This Just In: OCZ Vertex 2 SandForce-1200 SSD with Special Sauce
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 22, 2010 2:38 PM EST- Posted in
- This Just In
- Storage
- SSDs
- OCZ
Next week I'll have more to report on than just SSDs, I promise. Until then, the SandForce festivities continue with today's arrival: The OCZ Vertex 2.
As you may have heard, the Vertex 2 uses a special brew of SandForce's SF-1200 firmware that gives it the small file random write performance of a SF-1500 based solution, without most of the added cost. Unless Corsair and SandForce work something out, the Vertex 2 is going to be the only SF-1200 based SSD that can use SandForce's MP firmware and attain 30,000 sustained 4K random write IOPS.
I'm running the drive through the ringer now and hope to have results as well as an update to our SSD Bench later this week. If you want to see pics of its internals, check out the gallery.
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Earthmonger - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
Damn it, Anand. For the past month I've been trying to decide which drive is going to be my next SSD, but every time I reach a semi-solid conclusion, you pull something better out of your hat. Stop that!So much good stuff coming out lately; it really sucks.
Confusador - Friday, April 23, 2010 - link
You have a really interesting definition of 'sucks'. ;)abnderby - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
I have read many of the SSD articles, mainly because I have one main bottle neck in any of my systems. That being of slow spinning disks in my many drives. The one thing i do not understand though, is why the drives are only in 2.5 inch form factor. Most all of us have 3.5 inch drive bays in every system we own except our laptops. It would seem that if we want higher storage size put these in larger form factor and viola more GB per package. Drive could end up triple or quadruple in size over night. Imagine that.clarketelecom - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
What? Are you saying that simply changing form factors will result in a magical price drop in NAND? If you put music or photos on an SSD, shame on your affluence/stupidity. On the other hand, I dislike having to buy a conversion kit to 3.5" - I actually have my SSD sitting in my floppy bay with nothing holding it down. On the OTHER hand, making the same form factor for notebooks and desktops means cheaper manufacturing which means cheaper SSDs, so...BlackDragon24 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
This whole SF1200 mix-up says at least one of these things, if not more:Sandforce has no ethics
Corsair has no ethics
OCZ has no brains or balls
I'm trying to figure out which is true.
TonyB - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
all the aboveBarshj - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
as a software developer myself, I would like to give Sandforce the benefit of the doubt or at least cut them some slack.
If I give a customer a beta version of my software and say this is not for official release, there will be changes but you can use it for your own internal testing and then a client starts using that in a production environment only to find out later that a feature is removed by the time the official release comes out. I would like to say to that client, you should not have put beta software in a production environment. However, I would have made sure that the client knows as soon as I know that the said feature would be removed (this is where I think things fell apart on Sandforce's part although as far as I know there is no evidence that they did not tell Corsair, it could be that Corsair was told and simply did not understand the implications of the change).
I know this example is not exactly the same as what happened here but I would not put all the blame on Sandforce. I think they have always said from the beginning that the 1200 would have the lower specs than the 1500.
However, all that being said...I think the only way out of this debacle for Sandforce and all the rest of the people involved is simply to make the updated firmware run at the 1500 specs instead of putting the limiter in there for the 1200's. I bought a OWC LE so it doesn't affect me either way but really who will it hurt by taking out the limiter for the 1200's??? I'm sure they'll have to do something nice to OWC to make up for this but I'm sure they can work something out to OWC's advantage...
AstroGuardian - Friday, April 23, 2010 - link
That's you problem as a software developer. Read what you wrote again and i am sure you will find your mistake. It's a golden rule in SW development: you never take features out in the final release from the beta release. It looks like you might be lacking a business analyst in your team mate. No hard feelings but the world has gone through serious development years so far, so best practices exists...Barshj - Friday, April 23, 2010 - link
I will agree with you that it is not ideal to remove things between beta and release but I would also point out that both Microsoft and Apple have removed features between the beta and RTM of their products. It is not as uncommon as you may think (or perhaps you are just venting). Sometimes, there are performance reasons for things being removed until later when they can be addressed and are re-included in a future update. In an ideal world, this would never happen but that is not the world we live in.
icrf - Friday, April 23, 2010 - link
I want to agree, but the difference here is that they didn't just run out of time, couldn't polish it off, interacted badly with something else, etc. They knew from the get-go that this feature would not be available. When you know something isn't going to be in MP, you keep it out of the beta, especially when it's as artificial as this, AND you've promised exclusive access to someone else. That's just bad. I doubt it's malicious, but that still doesn't make it good.