Technical > PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews > Which SSD drive to get?

reply to 59137280

Re: Which SSD drive to get?

reply to Krisnatharok
Ditto. With me though. It does not take long to do some google work and see how horrible they are with customer service and reliability.

reply to Octavean
Been avoiding this thread because I tend to focus mainly on MHDDs despite knowing a bit about SSDs as well. Anyway, wanted to comment briefly on the Vertex 4 thing.

I did some quick skimming of the drive and thought "wow, this thing kicks the crap out of my Intel 510 120GB", followed by having the item in my Amazon cart. Was ready to check-out when I thought "...you know what, I shouldn't be hasty". I did more digging around and I found 3 things that concern me greatly about the Vertex 4:

1. Firmware behaviour (re: performance). TomsHardware did a review of the drive using 1.4 firmware and wasn't impressed. They then did a follow-up review regarding the 1.5 firmware stating that it looked much better. Except that isn't what I see at all: »www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ver···245.html

What I see in those screenshots indicate 1.4 was behaving about right (what I'd expect), while 1.5 beta was behaving *amazingly* well, but 1.5 final appears to behave *worse* than 1.4. Am I missing something? If they reversed their 1.5 final and 1.5 beta screenshots then I could understand the conclusion that "things looked much better", but to me they don't.

2. TechSpot's review indicates some general benchmarks were "all over the place", with absolutely nothing being consistent: »www.techspot.com/review/543-ocz-vertex-4/

That inconsistent behaviour could be a badly-implemented wear-levelling algorithm, but that's purely speculation on my part.

I don't like how TechSpot criticises the drive in their "Final Thoughts" (justified IMO), but then in later paragraphs states that "everything today looks great vs. how it looked months ago". The reviewer is obviously walking on eggshells to try and make someone happy.

3. The Vertex 4 provides an absolutely pathetic number of SMART attributes for monitoring. You get attributes 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 232, and 233. And hell, attribute 3 (Spin-up Time) doesn't even serve a purpose with an SSD, unless OCZ chose to use 3 for some other purpose.

The lack-of SMART attributes is either a) caused by lack of insight into the underlying behaviour of the Indilinx controller, and/or b) shotcomings on the part of the firmware author. smartmontools IS NOT hiding attributes from you -- literally those are all you get.

I would expect to see something more like what is shown in the first data set here.

Either the Indilinx controller provides absolute *jack squat* visibility into the state of things, or the underlying firmware lacks tie-in code for SMART attributes from the controller itself. Given what I've seen in the past with certain controllers, I would say it's probably the former.

These 3 things are what caused me to nuke the item from my cart.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

Man, here comes koitsu to shatter preconceived ideas and opinions.

Thanks for the informative post, as always. I wonder if Tom's truly switched the images or they perform worse under 1.5...
--
If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening.

reply to koitsu
I was of the understanding that the Vertex 4 controller was not in fact Indilinx based but rather Marvell:

quote:

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With the Vertex 4, OCZ switched to Marvell silicon, rebranded it Indilinx Everest 2 and built their own custom firmware.

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reply to 59137280
Kind of wanted Intel based on limited research but ended up with SanDisk based on price and reviews. I like the 128GB Sandisk I got a lot but only have had it for few weeks.

reply to koitsu
Koitsu, do you think Vertex 4 256GB will be a good drive regardless of all the above?
I mean, all the reviews of it are still good. I think it will be fast, much better than non-SDD and last me long time.

I really don't know or have a way to ascertain whether or not I'm grinding axes or not.

The lack of SMART attributes are just me bitching; generic end-users won't care about this part.

But the bizarre performance shown in the screenshots (re: firmware behaviour before / beta / after firmware updates) are something that greatly worry me. I'm not sure whether or not to blow off their review or not:

»www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ver···5-6.html

The 1.4 benchmark (with 25% free space) looks fine to me. The 1.5 beta benchmark (also with 25% free space) looks *incredible* (very, VERY impressive). But the 1.5 final benchmark looks like crap.

In fact, if you read very closely what TomsHardware wrote, you'll begin to question their benchmark environment to begin with. Read this slowly and in full a few times:

quote:

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Performance is immediately restored with firmware 1.5 beta, and is markedly different from what we observed with firmware 1.4.1.3. When we ran AS SSD's Compression Benchmark on the final version of firmware 1.5, performance appeared more erratic. Our hypothesis is that read and write performance are impacted by internal clean-up operations running in the background when the benchmark was active. So, we rebooted and re-ran the test. The results looked a lot more like the results for firmware 1.5 beta.

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reply to 59137280
I'm running a 128gb Vertex 4 currently, and I upgraded to the v1.5 firmware in the last couple months. Supposedly there's a v1.6 in the works.

I've currently got 48gb of free space, only my OS and a few other small programs installed.

This PC is lightning fast. No complaints on my end. I would totally purchase another one of these drives in a second. Next one I get will be a 256gb model.

reply to 59137280
Just ordered an Intel 330 series 240GB SSD for $139.99 USD shipped from Newegg.com.

I really wanted to hold out for a 480GB or 512GB SSD at a price I was willing to pay (like under $300) but this price was too good to pass up on.

reply to 59137280

reply to 59137280
I am thinking also this may something to do with Intel Display Driver. before SSD I always used AMD catalyst drivers and now there is on my system Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel, which I never had before. And I have trouble installing AMD Catalyst video driver

Why is gaming graphics so bad?

reply to 59137280

I think it has to do with video drivers.
In device manager under Display adapter it says Intel HD 3000
I tried uninstalling it, then installing my normal AMD CAtalyst but it gives me success with Warnings afte catalyst install and the graphics problems persists.
I think I'm already set to AHCI, where do I check this? Don't think that's the issue though

Core i7 2600k
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO
XFX Radeon HD 6970
CORSAIR CAFA70

OK, first ensure your monitor is hooked up via the GPU and not the motherboard.

Second, go into the UEFI under peripherals/SATA (don't know the exact layout) and ensure the "SATA mode" is set to AHCI and not IDE.

The manual for your mobo is here--it will have instructions on how to set to AHCI as well as how to ensure you are using the discrete GPU and not the iGPU: »dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA···_PRO.pdf
--
If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening.

reply to 59137280
I'm pretty sure it's something with display driver though

reply to 59137280
basically, I uninstalled Intel video driver and installed Catalyst, but it doesn't see Catalyst and is in no video drivers mode - under Display adpater it says Standart VGA , desktop in 800x600
Doesn't see Catalyst drivers

In order to install the SSD you had to power off your system and install the SSD. Then reconnect everything. It sounds like you connected the monitor to the video output of your motherboard rather then the video output of your video card.