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to 59137280
Re: Which SSD drive to get?I dont blame you. Like I said before Im still kicking myself for not buying that 512GB Vertex 4 for slightly under $300 while the deal lasted. Newegg.com has a 512GB Vertex 4 for ~$330 now but its not the same thing as under $300. I said Intel as well as Samsung (which didnt seem to be an option at Newegg.ca) and Crucial. However, thats a little like saying do as I say not as I do since I was looking to buy the Vertex 4,
although I do have a 256GB Crucial M4,
.but you know what I mean. Just please let us know how you get on with your new SSD. Good or bad Im sure people would like to know both short term and long. Enjoy and good luck! said by Krisnatharok:said by KoRnGtL15:OCZ is absolutely horrible. My personal experience contradicts your opinion. My personal experience with OCZ SSDs contradicts it as well. I have the following SSD models: OCZ Agility 60GB (1x) OCZ Vertex 2 120GB (1x) OCZ Vertex Plus 240GB (2x) OCZ Octane 128GB (1x) OCZ Agility III 360GB (1x) Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV-S2 64GB (3x) Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV-S2 128GB (1x) Corsair Force Series 3 120GB (2x) Crucial M4 256GB (1x) SandDisk 60GB mSATA (OEM on Asus Eee Slate EP121 Core i5 Tablet PC) I have yet to have any problems with any of them. From what I have been reading of user reviews, OCZ SSD units that fail presumably do so out of the box (DOA) or within hours / days although sometimes longer. IMO if a part is to fail its ideal for it to do so quickly rather then after the return period elapses or when the warranty expires. |
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KoRnGtL15 Premium Member join:2007-01-04 Grants Pass, OR |
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. said by Krisnatharok:said by KoRnGtL15:OCZ is absolutely horrible. My personal experience contradicts your opinion. |
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koitsu MVM join:2002-07-16 Mountain View, CA Humax BGW320-500
1 recommendation |
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/rev ··· 245.htmlWhat 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/ ··· ertex-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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KrisnatharokPC Builder, Gamer Premium Member join:2009-02-11 Earth Orbit |
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... |
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to koitsu
I was of the understanding that the Vertex 4 controller was not in fact Indilinx based but rather Marvell: quote: With the Vertex 4, OCZ switched to Marvell silicon, rebranded it Indilinx Everest 2 and built their own custom firmware.
» www.anandtech.com/show/6 ··· b-reviewTherefore to answer your concerns one would look at the SMART attributes of the corresponding Marvell controller without the custom firmware (whatever generic model SSD that might be). |
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koitsu MVM join:2002-07-16 Mountain View, CA Humax BGW320-500
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koitsu
MVM
2012-Sep-20 5:52 pm
Yup, could be Marvell's fault, could be the firmware -- only the actual engineers (not generic OCZ support people) involved would know the answer. For those confused by the terminology here (OCZ vs. Indilinx vs. Marvell): » www.ocztechnology.com/oc ··· icationsquote: NAND Controller -- Indilinx Everest 2
With extra confirmation: » www.tomshardware.com/new ··· 304.html» www.engadget.com/2012/04 ··· marvell/Review of Wikipedia shows that Indilinx was at one time a separate (South Korean) company, but was subsequently bought by OCZ in March 2011. So effectively what happened with the Vertex 4 was this: Indilinx (now OCZ) went to Marvell and requested that they design/engineer a NAND controller on their behalf. Marvell agreed, designed/engineered a controller per what Indilinx wanted, and handed over some of the rights to it (which is what legally allows OCZ to silkscreen "Indilinx" on the IC rather than retain a Marvell logo). So it's a proprietary chip, basically. This kind of thing is exactly what companies like Nintendo used to do with console hardware back in the 80s -- for example the custom Nintendo/Famicom CPU (6502 but contains audio circuitry) was silkscreened with the Nintendo company logo but was actually designed/enginereed by Ricoh. Same with the SNES/SFC (designed by Sony). But anyway, regardless of who made the chip and/or designed the underlying firmware, the situation with crummy SMART attributes still applies. Whether or not those can actually be addressed with a firmware update is completely/entirely dependent on what the underlying controller can actually provide statistics-wise. The only people who know that for certain are the folks at Marvell and Indilinx/OCZ. |
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Indy SabreSabre Rider From Indianapolis join:2003-10-02 |
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. |
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59137280 (banned) join:2006-07-06 Montreal, QC |
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. |
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koitsu MVM join:2002-07-16 Mountain View, CA Humax BGW320-500
2 edits
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koitsu
MVM
2012-Sep-23 5:41 pm
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/rev ··· 5-6.htmlThe 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: 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.
I have no idea what "clean-up operations" they're talking about; are they talking about TRIM, or are they talking about some other process on their benchmark system running WHILE they were doing the benchmark? If they're talking about TRIM, then it's possible rebooting would provide temporary relief of the issue. So like I said, I really don't know what to believe. TechSpot's review showed performance which was spotty/all over the place. I don't know what to make of that combined with what TomsHardware posted. Just utterly bizarre on all fronts. One thing you should take away from everything I've written here: like I have advocated from day one, you should try to avoid using more than 60% of your SSD's total capacity to ensure wear-levelling / garbage collection performs efficiently and decently. This is also why buying a larger SSD is helpful (e.g. 256GB SSD = use only 153GB of it, etc.); with smaller SSDs you have less overall *real* usable room before performance penalties start to kick in. |
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Ghastlyone Premium Member join:2009-01-07 Nashville, TN |
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. |
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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. |
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59137280 (banned) join:2006-07-06 Montreal, QC 1 edit |
59137280 (banned)
Member
2012-Sep-24 11:55 am
Just arrived... now who will install it for me? p.s. So I installed my first SSD drive and the computer flies, boots up in ~15 seconds, but the graphics performance is horrible, like I'm on an old videocard! Did I need to change something in BIOS or something else? The desktop display, resolution, and everything looks normal, but gaming graphicx is laggy, jittery, absolutely horrible! |
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59137280 |
59137280 (banned)
Member
2012-Sep-24 11:26 pm
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? |
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KrisnatharokPC Builder, Gamer Premium Member join:2009-02-11 Earth Orbit |
to 59137280
said by 59137280:Just arrived... now who will install it for me?
p.s. So I installed my first SSD drive and the computer flies, boots up in ~15 seconds, but the graphics performance is horrible, like I'm on an old videocard! Did I need to change something in BIOS or something else? The desktop display, resolution, and everything looks normal, but gaming graphicx is laggy, jittery, absolutely horrible! Please keep everything in one place. I didn't make the connection to this post from your new thread in the PC games tech forum, but my advice still applies--verify your SATA controller is set to AHCI mode, only use a fresh install of Windows, and let us know your complete system specs. |
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59137280 (banned) join:2006-07-06 Montreal, QC |
59137280 (banned)
Member
2012-Sep-25 8:47 am
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 |
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KrisnatharokPC Builder, Gamer Premium Member join:2009-02-11 Earth Orbit |
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/ASU ··· _PRO.pdf |
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59137280 (banned) join:2006-07-06 Montreal, QC |
59137280 (banned)
Member
2012-Sep-25 8:57 am
said by Krisnatharok: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/ASU ··· _PRO.pdf Could you pls make exact directions where to set these? Where do I set to AHCI and UEFI and discrete GPU? |
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59137280 |
59137280 (banned)
Member
2012-Sep-25 9:02 am
I'm pretty sure it's something with display driver though |
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59137280 |
59137280 (banned)
Member
2012-Sep-25 9:09 am
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 |
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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. |
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Octavean |
to 59137280
said by 59137280:said by Krisnatharok: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/ASU ··· _PRO.pdf Could you pls make exact directions where to set these? Where do I set to AHCI and UEFI and discrete GPU? You dont want to mess with the UEFI BIOS much if you dont feel comfortable doing so or dont know what youre doing. You could conceivably cause more problems then you would fix if things go wrong. Having said that to enter the UEFI press the delete key when booting the system during the prompt screen to do so. Once in the UEFI BIOS utility at the upper right most corner there is an exit / advanced mode button. Click that button with your mouse and choose advanced mode from the popup menu. You should then see tabs at the top, click the "advanced" tab (3rd tab going from left to right IIRC) . Click SATA configuration. Here you should see your OCZ Vertex 4 in the list. Just make sure that the SATA Mode button (probably at the top of the device list) is set to AHCI Mode. Then save and exit the UEFI if changes were indeed made. If not then you can simply exit without saving changes. I have two Asus motherboards with this UEFI but older versions may have a different layout as well as newer versions. Take note that if you installed Windows in EIDE mode and switched to AHCI then it will no longer start properly. |
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59137280 (banned) join:2006-07-06 Montreal, QC 3 edits |
59137280 (banned)
Member
2012-Sep-25 2:35 pm
How can I tell what mode am I in, SATA 3, UEFI or what? Anyway, the problem fixed itself somehow... and then unfixed again. I unplugged monitor HDMI what turned out to be it was in mobo and into the graphic card - it fixed it. Graphics were back to awesome. Catalyst driver displayed... And then the monitor just turned itself off... and started flashing the power light like when it cannot see the video source. And the driver is back to Generic VGA and desktop 800x600 Could it be monitor problem? HDMI cable? Update:I switched to analog cable and it's back to good... Can all this be dying HDMI cable? Also, what are the differences in graphics quality between HDMI and RGB (VGA) cable? |
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KrisnatharokPC Builder, Gamer Premium Member join:2009-02-11 Earth Orbit |
I don't think analog cables can go above 480 or 600. Do us a favor and try a different HDMI cable and see what happens.
Try plugging it back into the mobo, install the AMD Catalyst drivers, then plug it back into the GPU. |
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59137280 (banned) join:2006-07-06 Montreal, QC |
59137280 (banned)
Member
2012-Sep-25 3:40 pm
said by Krisnatharok:I don't think analog cables can go above 480 or 600. Do us a favor and try a different HDMI cable and see what happens.
Try plugging it back into the mobo, install the AMD Catalyst drivers, then plug it back into the GPU. I'm afraid to screw with it - it works now on RGB cable and I'll leave it like this. Anyway, I have no other HDMI cable When I wrote "analog" I meant RGB cable. My resolution is back to normal and graphics optimal under the RGB cable. So that's why I want to know the cons of RGB vs HDMI in such use? |
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Ghastlyone Premium Member join:2009-01-07 Nashville, TN |
Do you have any spare DVI cables laying around?
Only difference between HDMI and DVI, is audio is carried over HDMI along with video. |
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sk1939 Premium Member join:2010-10-23 Frederick, MD |
to 59137280
TigerDirect has the 240GB Samsung 830 Series for $160 for those interested. I wasn't sure if the OP was still looking or not (thread has since deviated). |
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nm, was going to recommend Samsung, but it looks like he made his choice. |
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to sk1939
said by sk1939:TigerDirect has the 240GB Samsung 830 Series for $160 for those interested. I wasn't sure if the OP was still looking or not (thread has since deviated). As I stated before, I ordered an Intel 330 series 240GB SSD from Newegg.com for $139.99 shipped (no rebate just coupon code). Newegg.com actually shipped it the same day and sent tracking info the same day as well (I didnt spring for rushing the order). It shipped from NJ and I received it the next day. Cheap and fast! said by Chuck_IV:nm, was going to recommend Samsung, but it looks like he made his choice. When I checked Newegg.ca they basically had no Samsung SSD units. Actually they had one 64GB 1.8 but that was it. |
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Indy SabreSabre Rider From Indianapolis join:2003-10-02 |
to 59137280
So does anyone else have feedback on the SanDisk drives? |
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sk1939 Premium Member join:2010-10-23 Frederick, MD |
sk1939
Premium Member
2012-Sep-29 11:38 pm
If it's like their memory cards then they should be pretty reliable and of decent quality, but they are not necessarily cheap. |
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