KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
As SSDs continue to grow in popularity and more users realise their value, companies are releasing a staggering array of drives to market. Months ago OCZ released the Vertex 2 Pro, an enterprise class product which delivered staggering performance. This was followed shortly afterwards by the OCZ Vertex LE, part of a 5,000 unit limited edition run based around a hybrid Sandforce SF 1200/1500 controller. This limited edition unit was close in performance to the more expensive Pro drive, which utilises the class leading Sandforce 1500 controller.
The drive we are looking at today in our labs is simply entitled the Vertex 2 and it is the true successor to the original VERTEX unit and is based around the affordable Sandforce 1200 controller which OCZ claim will outperform the Limited Edition. The idea is that OCZ will be dropping the price of the original Vertex drive for the mainstream marketplace while targeting performance users with the Vertex 2.
So what does the rest of the OCZ lineup look like? Well, they are still offering the Agility SSD units which are aimed at the lower end of the market and they have also released the new Agility 2 drives which share the same ‘next generation’ SF-1200 controller. The Onyx unit is also available in the UK right now which is targeted as an entry level unit, costing £75 for 32GB. This is sure to be competing with the excellent Intel X25-V 40GB drive we recently reviewed. The Onyx drives use a new Indilinx Amigos controller which while budget oriented, should still give relatively good performance – rated at 125mb/s read and 70 mb/s write.
The drive on test today is MLC based (multi level cell) which is cheaper and less reliable than SLC (single level cell), however for this marketplace SLC is still too expensive. Manufacturers quote ‘Mean Time Before Failure' (MTBF) as millions of hours now, and we find this quite pointless – no one really knows when they will fail, its all guesswork. I would assume even under continuous heavy load that these drives will last a good 8-10 years, the technology has wear leveling incorporated which automatically maps out bad cells as they fail.
| Specifications | |
| Size | 99.88 x 69.63 x 9.3 mm |
| Operating Temperature | 0c – 70c |
| Max Performance | Read up to 285 MB/s |
| Write up to 275MB/s | |
| Sustained Write | up to 250 MB/s |
| 4kb Random Write | Up to 50,000 IOPS |
| Shock Resistance | Shock Resistance |
| Vibration | 20G Peak, 10-20Khz with 3 axis |
| MTBF | 2,000,000 hours |
OCZ have always been solid SSD drives./ that one is a bit costly though I do agree.
Great drive, good performer. awesome write performance. only issue I have is the pricing. its £300 in our local store. for 100gb? ouch.
im impressed with the performance, only concern is the cost for this performance. I am sure some people will pay it, but the intel 40gb drives seem good value, and in raid 0 outperform most drives in read performance. I know write is much slower, but it seems most people dont really notice it as much. Or am I missing the point?
nice review. outperforms most drives, but for the price, its a bit small i think. Still wouldnt mind one though 🙂
The controller is great. clearly seen in the performance figures. I have to agree with others. almost £300 for 100gb seems a lot of dosh.
I like it, cant quite afford it yet, but it will be my next SSD
sandforce controllers are mega good . all their drives are dear tho. just opart of the costs of owning this controller unit.
These are actually very hard to get in the UK right now, anyone seen them on sale anywhere?
I always like to see real world testing. Seems a solid enough drive, but OCZ are pretty much leaders in this field I think. Bit surprised with the cost however, I was expecting it to be around 200-230./ not 280-300
my friend has one of these, they are very good SSD’s. out of my price league but if I was paying this much for an SSD id go for a 256 gb and spend a bit more.
performance is great, but its not worthy of the price tag. id rather go with a raid 0 system that Zardon reviewed last week. those intel drives would be around 100 less and have more read performance. Write speeds are important for specific jobs, but for a boot OS drive it makes little to no difference.
Great ssd, but for £131.59 at Aria you can get the 50gb vertex 2, and put your OS and main programs on it, and then pick up a cheap traditional hard drive for your data. OK it’s only 50gb, but when you consider the money that can be spent on a processor to speed things up it’s not bad value at all.
I have 6 of the 50s running on different setups with an ahci minimum. If you are worried about cost per gigabyte, don’t think like that. How much was cost per gigabyte when geeks upgraded 286s from 384kb to 2 Meg back in the 80s and how much difference did that make in system speed? $20000 a gig?
These also make fiber optic cards actually go full speed as the drive is capable of doing all the IOPS. The only thing hotter than this in a modest budget are vertex 2 pro and Pcie skinny controller SSD.
Sorry for any typos.