Convince me to not get Vertex 3 IOPS

I just bought a new high end laptop and want to get a good SSD to put in it. I've been reading here, on newsegg and various review sites and it's obvious that Vertex 3 Max IOPS 120GB (the size I'm after) has the best specs, by far. Now it turns out that some people have problems (others don't have problems), but since it comes with 3 years of warranty, I should be safe right? If it doesn't work, I'll just get a new one. Oh, and if it breaks after 3 years, that's pretty OK too, since in 3 years, a 120GB SSD will probably not cost a whole lot. Am I missing something here, or why is everybody recommending the Intel 510 or Crucial M4?

The laptop is a Clevo P150HM/Sager 8150 with i7 2720QM and GTX460M.

 

OCZ is a dishonest company who decieves their customers. You should not support them.


...you wanted to be convinced, right?

 

Apart from the recent bad press attributed to OCZ, note that the technical benchmark records do not necessarily translate to a significant real-time improvement over competing SSDs. In addition, would one really want to risk a company's return policy when it's much more preferable to receive a product which works reliably without having to consider the warranty policy?

 

Yeah, I guess that's a valid point. So, I'm looking at the specs for the Intel 510
Read (Max) 450 MB/s
Write (Max) 210 MB/s
Random read 4KB 20 000 IOPS
Random write 4KB 8 000 IOPS
And they seem pretty OK, still the Vertex 3 IOPS is a lot better. Looking at this thread though
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...orage/579015-intel-510-series-ssd-thread.html
makes me wonder more. Especially the 4k write speeds seem to not be too good. Will I really not notice a difference in performance in every day use?
So, can anyone recommend a replacement for the Vertex 3 IOPS? What about the other OCZs, like the Agility?

 

The Vertex 3 Maxiops is the fastest SSD available, no doubt. The best alternative to the Vertex 3 Maxiops is the Vertex 3 240GB, they perform nearly identical. It's not the most reliable drive but the 3 year warranty is good and OCZ tends to be pretty fast with RMAs.

On the other hand, it will be impossible to notice the difference between a Vertex 3 and a Crucial M4 without using a stopwatch or running benchmark software. Crucial has a much better track record for reliability and only uses IMFT NAND.

If you look at the Newegg customer reviews of the Vertex 3 (Maxiops) it's pretty horrible. Add to that the recent firmware problems and you'll get an idea why many people say to avoid OCZ: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?88625-Vertex-3-BSOD-2.06/page6

 

As stated above, on paper and benchmarks it's the fastest but in real life, you'd be hard pressed to ever notice any difference between the Vertex 3 Max IOPS and any of the other top SSDs.

 

wait for the Corsair Force 3 GT series. it will be worth it.

 

Cool. You convinced me to stay away from OCZ.

Hadn't looked into Corsair before, but now when you mentioned it, it seems like a really interesting option. And, maybe Corsair is a more reliable company? The specs were better than Vertex 3 IOPS too! I was just a little confused; there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the Force GT series and the Force 3 series, as seen here:
Force Series GT - Solid-State Drives
I need my SSD soon and I haven't found any store (I live in Sweden) that sells the GT. Is it a bad idea to get the Force 3 instead?

 

Corsair Force does just as bad as Vertex 2 on Newegg: about 20% failures.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...mer-reviews-current-ssds-who-will-help-6.html

 

That 20% failure rate may be exaggerated. There could be plenty of people who bought that had no issue and didn't post a review. Can't judge failure rates by reviews.

 

While the OCZ vertex 3 is fastest on paper, it may not translate as such in real world use. Then again, even if it doesn't meet those specs, it still will be the world's fastest. So if you want bragging rights or have a need for the best, get it. Otherwise, its reliability is questionable, and OCZ has done some shady things in the past.

 

You do know that published specs mean diddly squat right? Example, Intel G1 with "low" sequential writes blew away the competition when they came out since their random (and unpublished) speeds were much better than the rest.

 

I bet several dozens of thousands are sold. I doubt the failure rate is higher then other SSD's. there's a thing called quality control and it's present at any FAB. actually the FAB's producing ocz ssd's are the same of many other brands. just because 50 reviews are bad and just 100 is good doesn't mean it's a 50% failure. Just because OCZ has a bad reputation that doesn't mean their failure rate is higher then any other brand.

 

That's true, people who have a failed SSD are more likely to leave a review. But that will be the same for any brand.

So it is likely it will be lower than 20% and still the highest of any current SSD on Newegg.

Actually you can, in case of the Sandforce reviews we're talking about more than a thousand reviews. There's no doubt, Sandforce (and Indilinx) is the least reliable controller of modern SSD.

 

not for ocz apparently.

remember, they sold ssds that where unable to get windows installed on. what kind of quality control does not test an os setup?