OCZ Vertex4

Anyone besides me take a chance? So far I'm extremely happy with mine, and I'm thinking OCZ's problems recently have been the fact that they were using SandForce controllers The Vertex4, being an Indilinx controller (actually a heavily customized Marvell apparently), should be immune to SandForce issues.

And it performs so nice too....

 

nice drive, performance and pricewise similar to plextor m3(vanilla). 512GB version is very nice though

could you please post smart data from CDI?

 

Voila

 

OCZ Vertex 4 Receives Much Anticipated Firmware Update Promising Higher Performance

New Vertex 4 Firmware 1.4 released.

OCZ Technology

New ATTO result on the Vertex 4 512GB SSD


512GB V4 performance jumped from 521MB/s read and 460MB/s write to 546MB/s read and 467MB/s write

 

I care nothing for sequential performance. There are two speeds for sequential performance: "Hard drive," and "SSD." Any further differentiation is pointless.

I want to know the improvement in two things: power utilization, and random access speeds. I understand the improvement in the first is minimal, but I don't think the review sites have finished their complete test runs to find out the latter, have they?

Besides which, it's an RC. I'm thinking I'd rather wait for the release firmware. I find the drive's current performance to be extremely satisfactory.

 

It's hard to find any meaningful data on random access speeds these days. With all modern SSDs booting Windows 7 and starting Photoshop within a 1 second difference of each other, most review sites have since moved onto fairly unrealistic workloads that the average user would never come across - high traffic servers, databases, filling up the entire drive as fast as it can be written to, etc. - workloads where the differences between different SSDs are still perceptible.

 

Well, don't knock DB performance TOO much, one of the things I'm starting to think about is building a special ultra-high-performance SQL cluster, given that SSDs can beat SAS RAID all hollow too. SATA SSDs are starting to get down to SAS prices in dollars per gig, and I'd LOVE to benchmark SQL 2008 on an array made out of these against standard 15k SAS.

The SSD being SATA presents a handicap in one direction, but their massive speed compared to mechanical SAS drives might make up for it. And since these are actually consumer oriented drives the pricing isn't insane like it is for actual enterprise SSDs.

Still, this is a consumer drive, and not really meant for enterprise applications like high traffic servers and DBs. Though I predict they'll start hitting the latter....as soon as I can go on Dell Premier and get the configuration approved.

 

An SATA SSD is indeed much faster than 15k RPM SAS HDD RAID, but RAM is much faster than SATA SSD RAID. Having used in-memory databases where all data is stored on servers with multiple terabytes of RAM, I'm no longer impressed by SSD database performance

 

That day will come at some point. SSD will be considered garbage by then haha

 

Hey npaladin2000 , can you share the window 7 boot up in real world & boot timer?

 

I've never timed it but it's south of 10 seconds.

 

boot time is mostly influenced by post and hardware initialization in a computer. Difference in windows load time with fastest vs average ssd is some 2s or so.

look at this chart (i know, it's from thg, but still)

830 should litteraly be more than twice as fast as intel 320 but it isn't on windows load and it isn't on any home workload.

-- picture is taken from this article

 

It can also be influenced by manufacturer specific boot optimizations, which means different PCs can't always be compared directly.

 

Thanks you but I don't trust this chart , because my c300 is on 9sec , m4 actually runs the slowest overall.

So far I know vertex 3 max iops runs on 8sec. I might get more info of Samsung 830. Thanks!

I know , I'm booting freak , sorry about that!

 

I must say OCZ drives are quick (when they work).
They even give you a sticker in the package of the drive that spells:
My SSD is faster than my HDD!
But, I passed 2 Vertex II that lived less than 30 days
And I now believe the sticker should also say:
My SSD is faster to die (or crash) then my HDD!
Hence my OCZ story is now over and the Intel 520 series lets me sleep at night
So whatever you do, think that a few $ more gives you reliability, and avoid at all cost OCZ.

 

I'm enjoying mine in RAID 0 8).

 

You sure that your problem isn't SandForce drives?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I927 using Tapatalk 2

 

Although the Intel 520 shouldn't really die, please keep us updated if you hit any BSODs during its use.

 

Guys, have you seen the review of the new firmware for the Vertex 4?
It looks bloody fast now. Before it was only mediocre fast in Read but now they have also corrected the write to very fast speeds plus the read got a small boost. I would love to see a real world comparison with these drivers, but noone have posted them yet.

Take a look at the review with comparison with the different drivers

Before:


New driver:


Intel 520 120GB:



OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSD Review and 1.4RC Comparison - SSD Steroids for Your Vertex 4 - The SSD Review

 

Yeah, I'm waiting for the actual release before I update mine, though.

 

Whats your HW? Thanks for reply

 

I'd be all over this for my 11.6" notebook purchase except for the fact that power consumption at idle is still in the 1.2-1.3W range. If they fix that they'll have me on board.

 

1.4 Release firmware is now available: http://www.ocztechnology.com/files/ssd_tools/OCZToolbox_v3.02.09.zip

Time to see if anyone improves. Per OCZ, this only gives minor improvements to the 512 GB drives, so since it's destructive, I'm not going to bother.

 

no improvement for 256gb drives?

 

It's supposed to significantly improve the 128 and 256 GB drives, making their performance competitive with the 512 GB model.

 

so do u guys recommend this ssd???? it just arrive in my country...pricing wise about the same as the samsung 830 which im looking at....and also considering the cheaper m4....looking at 256gb model

 

With the 1.4 firmware, the OCZ is faster than both in most usage cases. So far mine has been flawless, but they haven't been around as long as the Crucial and Samsung, which have longer reliability records. Definitely I'd take the OCZ over the Samsung, but Crucial's pricing lately has been excellent, and you'll have to decide if the performance is worth the price premium. The OCZ will also have higher power consumption than the Crucial,by about a watt.

If Crucial's pricing had been this good when I bought I might have bought one: it really came down fast when the Vertex4 hit the market. But I don't regret getting the OCZ.

 

Owners, any reliability / stability issues? I saw it available today and was considering getting it but there was only the 256 gb option, which was more than what I need/ willing to pay for!

 

I just brought it this morning , I wanted to upgrade to v1.4 it keeps saying upgrade fail , file does not exist , tried so many way , can't upgrade it , I'm going to refund it tomorrow , so much frustration.

 

Have you talked to their support yet?

 

I just found the fix , in case anyone have same issue like me.

1. Open "Device Manager"
2. "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" > "Intel(R) Mobile Express Chipset"
3. Right click go to "properties" > "update the driver"
4. Browse my computer for driver software > Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer > click the "Standard AHCI 1.0" controller
5. Then restart computer , when its back up and running it will installing drivers.
6. Another Restart again.

Finally I'm on v1.4...I been thought it was no file uploaded in OCZ's data base.

I'll post some benchmarks later on.

 

What you guys think?

 

I think that's pretty freaking fast, what do you think?

 

Not bad so far so good , but it seem having a little issue with my m14x with this drive , the bios itself unable to detect the drive(randomly) or might be the drive having issue itself, still trying to figure it out. Probably not my sata connector problems.

 

There's a thread on the OCZ forums about some owners not getting the V4 recognized on cold boots and having to Ctrl+Alt+Del to get going.

Support Question Vertex 4 not found on 1st boot

 

So whats the verdict peeps?
To buy or not to buy?
I have had people telling me not too, it has this and that issue + it is slow and some even saying it is slower than the vertex 3.

I want to head down to the stores tomorrow and pick one of these up. Preferably the 256GB vertex 4.

Cheers.

 

The V4s do well in the benchmarks because they don't compress data.

This is great for working with lots of incompressible data (video, audio, rar archives) but it doesn't do too well with 4k's lower queue depths which is important for a OS system drive. Ocz is still improving their V4 firmware so things may get better with the 4ks.

One nice plus is the 5 year warranty that the V4 has.

The cold boot issue in notebooks has been fixed with a new firmware release.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...sh-storage/670223-vertex-4-cold-boot-fix.html

 

Go for it. Mine's been trouble-free.