OCZ Vertex

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taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
Bandwidth-wise you don't need anything more than 0.5 MB/s. But say your random writes are 100MB/s but it hits a brick wall, for example runs out of buffer, you'll still stutter.
Isn't that a self contradictory statement? If you run out of buffer with a 100MB/s write then obviously 0.5 MB/s write is not enough, if it was enough you wouldn't run out of buffer. "its enough except for when its not, then its always not" is a pointless truism.
 

imported_Scoop

Senior member
Dec 10, 2007
773
0
0
25 or so replies into this thread and not a word of the compatibility issues mentioned in the AT article linking to the OCZ forums. I suppose that's a no-issue when shelling out $225 for 60GB.
 

imported_jed

Junior Member
Jan 20, 2005
17
0
0
Agreed. The OCZ support forum is full of users who can't even get their OS to install on the drive. OCZ SSD drives are currently beta products with the consumers doing the testing with no ability to return the drives if they don't work as advertised. (I know - I'm stuck with a pretty much useless Apex)
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: jed
Agreed. The OCZ support forum is full of users who can't even get their OS to install on the drive. OCZ SSD drives are currently beta products with the consumers doing the testing with no ability to return the drives if they don't work as advertised. (I know - I'm stuck with a pretty much useless Apex)

:cookie: Thanks for footing part of the bill that OCZ is paying to develop Summit II. Someone has to pay the bills today so tomorrow's product can be developed.

I disagree with the statement that OCZ customers are beta-testing the products in a pay-to-play relationship. In order for this to be the case then OCZ would need to be releasing updates to the products which subsequent customers benefit from while the existing beta-testers do not. But that's not really what is happening, Apex was under development regardless the feedback from Core users, and Vertex was already under development regardless the feedback from Apex customers.

It's only a beta-product if eventually a gamma (production) product version actually gets released...and that doesn't happen with OCZ. These products folks are buying do represent the best they are going to get from that product line, they are the gamma products, suckage or no suckage. So really its not beta-testing, its just simply buying lemons (as in lemon cars, get convinced the shiny car is going to work under the hood but then 10miles down the road you get to find out what you really bought).
 

Denithor

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
6,298
23
81
From the article, when Anand first tested the Vertex he found the same ol' stutter problem. Fired off an email to OCZ and they responded a few days later with updated firmware that fixed the problem (slowed the drive down in other categories but did indeed fix the problem).

I wonder if they could apply the same "fix" to their other series drives?
 

imported_jed

Junior Member
Jan 20, 2005
17
0
0
Beta or lemons, it's really just semantics. The products they (and many other SSD producers) are selling are simply not finished or suitable for market. The fact that they are releasing regular updates to the Vertex firmware means they are trying - but in a rush to market they are skipping the bulk of their R&D work that should be done pre-production - and forcing their customers to be the guinea pigs.
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
Originally posted by: Denithor
From the article, when Anand first tested the Vertex he found the same ol' stutter problem. Fired off an email to OCZ and they responded a few days later with updated firmware that fixed the problem (slowed the drive down in other categories but did indeed fix the problem).

I wonder if they could apply the same "fix" to their other series drives?

doubtful, the vertex uses a programmable CPU for its controller, a firmware update can make major changes here. However it can do little for a more traditional controller.
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
Originally posted by: jed
Beta or lemons, it's really just semantics. The products they (and many other SSD producers) are selling are simply not finished or suitable for market. The fact that they are releasing regular updates to the Vertex firmware means they are trying - but in a rush to market they are skipping the bulk of their R&D work that should be done pre-production - and forcing their customers to be the guinea pigs.

pretty much. Buyer beware.
 

alcoholbob

Diamond Member
May 24, 2005
6,380
448
126
I picked up a Vertex 120GB yesterday.

Took me 12 hours to install Windows 7 Beta. It would hang on installation repeatedly while trying to "expand files" which is taking a Vista image and expanding it to the drive. If you fail a Vista/7 installation this way, you can't do a "rollback" which is just deleting the installation files on the disk. The computer would blue screen while loading the rollback application. You really need at least 2 working operating systems as a fail safe before attempting to install an OS on this drive since the "rollback OS" is not going to play well with the drive until after you format it, which of course, is impossible to do so from the OS you installed it from. Every time it was goto XP (my backup OS) delete partition, repartition with a 3rd party program to get the disk aligned, format with the right allocation size, then reboot, go into Vista Ultimate in order try to install an OS on the SSD again. Another annoying thing is, you have to disconnect EVERY HARD DRIVE when attempting to do a boot installation on this drive, which at first I chalked at but learned the hard way through wasted hours.

It finally got finished yesterday. Like another poster in hardforum noted, this drive can't handle bit torrent without stuttering. Read performance is good, but still not that impressive coming from a 300GB Raptor. In Fallout 3 and Crysis I still get the classic stuttering when textures are getting loaded (not momentary stutter, but reoccuring stutter for a period of time) which is wonderful when you are getting chased around. Write performance is pretty bad, it takes about twice as long to install anything than it would on a Raptor, but I knew that already from the sequential write benchmarks it lagged behind the Raptor by 55% so it's quite a bit slower than a 7200rpm hard drive in this regard.

All in all, was this worth $450? No. Performance is up in some areas but down in others, noticeably in both directions. I don't have a boot loader any more, since if I have one, the Vertex drive doesn't show up (well documented in OCZ forums). It has some significant usage limitations (such as torrenting) which some of us take for granted. If I wasn't so apprehensive about RAID (2 x 1 TB array failed on me) I'd say RAID 0 Raptors is still probably your best bet for all around performance.

Well, I'm on borrowed time anyway, lets see how many years it'll last before the drive dies. I still have a 74GB Raptor from 2001, 8 years going strong.
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: jed
Beta or lemons, it's really just semantics. The products they (and many other SSD producers) are selling are simply not finished or suitable for market. The fact that they are releasing regular updates to the Vertex firmware means they are trying - but in a rush to market they are skipping the bulk of their R&D work that should be done pre-production - and forcing their customers to be the guinea pigs.

I fully agree. It is this aspect of OCZ's business model that has really trashed their reputation.
 

Hacp

Lifer
Jun 8, 2005
13,923
2
81
Originally posted by: Astrallite
I picked up a Vertex 120GB yesterday.

Took me 12 hours to install Windows 7 Beta. It would hang on installation repeatedly while trying to "expand files" which is taking a Vista image and expanding it to the drive. If you fail a Vista/7 installation this way, you can't do a "rollback" which is just deleting the installation files on the disk. The computer would blue screen while loading the rollback application. You really need at least 2 working operating systems as a fail safe before attempting to install an OS on this drive since the "rollback OS" is not going to play well with the drive until after you format it, which of course, is impossible to do so from the OS you installed it from. Every time it was goto XP (my backup OS) delete partition, repartition with a 3rd party program to get the disk aligned, format with the right allocation size, then reboot, go into Vista Ultimate in order try to install an OS on the SSD again. Another annoying thing is, you have to disconnect EVERY HARD DRIVE when attempting to do a boot installation on this drive, which at first I chalked at but learned the hard way through wasted hours.

It finally got finished yesterday. Like another poster in hardforum noted, this drive can't handle bit torrent without stuttering. Read performance is good, but still not that impressive coming from a 300GB Raptor. In Fallout 3 and Crysis I still get the classic stuttering when textures are getting loaded (not momentary stutter, but reoccuring stutter for a period of time) which is wonderful when you are getting chased around. Write performance is pretty bad, it takes about twice as long to install anything than it would on a Raptor, but I knew that already from the sequential write benchmarks it lagged behind the Raptor by 55% so it's quite a bit slower than a 7200rpm hard drive in this regard.

All in all, was this worth $450? No. Performance is up in some areas but down in others, noticeably in both directions. I don't have a boot loader any more, since if I have one, the Vertex drive doesn't show up (well documented in OCZ forums). It has some significant usage limitations (such as torrenting) which some of us take for granted. If I wasn't so apprehensive about RAID (2 x 1 TB array failed on me) I'd say RAID 0 Raptors is still probably your best bet for all around performance.

Well, I'm on borrowed time anyway, lets see how many years it'll last before the drive dies. I still have a 74GB Raptor from 2001, 8 years going strong.

Nvm
 

jimhsu

Senior member
Mar 22, 2009
705
0
76
Originally posted by: Astrallite
I picked up a Vertex 120GB yesterday.

Took me 12 hours to install Windows 7 Beta. It would hang on installation repeatedly while trying to "expand files" which is taking a Vista image and expanding it to the drive. If you fail a Vista/7 installation this way, you can't do a "rollback" which is just deleting the installation files on the disk. The computer would blue screen while loading the rollback application. You really need at least 2 working operating systems as a fail safe before attempting to install an OS on this drive since the "rollback OS" is not going to play well with the drive until after you format it, which of course, is impossible to do so from the OS you installed it from. Every time it was goto XP (my backup OS) delete partition, repartition with a 3rd party program to get the disk aligned, format with the right allocation size, then reboot, go into Vista Ultimate in order try to install an OS on the SSD again. Another annoying thing is, you have to disconnect EVERY HARD DRIVE when attempting to do a boot installation on this drive, which at first I chalked at but learned the hard way through wasted hours.

It finally got finished yesterday. Like another poster in hardforum noted, this drive can't handle bit torrent without stuttering. Read performance is good, but still not that impressive coming from a 300GB Raptor. In Fallout 3 and Crysis I still get the classic stuttering when textures are getting loaded (not momentary stutter, but reoccuring stutter for a period of time) which is wonderful when you are getting chased around. Write performance is pretty bad, it takes about twice as long to install anything than it would on a Raptor, but I knew that already from the sequential write benchmarks it lagged behind the Raptor by 55% so it's quite a bit slower than a 7200rpm hard drive in this regard.

All in all, was this worth $450? No. Performance is up in some areas but down in others, noticeably in both directions. I don't have a boot loader any more, since if I have one, the Vertex drive doesn't show up (well documented in OCZ forums). It has some significant usage limitations (such as torrenting) which some of us take for granted. If I wasn't so apprehensive about RAID (2 x 1 TB array failed on me) I'd say RAID 0 Raptors is still probably your best bet for all around performance.

Well, I'm on borrowed time anyway, lets see how many years it'll last before the drive dies. I still have a 74GB Raptor from 2001, 8 years going strong.

Can you check your firmware version? I don't have a SSD, but I'm compiling notes of user experiences.

 

alcoholbob

Diamond Member
May 24, 2005
6,380
448
126
Originally posted by: jimhsu
Can you check your firmware version? I don't have a SSD, but I'm compiling notes of user experiences.

1199 firmware from newegg.

I found that the only sure-fire way to install an OS is *EXACTLY* per the instructions, which is really sad (shows that it's not plug and play). Most of my wasted hours were, in truth, trying to install an operating system like any sane person would do instead of this hoop-jumping. The problem is, there are tons of optimization guides on the oczforums, and none of them really complete--you really have to spend time (hours really) sorting through the damn forum to figure out how to install a drive. I feel this product is not ready for the market--I have to conform to a fixed, restrictive installation pattern in order to turn this into a boot drive. I'm not even complaining about the registry hacks here. Why can't I just install the OS like any other so that it shows up on my boot loader? Instead I have to set the Vertex as the boot device which means after I manage to install the OS, I'll have the create a new boot loader just to get my old OSes working.

This drive can't handle multitasking that requires quick writes. I could bit torrent and play a game on my Velociraptor. The cg cutscenes in game intros will get *really* choppy if utorrent is on in the background which is pretty sad in this day and age with a hard drive of this cost. So on this "high performance drive" I'm even more handcuffed than if I had an average disk drive.
 

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
7
81
Originally posted by: Astrallite
So on this "high performance drive" I'm even more handcuffed than if I had an average disk drive.

Thanks for "taking one for the team" and sharing your experiences here. I'll stick with my VelociRaptor 300 for now as there is no Intel drive big enough to hold all my games.
 

jimhsu

Senior member
Mar 22, 2009
705
0
76
Now the 50% price premium on the intel is not so unjustified... Can the OCZ forum go for a month without any showstopping problems? Until then, I'm holding off.
 

magreen

Golden Member
Dec 27, 2006
1,309
1
81
is it clear that the intel ssd doesn't suffer from any of these problems?
 

jimhsu

Senior member
Mar 22, 2009
705
0
76
Data loss? No one has reported anything for 6 months, so probably yes. I would say it's as safe (or safer) than a conventional hard drive.

Performance? Intel has a steady state performance in the worst case of 30MB/s writes. The worst case for the Vertex is unknown (anand reports 2MB/s random writes, but that is with an older firmware version). Plus, the fact that the Vertex randomly loses the OS partition for firmware 1199 makes benchmarks for that firmware irrelevant. I am estimating an approx 1% failure rate for FW 1199 (10K drives, dozens of posts, and only some drives have been upgraded to 1199), which is unacceptable.

 

jimhsu

Senior member
Mar 22, 2009
705
0
76
Originally posted by: Idontcare
Originally posted by: IntelUser2000
Sigh, you don't need anything more than 0.5MB/s in random writes for consumers. The problem is that the more demanding workstation users and server users comment on the very same drives meant for consumer sector.

0.5MB/s in random writes is what 4200RPM drives achieve. You don't notice them stuttering do you?

Anandtech is doing a favor saying to us that kind of throughput is fine for the consumer sector. If you want to misinform and say you need 10-20MB/s for home usage, please do not say ANYTHING.

It's not clear to me what you are basing these statements on.

As Anandtech testing shows it is not solely the bandwidth that determines the user experience (bandwidth is part of it but does not tell the full story) as stuttering takes your 2.4MB/s bandwidth on Vertex and throttles it down to nearly zero for a second while the drive stalls to take care of business with its 0.5-1.0s latency...this you would notice.

However latency does factor into bandwidth, you can't have 2MB/s bandwidth with 4KB random writes if your random write latency is 10ms. The drive simply can't retire enough 4KB random write requests fast enough to hit a 2MB/s bandwidth in that case.

So in a great world where latency was mostly a static attribute of a drive as a function of usage history (which is the case for spindle drives and Intel SSD) then the small file bandwidth tells us all the story we need to see. But if a drive is prone to sporadic latency spikes that reach into the 100ms and higher regime then those bandwidth numbers are meaningless as they fail to capture the typical/worst-case situations where bandwidth is drastically reduced as the latency spikes and the drive stutters.

(this is why standard deviation of the data used to generate an average is usually computed and reported in most technical journals, no surprise it is absent in enthusiast review sites though)

I suspect it's not bandwidth of random writes per se, but I/O depth. A random write of 0.5MB/s might be perfectly acceptable if the drive can process an I/O stack of, say 32 writes in a "reasonable amount of time". It's just that bandwidth is typically correlated with how well the drive processes the I/O stack, but not absolutely.

 

IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
8,686
3,787
136
Originally posted by: taltamir
Bandwidth-wise you don't need anything more than 0.5 MB/s. But say your random writes are 100MB/s but it hits a brick wall, for example runs out of buffer, you'll still stutter.
Isn't that a self contradictory statement? If you run out of buffer with a 100MB/s write then obviously 0.5 MB/s write is not enough, if it was enough you wouldn't run out of buffer. "its enough except for when its not, then its always not" is a pointless truism.

Sigh. Unlike a platter HDD which has no particular weaknesses(everything is all around similar), SSDs have an extreme strength and extreme weakness. If it can sustain 100MB/s random writes most of the time but it can run out of buffers and stop sometime, then you will notice stutter. But if it can only transfer 0.5Mb/s in random writes but can sustain it all the time without running into a brick wall/bottleneck, you won't notice stutter.

You might notice slowdowns, but not stutter. Is that so hard to understand for you?
 

jimhsu

Senior member
Mar 22, 2009
705
0
76
Originally posted by: IntelUser2000
Originally posted by: taltamir
Bandwidth-wise you don't need anything more than 0.5 MB/s. But say your random writes are 100MB/s but it hits a brick wall, for example runs out of buffer, you'll still stutter.
Isn't that a self contradictory statement? If you run out of buffer with a 100MB/s write then obviously 0.5 MB/s write is not enough, if it was enough you wouldn't run out of buffer. "its enough except for when its not, then its always not" is a pointless truism.

Sigh. Unlike a platter HDD which has no particular weaknesses(everything is all around similar), SSDs have an extreme strength and extreme weakness. If it can sustain 100MB/s random writes most of the time but it can run out of buffers and stop sometime, then you will notice stutter. But if it can only transfer 0.5Mb/s in random writes but can sustain it all the time without running into a brick wall/bottleneck, you won't notice stutter.

You might notice slowdowns, but not stutter. Is that so hard to understand for you?

Doesn't it ultimately depend on response time? Several things can affect that:

1. Bandwidth
2. Buffer size/speed
3. Efficiency at processing densely stacked I/Os
4. Efficiency at interleaving I/O read/writes
5. Many other factors...

 

jimhsu

Senior member
Mar 22, 2009
705
0
76
Originally posted by: jimhsu
Data loss? No one has reported anything for 6 months, so probably yes. I would say it's as safe (or safer) than a conventional hard drive.

Performance? Intel has a steady state performance in the worst case of 30MB/s writes. The worst case for the Vertex is unknown (anand reports 2MB/s random writes, but that is with an older firmware version). Plus, the fact that the Vertex randomly loses the OS partition for firmware 1199 makes benchmarks for that firmware irrelevant. I am estimating an approx 1% failure rate for FW 1199 (10K drives, dozens of posts, and only some drives have been upgraded to 1199), which is unacceptable.

Now this article shows that

"In some instances, sequential reads were reduced to a mere 22MBps, slower than some laptop hard disks. "

This is definitely not write degradation. And while PCPer asserts that this is particular to the intel SSD, anand asserts that "I should also mention that I can do the same to other drives as well." Contradiction there?
 

ledevil

Junior Member
Nov 18, 2012
3
0
0
I am stuck on 1199 on OCZ vertex...Does any one have the firmware files 1275-1.10......