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    SATA 3 SSD - OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS Edition vs. OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by benji123, Apr 26, 2011.

  1. benji123

    benji123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I've had my XPS 15 L502X for about a month now and I am looking into the various SSD options hitting the market. It looks like the 2 fastest are the OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS (released today) and the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G (see the test results for the OWC here and here).

    Does anyone have any experience with OWC SSD's?

    Everything I've read about OWC seems positive so far. I know that Newegg has the MAX IOPS edition available but Newegg has a no-refund policy so I've pre-ordered on Amazon for now. Now I just have to decide whether to order the OWC instead.
     
    benji123, Apr 26, 2011
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  2. benji123

    benji123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Alright, decided to go with the OWC instead. Shipping in 5 days according to the website. Will report back once installed.

    4/30: OK, so my pre-order from Amazon shipped early, before the OWC shipped, so I canceled the OWC order...
     
    benji123, Apr 26, 2011
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  3. Gazzajagman

    Gazzajagman Notebook Guru

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    I wanted a OWC 6G 240GB and would have prefered one over the OCZ Vertex III 240 GB that I'm now using. But the delay wasn't helping and I'd have to wait for shipping to the UK as well. So I went for the Vertex III and it's working out very well.
     
    Gazzajagman, Apr 26, 2011
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  4. ZippoMan

    ZippoMan Notebook Evangelist

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    I decided against the Vertex 3 for the following reasons:

    1. It's made by OCZ. They have a shady reputation for a reason.
    2. Higher cost than other SATA III SSDs
    3. Lower disk size - 240gb vs 256gb. Sure it's only 16GB but every bit counts when you're spending $2 / GB.
    4. Reported freeze-up issues

    I'm buying the 256GB Crucial m4. MSRP is $499, I hope Amazon has it for a few bucks less than that. Crucial m4 benchmarks. Crucial.com already has it for sale but I'd really prefer to get it through Amazon so that I don't have to pay tax or shipping.
     
    ZippoMan, Apr 26, 2011
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  5. benji123

    benji123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    My first benchmark run after installing a Vertex 3 Max IOPS 120GB (received yesterday from Amazon).

    Would love to know if I can push it further/faster with more tweaks ...

    [​IMG]
     
    benji123, May 1, 2011
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  6. Darkstone

    Darkstone Notebook Consultant

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    Why the hell do people bench with filll 0x00? Whit the same trick i can write 10GB/s to my hard drive...

    use realistic settings please.
     
    Darkstone, May 1, 2011
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  7. Gazzajagman

    Gazzajagman Notebook Guru

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    I think the Vertex 240GB SSD is a 256GB drive, but uses 16gb for data provisioning and error correction.
     
    Gazzajagman, May 1, 2011
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  8. benji123

    benji123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Dude, chill. Never run a benchmark before (or had reason to). I looked to see what settings were obvious from previous postings and used those. Do tell: what are the "realistic" settings?
     
    benji123, May 1, 2011
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  9. Darkstone

    Darkstone Notebook Consultant

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    Fill 0x00 is not reallistic because it writes a bunch of zeroes to the SSD.
    This is fine for most SSD's except sandforce. The sandforce controller utilizes compression and thus scores pretty impressive when writting lots and lots of predictable data...

    Thing is, real world data does not equal to a bunch of zeroes, in fact, most, if not all of the big files are already compressed.

    tl;dr: don't use benchmarks that write non-random data to the disk. Such benchmarks only give sandforce a better name than it deserves.
     
    Darkstone, May 1, 2011
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  10. benji123

    benji123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    So which benchmark should I use? Happy to try another
     
    benji123, May 1, 2011
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  11. Darkstone

    Darkstone Notebook Consultant

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    Crystaldiskmark or AS-SSD. AS-SSD is just updated whit a new kind of bench: compression benchmark:
    [​IMG]
     
    Darkstone, May 1, 2011
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  12. ZippoMan

    ZippoMan Notebook Evangelist

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    AS-SSD is a popular SSD benchmarking tool.
     
    ZippoMan, May 1, 2011
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  13. benji123

    benji123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Here are results from first run of AS-SSD:

    [​IMG]


    [​IMG]
     
    benji123, May 1, 2011
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  14. zonto

    zonto Notebook Enthusiast

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    Any recommendations for products and procedures as to how you moved the hard drive where your optical drive used to be? I'm going to be doing basically the same thing that you've done.

    Results look great so far! Does the Intel chipset on the L502X enable TRIM for your SSD?
     
    zonto, May 1, 2011
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  15. Darkstone

    Darkstone Notebook Consultant

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    Of course it does.
     
    Darkstone, May 1, 2011
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  16. benji123

    benji123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yes TRIM is enabled. I followed the instructions from the service manual and got the caddy and esata-p cable from here:

    2nd HDD or SSD Caddy for DELL XPS 15 (L501x, L502x) [OBHD-SATA12-SATA-BU] - $44.75 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks
     
    benji123, May 1, 2011
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  17. zonto

    zonto Notebook Enthusiast

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    And did you put the DVD cover on that caddy or leave it stock? Any pics? :)
     
    zonto, May 2, 2011
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  18. benji123

    benji123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Trying to figure out how to pry the cover off the HDD caddy to I can attach the cover from the DVD burner.
     
    benji123, May 2, 2011
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  19. joco

    joco Notebook Consultant

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    joco, May 2, 2011
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