OCZ Vertex 2 vs. Intel

Can someone tells me which one of these SSDs is considered to be the super fastest unit for Alienware M15x:

OCZ Vertex 2, or Intel X25-M,

When I was trying to configure the hard drive for M15x, it came out w/ Samsung<< Being offered by Dell's website, but yet i have no idea whether it is as speed as others like Intel & OCZ.

Kindly, I like to see benchmarks for the fastest SSD

I really appreciate it

PS. If there are other brands that outperform Intel& OCZ, please share us with your inputs guys.. price aint that important to me, but i do care for getting such a high performance w/ stability

Thank you in advance

 

The Vertex 2 is the fastest, it's pretty much top of the line right now.

 

thanks Johnny. Certainly, I will go with Vertex 2... It rocks

 

Vertex 2 is fastest on paper, but in real life it may not be as overwhelming.

SSD have so many factors that need to be considered to best make the decision of witch is better.


First the easiest decision to make; Prce - Witch one has the best price in GB per $? I think Intel is winning this one.

Second is support for advanced features like a toolset and trim. I remember hearing some bad stuff about Vertex 2 owners being promised a tool kit like what intel has so you can wipe the drive, secure erase, and manually perform trim functions and it was never delerviered.

Third is going outside of synthetic benchmarks and testing real life stuff. Is the Vertex 2 really faster in real life testing? I dont know but I do recall an issue discovered with how the sandforce manages to speed things up.

Its not that the vertex 2 is using faster memory than the intel it has something to do with how it processes data, apparently it relies on the data being uncompressed to get that fast speed it boasts.

There was a huge drop in synthetic performance scores when test were run with compresed data. Things like jpg, avi, zip, rar they suddenly have much lower speed in transfer because the sandforce controller can "do its thing"

Then I thought to myself, probably the vast majority of data on my computer is compressed data. So thats what got me thinking that in real life test the Intel maybe just as good or better while still winning out in the cost category and I know its well tested and reliable.

Not trying to sway opinions one way or another just food for thought.

 

During normal usage there will hardly be any differences between Intel G2 and Vertex 2.
During medium to heavier multi tasking the Vertex 2 will be much faster than the Intel G2 (see storagereview.com)
Also for writing large files the Vertex 2 will be faster.

The toolkit is a benefit of Intel. OCZ owners can perform a secure erase with a Windows app on the OCZ forum.

The OCZ forums are a benefit of OCZ drives. They have expert help that responds quickly to problems.

 

You can post some pretty high write benchmarks with Vertex 2 (and basically all Sandforce drives) but then...they 'settle in'. Nobody knows how or why they do this exactly and there are theories but Sandforce is notoriously tight lipped about how its Duraclass technologies work, thus it is difficult to know anything for certain.

So the basics are this: under very specific conditions you can get much higher sequential and random write transfer rates with a Vertex 2 than the Intel but under certain other conditions (now assumed to be hammering the drive with lots of incompressible data) its just as easy to get the same transfer rates as the Intel or worse and thats the only real selling point it has over the Intel. The way in which Intel ssds work is well documented and transparent so its easier to know what you're getting whereas Sandforce at some point is going to have to be a lot more transparent about how their controllers work because alot of people see precipitous declines in write speed shortly after they begin using the drive. The initial write speeds are almost universally good and make for great looking benchmarks but do ask around for some benchs of a settled in drive or check out the many hits you'll get over at the OCZ forum.

I bought a Vertex 2 and I'm pretty happy with it since it beats the pants off my old hdd, like any ssd should. If you are buying into ssds right now then you are still what would be considered an early adopter and so we will always be spending more money on uncertain tech, that may become obsolete quickly. That uncertainty is just what you get when you want to get in early. At this point I think you should go with what gives you the most sense of security - the cheapest drive that you feel you will be happy with plus the longest warranty you can get. This way you will hopefully fret alot less about whether your benches are up to snuff and you just get on with using your drive.

The OCZ forums can be a useful resource but if you hang out there too much it will put very strange ideas into your head. Many people there talk in acronyms and it is assumed you know what they mean. It can make the whole thing seem incredibly complicated. At times people recommend that you use the drive with a list of caveats or else... and this does not inspire faith in your purchase. Whether its justified or not, who really knows? Its all a bit clandestine really. Even the the OCZ guys who are selling Sandforce based drives don't really know how they work. I couldn't tell you the Vertex 2 I've got is faster than an Intel. Honestly the write speeds according to various benchmarks (which probably don't reflect drive performance in practice anyway) can vary so much depending on the compressibility of the data being written, the possibility of Duraclass intervention, power saving levels/states etc.

 

In the Storagereview real world benchmark the Sandforce drives manage to get nearly double the throughput of a Intel G2 160GB.



OCZ Vertex 2 Review (120GB) | StorageReview.com

People tend to focus a lot on Durawrite and compressed vs. uncompressed data, but in the end it's real world performance that counts. And that's where Sandforce drives are good.

I've had a couple of Sandforce drives in my laptop, the performance drop was minimal even after I wrote 200GB to it in a matter of hours.

 

I'm not worried at all. But I do like to understand how things work and I do like to ensure that people have what can be considered all of the known facts at the time of writing so they can make informed purchases.

When I say 'settled in' drive I don't mean a new one or a recently secure erased drive like the ones that are likely reviewed by sites such as storagereview. I know far too little about their test system, methodology, the compressibility of the data being transferred in the realworld test etc to comment beyond that.

Theres a sticky over at the OCZ forums which kind of showed how realworld transfer rates between various ssds were all very very similar, despite wildly variable CDM and AS SSD results. The theory goes that theres some limiting mechanism that is bypassed by AS SSD. I'll admit, alot of it is over my head, alot of it is obfuscation and jargon.

So right now, I wouldn't put money where the benchmarks are. I'd put money on whoever is offering the longest warranty on the cheapest drive with the capacity you need. Bonus points awarded if it looks like the company is going to be around long enough to honour the warranty (in this regard, Intel is a safe bet). If you are coming from a hdd then literally any second generation ssd will be faster in a way that you will notice without needing visual feedback from benchmark numbers.

Edit: Actually I'd like to ask you a question. As part of your job you get to use lots of different drives on a regular basis right? Have you ever felt that any of them stood out particularly as being significantly faster all the time than any other drive of the same generation? I mean the only comparison I've got is that I've had a Vertex 1 and a Vertex 2 in this computer and I can't really tell any difference except for somewhat arbitrary benchmark numbers. Now I wasn't stopwatching anything and thats important (because how often do you stopwatch mundane day to day computer tasks?).

 

On paper and in benchmarks, the OCZ Vertex 2 is technically faster.

But you don't buy an SSD to run benchmarks. When you're actually USING the hard drive in day-to-day activities, you won't be able to tell the difference between any top-end SSD drives.

And I quality "top-end" as drives based on fast controllers - SandForce controller, Intel controller, or Indilinx controllers.

 

In the quest to answer questions like these someone should write an articles titled: "It's Not All About Speed." In fact, there are a variety of tasks performed in conjunction with computing that are equally important to consider before making a choice on SSDs.

Just like HHD, some have speed advantages, while others offer greater long term stability depending on the task it performs. Consider which is most important to you. Then pick the device that best fulfill those requirements.

In instances such as this, it's also important to consider the old adage-- that which burns brightest, often burns half as long.