is my first SSD. I had to save up for some time to have enough to get the drive without starving for a while (I'm a grad student), so you can understand that it was a big deal for me.
All I got for my trouble was a lemon out of the box. I couldn't return the drive to Newegg because I had applied for a rebate already, so I was left to deal with OCZ directly. They took two days to respond to my "Trouble Ticket", and replied with directions to update the firmware and secure erase the drive (both things I'd already done before contacting them). After my response, their next contact came another two days later, telling me my RMA request was accepted and that they'd pass my info on to the RMA department, who will issue me an RMA number and then I can send the drive back. It's been five days since then now and I still haven't heard anything.
Also, I have to pay for shipping now to send the drive back to them. To top things off, until they get the drive back, they won't ship me a new one, with the only alternative being that they charge me for a new drive on my credit card and then refund me later. This, however, does nothing for me, since I don't *have* a credit card.
/rant
All in all, if I were you, Anand, I'd check again on how the company deals with its regular customers who aren't Anand Lal Shimpi before commending their CEO on a job well done. :-)
First comment, by the way. I'd just like to say thanks, like the millions of other people, for being the only source worth coming to for reliable info on hardware. You're a legend.
Anand and AT, Do you plan on reviewing the new Kingston SSDNow V200? There isn't any beachmark on this series that I can find. It would be interesting to compare that to the OCZ Octane. Thanks.
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Chloiber - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
...now let's wait what Indilinx has learned from the Barefoot fiasco. The performance looks good - so does the performance of the competition. The only things that matter now are 1) reliability, 2) price and 3) performance over time.IceDread - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Reliability is very important, performance and price are as well of course but without reliability the later two does not really matter.So it will be interesting to later know the statistics there.
Zane K - Sunday, November 27, 2011 - link
I work at quite a large computer shop, and we sell a heap of OCZ drives. Unfortunately we see 12-14% of these come back compared to 2-4% for out corsair force 3 and Silicon Power drives, until this works its self out, I will neither buy or recommend a ocz drive.dj christian - Monday, November 28, 2011 - link
I agree completely!This says it all
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/843-7/ssd.html
- Intel 0,1% (contre 0,3%)
- Crucial 0,8% (contre 1,9%)
- Corsair 2,9% (contre 2,7%)
- OCZ 4,2% (contre 3,5%)
dj christian - Monday, November 28, 2011 - link
Sorry forgot the above is the reliability indexTranslated for you
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c...
happycamperjack - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Comparing last gen SSD with this Gen of SSD is hardly fair. But I guess Vertex 3 series had suffered earlier this year from a firmware bug, but it''s solved now. Should be smooth sailing from now. I would probably get Vertex 3 over Octane though.maxgrax - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Definitely going to wait for reliability results before I jump back onto OCZ. They still have the best performance / $ but that has little meaning when data security is at risk. Was hoping after yesterday's preview that you would have more than just the 512GB drive benched :( , I hope the speed doesnt degrade too much going down to 256 and 128Marlin1975 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
How about testing with a SB950 AMD 6Gb controllerLike to see what diff the newwest Intel vs AMD controllers are.
That and more 128gb reviews. most don;t have SSDs and even fewwer have 512gb models.
inighthawki - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
I would love to see a lot more tests runs on SSDs with less storage. Many of the drives have higher performance in the higher capacity models, and it's pretty obvious that your even your above average tech savvy user isn't going to be dishing out one thousand dollars for the 512GB version of the drive.You should perhaps try to keep all of the tests in the same size range (IE, test all 120/128GB drives, all 250/256GB drives, etc in a single batch).
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
I agree completely, but all we got this round was the 512GB drive. I'm still waiting for lower capacities :)Take care,
Anand
Taft12 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Anand, do you have any insight into how the SSD industry's volume breakdown goes WRT size?I would be shocked if drives > 128GB made up more than 5% of shipments of consumer-class SSDs. I realize that hardware vendors want their product seen in the best possible light, but this 512GB drive might move a couple thousand units total globally whereas the 128GB version might see a couple orders of magnitude more.
Sunrise089 - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
I echo both the request-for-info-on/suspicion of the breakdown in shipments between 128gb models and 512gb models. I also very much echo the desire for more reviews of 128gb drives.I get this is what you get sent, but one of the reasons I love Anandtech is that you guys will actually play hardball with the manufacturers. I'm not telling you to refuse to review 512/256gb drives unless you're sent a 128gb model too, but at the same time I doubt you'd only review Extreme Edition CPUs or dual-GPU video cards.
niva - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Thanks a bunch Anand, it's amazing how the perception for OCZ has changed, I remember the days when it was a "stay away from" company. Personally I still haven't bought an OCZ product after getting stuck with dead RAM modules (one outright, one with errors) years ago and having no recourse.Still, competition is good, and OCZ has done a lot to bring prices down for SSDs. Hope they succeed in the long term. I was also really tentative about the Indilux acquisition, but so far it's a definite success.
james.jwb - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
pretty much all the OCZ memory modules i had over time died prematurely. Bad luck i guess.inighthawki - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
I own 4 1GB modules that are a good 5+ years old, all still work fine.PubFiction - Saturday, November 26, 2011 - link
Well I do not know how much it has changed overall I would say I still have a negative view of OCZ. They just seem to be a decent marketing machine but they put out alot of garbage. They constantly have sales on bad products which people jump on to try and then get burned. Right now and for months their SSDs which have reliability and firm ware issues are all going on sale for hard to resist prices. I had ram from them that while it still works had a sticker that was so thick it had to be removed in order to fit in the slots. Of course that was on sale too which is why I tried it. Instead of really fixing problems or avoiding them they tend to just drop prices and sell more of it. We also just went through the whole different slower nand on the same part fiasco.inighthawki - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Ah, ok. As someone looking into buying a new SSD soon, I sure would like to see how the 128GB version pairs up vs other SSDs in the same range. Hopefully you will extend the review at some point if you get different models :PDigitalFreak - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
I wonder about that also. Seems like all the review sites got the 512GB model.hackztor - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
hum, still seem to like the vertex 3 better. This could be good, but the other day newegg had a nice sale for the vertex 3 120gb max iops for 150. Really cannot beat that. I think the key though is benchmarks are getting overrated because these drives are so fast especially compared to hard drives. They need to have a reliability chart, that would be lol. I know I went through 4 vertex 1 drives before ocz upgraded me to vertex 2 so I am somewhat hesitant.mckirkus - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Given that the vast majority of people (according to top sellers at NewEgg) buy drives in the 60 to 128 GB range, it seems odd that they're rarely represented in benchmarks. It'd be interesting to know what percentage of their sales are 512GB drives.jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
"OCZ sent us a 512GB version with sixteen NAND packages and four 8GB die per package. We typically don't see any interleaving benefits beyond two die per package, so I'd expect similar performance between the 512GB drive and the 256GB version (despite the significant difference in specs)"What a strange thing to say. Do you really mean that you think that despite OCZ quoting a 270MB/s sequential write speed for the 256GB model (vs. 400MB/s for the 512GB model), that the two sizes will actually have the same sequential write speed?
If so, I'd be willing to be a lot of money with you that you are wrong.
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
be -> betAnand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
The only reason I said that is because I wasn't really able to hit OCZ's "400MB/s" in our Iometer tests. Instead I got 280MB/s, which is closer to what OCZ specs the 256GB version at.I'm 100% ok with being wrong and I'll be sure to point it out if I am in the next review :)
Take care,
Anand
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
But you measured 395 MB/s for the 512GB Octane sequential write with AS-SSD.It seems that the Octane sequential write speed varies a lot (other review sites have measured 348 MB/s with AS-SSD). Maybe it depends a lot on the block size, or on the size of the test file (span), or on whether the SSD is in a used or fresh state.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
But if you look at HDTach and Iometer the perf is down at 280MB/s. I'm not entirely sure what's going on with AS-SSD...Take care,
Anand
gevorg - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
"I believe OCZ needs a good 12 months of an Intel or Samsung-like track record to really build confidence in its products."I completely agree!!
LoneWolf15 - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
""I believe OCZ needs a good 12 months of an Intel or Samsung-like track record to really build confidence in its products."I completely agree!! "
That makes three of us. I'll say one more --they also need to build a proven track record of customer service as well.
Right now, Intel, Crucial (specifically the m4), and Samsung are the choices I look at if a client needs an SSD.
MrSpadge - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
What's this "double write endurance" and "faster boot" about?MrS
iwod - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
I think it just shows how Random Read is EXTREMELY important to Real world workloads.Since we have already establish Random Write over 40 - 50MB/s doesn't make any difference, And Seq Read Write matter a lot less then Random Read.
Taft12 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Fully agree here, in fact random read is the only thing that really matters as far as anything you'd ever notice in real world desktop use.Anything more is benchmark porn (no offense to the fetishes of many AT readers)
Longevity and stability is most important by far, too bad a benchmark can't determine that.
iwod - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
So while hopefully pulling Seq Read Write Further until we reach the same point of the curve as Random Write, which should be fairly easy, SSD needs to Significantly improve Random ReadChloiber - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Anand - why don't you also test Random Read with a queue depth of 32? I agree that QD32 isn't as important as below-10s, but I don't quite understand why there is no QD32 Random Read but a QD32 Random Write?mino - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
NAND 512GBUser Capacity 476GiB
I hope AT staff is aware that:
512GB (GigaByte) == 512*10^9 Bytes == 476*2^30 Bytes == 476 GiB (GibiByte)
If so, then what does "User capacity" mean in that table?
Provided a claimed 7% spare area, "User capacity" would be 512 GB*0.93 = 476.16 GB == 443.5 GiB.
In my humble opinion, the reality is such:
NAND Capacity is 512GiB
User Capacity is 476 GiB (== 512GB)
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
No, a 512GB drive should have 512GB of usable capacity. And the Octane apparently does (as do other 512GB SSDs).It also has 512GiB of flash memory on board.
512GiB / 512GB = 1024^3 / 1000^3 = 1.0737, which is about 7% reserved.
mino - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Yes, I suggest/expect the same thing.Now, please go and read the table at the beginning of the article which clearly states (as of now):
NAND 1TB 512GB 256GB 128GB
User Capacity 953GiB 476GiB 238GiB 119GiB
;)
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Anand always gets his GiB / GB wrong. I don't think I have seen him get it entirely right in any article. So I tend to ignore his mistakes now. But you are correct that his NAND flash capacity row is wrong in this article. He wrote "GB" when he should have written "GiB".I was just responding to the line where you said the user capacity is 443.5 GiB (no, it is 476GiB, Anand at least got that right). Anyway, I think we are in agreement.
mino - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
Yeah.What I do not understand why AT insists on using both GiB and GB in an article and making consistently fools of themselves by using it wrong..
If AT "named" all GiB values in that table as "GB", I would not really bother, as that is a common practice.
What always pisses me off is the smart-ass use of both *B and *iB in the same table while consistently getting it wrong one way or the other.
Why do I bother?
Because this sloppiness puts the important spare area claims into the "maybe, if they did not miscalculate" category...
Avenger762 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
I'm not sure if the OCZ name is really recovering. I have purchased many of the Vertex 30GB and Vertex 2 40GB drives for workstations in my organization as well as OCZ RAM. I had an ongoing fiasco on getting the RMA'd RAM back. In addition about 10% of the Vertex 30GB's have failed and 2 of the Vertex 2 40GB's that were purchased about 4 months ago just failed today. As soon as my supplier can get a contract with Kingston or SanDisk SSD's, I believe that I will switch over. OCZ was always good for my personal PC, but in large volumes for the organization that I work for, they fall way short.LB-ID - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
...from OCZ's 3-series drives (Vertex, Agility, etc.). They were basically inoperable for a large chunk of their client base, and even after seven months now, although their current firmware is a vast improvement, issues still persist for some. Couple that with the dismissive (and sometimes worse) attitude displayed by their 'customer service', and you have a company with a badly-damaged reputation. I'll be steering clear of them for the foreseeable future, particularly with so many comparably-priced options with far better stability available from their competitors.Beenthere - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
In all honesty OCZ as a company has never impressed me. I never found their tweaked RAM to be all that great. It was a niche product that eventually made them a lot of money when review sites hyped it but the performance gains were really more in benchmarks than in system performance.Then OCZ moved on to PSUs. As history has shown this has been a mixed bag for them too. Lots of QC and design issues from their suppliers didn't help. Then they bought PCPC to try and figure out how to produce quality PSUs. Today they still have a mixed bag of PSUs under the OCZ brand with only PCPCs stuff always be top quality.
Now OCZ is flooding the market with SSDs. Needless to say all SSD suppliers have had issues with the immature tech they have been dumping in the market for naive consumers to gobble up. There has been a pretty high price to pay for being naive and jumping on these half-baked SSDs, especially OCZ's.
It would appear that OCZ is trying to stay one step ahead of the competition with all sorts of variations in SSDs be it SandForce based, Revo or now Octane. This "shotgun approach" may work for sales but as we know, OCZ's SSD quality and compatibility resembles that of their RAM and PSUs... NOT very inspiring.
So the watch word is WAIT and let other folks be UNPAID Beta testers on these half-baked products - as Anand so rightly suggested.
Flashfir - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
A little correction to your claim that OCZ is becoming jack of all trades, practically failure at all of them.Almost ALL of OCZ new lines of PSUs have been garnering really great reviews over reputable review sites like Jonnyguru and Hardwaresecrets. Personally I'm running an OCZ StealthXStream II 600w and I did my review searching, seemed good, it's running my rig excellently. 80+ Cert which actually meets bronze level!
Newest lines: ZX, Z, ZT, ZS series. I recall seeing ZS reviews, ZX reviews and ZT reviews all glowing, >9/10 ratings on Jonnyguru!
PSUs doing well, their SSD lines are suffering granted. The particular Vertex Plus line got crippled by data corruption issues when used with SATA I, instead of Sata II or III aka, lower than Sata 3GB/S standard.
They didn't loudly warn people about it nor did they loudly advertise the fix which was included in the 3.55 firmware update. I helped my roommate get one and it works great but I had to research and double check to see if all the 50%+ negative reviews on NewEgg were because of a controllable issue. It was true! And now his netbook is lightning fast.
Beenthere - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Just because of late OCZ's PSUs have improved, doesn't mean that they have resolved their QC/design issues any more than fixing one SandForce BSOD issues means SSDs are now free of reliability and compatibility issues. I just call it like it is and OCZ has and continues to have a very checkered history on product quality.Corsair has also had issues with their PSUs, SSDs and closed loop coolers. This is what happens when companies rush crap out the door for quick profits without doing proper qualification of the goods. As long as "enthusiasts" buy this half-baked crap and make these companies huge profits, that's what they will continue to deliver - crap.
Flashfir - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
True. Everything you say is true. You know how emphasizing the bad without talking about anything good tends to give people the wrong ideas about how things really are.If OCZ's PSUs continue to be good from here on out, then their past is still checkered but they've spent enough effort to show they're good. Which we're seeing if they will do.
It's not about being right or wrong but whether or not if people who don't know much who read in can really get the same sense of "it as it really is". I wanted to correct you a little bit to clarify that PSU lines can possibly be improving.
Beenthere - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
To be perfectly fair OCZ would not be at the top of my list for any product at the moment. Maybe five years down the road they will be selling reliable, trouble-free products, but right now I wouldn't touch their stuff. Same goes for Corsair other than their RAM. You couldn't pay me to use a half-baked Asus mobo either. All of this stuff is rushed out the door for profit before it's ready for prime time, IME.Unfortunately the PC industry is rifle with crap products - because people are naive enough to buy them.
jleach1 - Sunday, November 27, 2011 - link
Oh yeah? My stealthxstream blew in a spectacular manner 6 months after I purchased it and it filled my whole house with that burnt electronics smell that you can never seem to get out of your nose.That combined with the nonexistent support I received for a set of DDR3 dims that required lowering the speed and upping the voltages every few months has me avoiding OCZ for the 12 months Anand spoke of at all costs.
I didn't even attempt to rma my power supply.
How many people have decided just to junk their hardware after being nickeled out of a manufacturers rebate or hounded on by ocz support for months with useless questions, I don't know. And we'll probably never know.
jimbowdang - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Great review Anand, reading your comments on passing up on this drive for use on OS X makes me wonder if those hacks that supposedly allow non-Apple SSDs to use Trim actually work. I've been using an Intel G2 160 GB SSD in my 2010 13" MBP for over a year now and I've done the hack but I've never seen any testing to confirm that it actually works. I would love to see some testing on this as real Trim support would open up a lot of SSD options for OS X.NCM - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Surely you'd notice if your enabling OS X TRIM on a (non-Sandforce) SSD wasn't working, at least unless you had a quite large amount of spare capacity to start with. Even then you'd eventually start reusing storage and would see a slowdown.I think it's worth making clear that although OS X only turns on TRIM by default for Apple supplied SSDs, it's trivial to enable it for third party units. It also seems reasonable to suppose that anyone motivated to install their own SSD on a Mac would also know to do that.
We're currently running four of our Macs with SSDs, two laptops and an Xserve that I ordered that way, plus a Mac Pro that I retrofitted.
Peroxyde - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Did the new CEO also setup un-honored Mail In Rebate as a business? If so it is quite successful.geddarkstorm - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Had that happen to me with two different kingston products. Don't trust mail-in-rebate to begin with, no matter who is peddling it.krazyderek - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Would have really liked to see a throughput vs transfer size for this drive :( some of us move around large compressed movies for editing and i'd like to know how the octane fairs against the m4 in such cases.also, where is the avg access time, and max latency?? could also be good points to have about a new controller!
pandemonium - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Thanks for the article. That was quite interesting hearing about your personal interactions with OCZ and your perceptions. Of course, the number crunching data is always appreciated as well!Locut0s - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
IMO they really only turned a new leaf with their SSDs and their decision to abandon memory sales. All of which was in the last few years.Beenthere - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
I'm not sure they've ever "turned a new leaf"... ? Their SSDs also have issues which is why people should WAIT for 6 months or so to see how many firmware updates are required and if they actually fix all of the OCZ SSD Octane issues discovered.FunBunny2 - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
Yeah, and then get a huge discount at Newegg!!lancid81 - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Which SSD do you use for your personal computer at home Anand ? or i guess thereal question is if you had to purchase an SSD with your own cash..which would you go for?
Thanks for all the great reviews
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
My personal system(s) all use SSDs I recommend. It's a part of the review process to be honest. I put in months of use case testing on top of the normal review to help me formulate exactly these types of opinions.I've got both the Intel SSD 510 and Samsung SSD 830 in my main work computer at this point. If I had to spend money on one right now it'd probably be the Samsung.
Take care,
Anand
jihe - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
OCZ, now that's three letters I'd like to avoid at all costs.ppro - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
I just post a link to this anadtech post and they removed the post on ocz forum... go and try... they even ban your account.NO OCZ anymore... awful customer support + BSOD on all series 3 OCZ drives
Beenthere - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
There have been lots of issues in both the OCZ and Corsair forums when they get over-protective of even mentioning a competitors brand/product. I understand the challenges and bickering that can occur in these forums but the moderation of these forums leaves a LOT to be desired IME and is often counter-productive to supporting the brand.TinHat - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
BeHardware - by Marc PrieurPublished on November 16, 2011
http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-1/component...
Components returns rates - SSD's (page 7), Memory (page 4)
If i'm reading this article right, I see from the stats provided by Behardware that OCZ still have very poor return rates for their SSD drives currently at 4.2%. In contrast Intel has a ultra low 0.1% return rate whilst Corsair (their nearest competitor) has only 2.9% fail rate. I appreciate this could be attributed to the controller bug nightmare that seemed to drag on forever but how do they explain why other competitor brands, using the same chip, seemed to have no problems at all? In addition to this why their memory return rates are the highest to date at 6%?
If these stats are to be believed then OCZ product failure rates are still not very reassuring, especially when you consider the prices of their products and all the consumer hasstle when dealing with component failures. Intel and Kingston seem to be the better bet at this time.
jwilliams4200 - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
You need to carefully check the dates on that data. It takes a while for this kind of data to trickle in, so you are mostly looking at returns that were sold about a year ago.PubFiction - Saturday, November 26, 2011 - link
I don't think anandtechs claims about a turn around took place in the last year.OCZ has a low rank in most areas it plays in. This reminds me of the fiasco with the different nand in the same product for OCZ and it seemed that alot of people were unhappy with how anandtech was dealing with that. IMO OCZ still has a bad name and I do not touch anything they make unless it is significantly less expensive and reviews fine. I guess the turn around is that OCZ was worse than terrible back then. The amazing thing is that being a bad company seems to pay off because OCZ is aquiring major players in multiple fields meaning they must be making money I guess.
jwilliams4200 - Saturday, November 26, 2011 - link
Sigh. I did not say that OCZ stats will look better for parts sold after April 1, 2011. They may very well look worse. I was just pointing out that the data he was looking at may not reflect what he thought it did. For one thing, it will include very little of the SF22XX BSOD issues.faster - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
What a great article. Not only a good technology review, but a great story about the transformation of OCZ. The perspective of this article could only be told by Anand because it was his own story and experience. This was a fantastic piece of writing that gripped me, interested me, and left me feeling good about OCZ. Great job!ericore - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
This drive is very slow and relies poorly if you compare it with the Plextor px-m3s. In fact, that drive is probably the best SSD on the market yet Anandtech has never reviewed a single Plextor drive. It comes with a 5 year warranty, and uses a marvel controller. The specs for the 128GB alone are Random Read (IOPS 4K) 70,000, Random Write (IOPS 4K), 50,000 which hands down owns this drive and probably the Crucial M4 variant as well. Yet there has not been a single Plextor review, sadface. Note, Plextor also does a 20 hour burn-in on all drives.Also I remember reading the octane uses exclusively designed nand scaled for capacity at the cost of reliability therefore having much shorter lifespan than competition.
This is a positive step for OCZ though.
Beenthere - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
It would be useful to see a proper review of the Plextor PX-M3 SSD. Perhaps Plextor hasn't shipped any review drives yet as I don't see any online reviews for them.Fiah - Saturday, November 26, 2011 - link
This reputable Dutch website reviewed one (I take their reviews as seriously as I do anandtechs)http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl...
They're calling it the fastest SSD yet
Beenthere - Saturday, November 26, 2011 - link
The Dutch site appears to have tested an MP2 model not the M3S - unless Plextor is using odd model numbering in Europe?The test data showed the MP2 to be faster in some benches and slower in others. I think we'll need to see Anandtech's or StorageReview.com results to get a clear picture on SSD performance for the M3S.
I'm not so interested in speed as I am in reliability and compatibility. I have no interest in being an Un-Paid beta tester for PC companies.
Beenthere - Saturday, November 26, 2011 - link
It turns out that the MP2 is not the M3S. SR reviewed the MP2 and it's a middle-of-the pack SSD based on performance. The M3S may actually be slower based on the specs Plextor is quoting. The M3S may be geared more toward enterprise?http://www.storagereview.com/plextor_pxm2p_ssd_rev...
http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.php/ssd/px-m2...
http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.php/ssd/px-m3...
Questor - Sunday, November 27, 2011 - link
I echo the echo about seeing more smaller capacity SSD reviews. I personally have one 120 GB Intel , one 128 GB Samsung 470 and two 128 GB Plextor SSDs. I am very happy with them but would love to see all the technical stuff you folks here and Anandtech extract from this gear.I am also interested in percentage of drive sizes shipping to consumers (IE: what capacitie(s) are consumers buying most and ratio of brand to units shipped for sale, if at all possible).
I have stayed away from OCZ like it was the next coming of the plague. As a matter of fact, 1) I posted recently on another article I wouldn't touch OCZ until they could make a reliable drive and prove it and...
2) When someone around me started talking Sandforce and OCZ I would run.
Your 12 month idea of watching and waiting for reliability results is right along the lines of my thinking.
Other than those requests, thanks for a great article. It was so interesting, the wife is annoyed I stayed up to finish reading! =O I had better order those roses, come up with a real good verse for the card and get the dinner reseverations ready at some place we can't afford! If I didn't leep doing this, I could afford some 512 GB drives!
Beenthere - Sunday, November 27, 2011 - link
Hopefully a year from now SSDs will be reliable and trouble free. Right now they ain't worth the hassles IMO. Marvel and Samsung controller based SSDs hold a lot more interest for me than SandForce or Indilinx, so we'll see how their reliability turns out.renosablast - Sunday, November 27, 2011 - link
More great info on this drive available here:http://thessdreview.com/
adamdz - Monday, November 28, 2011 - link
"Go above and beyond the call of duty in taking care of his customers and our readers".I had good experience with other companies that would still honor warranty a month or two after its expiration. OCZ wouldn't.
RohitK - Sunday, December 4, 2011 - link
"Most of my suggestions were obvious, just to go above and beyond the call of duty in taking care of his customers and our readers. He agreed to do everything on the list, with one exception."I bought a $220 Vertex 3 Max IOPS 120GB a couple weeks or so ago. It is my first SSD. I had to save up for some time to have enough to get the drive without starving for a while (I'm a grad student), so you can understand that it was a big deal for me.
All I got for my trouble was a lemon out of the box. I couldn't return the drive to Newegg because I had applied for a rebate already, so I was left to deal with OCZ directly. They took two days to respond to my "Trouble Ticket", and replied with directions to update the firmware and secure erase the drive (both things I'd already done before contacting them). After my response, their next contact came another two days later, telling me my RMA request was accepted and that they'd pass my info on to the RMA department, who will issue me an RMA number and then I can send the drive back. It's been five days since then now and I still haven't heard anything.
Also, I have to pay for shipping now to send the drive back to them. To top things off, until they get the drive back, they won't ship me a new one, with the only alternative being that they charge me for a new drive on my credit card and then refund me later. This, however, does nothing for me, since I don't *have* a credit card.
/rant
All in all, if I were you, Anand, I'd check again on how the company deals with its regular customers who aren't Anand Lal Shimpi before commending their CEO on a job well done. :-)
First comment, by the way. I'd just like to say thanks, like the millions of other people, for being the only source worth coming to for reliable info on hardware. You're a legend.
gamoniac - Monday, December 5, 2011 - link
Anand and AT,Do you plan on reviewing the new Kingston SSDNow V200? There isn't any beachmark on this series that I can find. It would be interesting to compare that to the OCZ Octane. Thanks.