What SSD is better?

[Implied]

if you can wait, intel is doing their ssd refresh in a few months. then they will be on top for a while.

OCZ is about to launch their Vertex 3 Series as well, which goes up to 500 MB/s read/write (Note, SATA III Drive). Review on Tom's Hardware has good Benchmark results, although it may be a card from before or after the 25nm switch.

The Intel SSDs will probably be mostly SATA III Drives though, same as the OCZ Vertex 3.

The Corsair Performance 3 has some good read/write speed as well, has Garbage Collection. Also a SATA III however.

Makes them a bit more expensive, although you don't need to worry about upgrading when OS X gets SATA III support (at least for a while)?

 

[jpa]

if you can wait, intel is doing their ssd refresh in a few months. then they will be on top for a while.

OCZ is about to launch their Vertex 3 Series as well, which goes up to 500 MB/s read/write (Note, SATA III Drive). Review on Tom's Hardware has good Benchmark results, although it may be a card from before or after the 25nm switch.

The Intel SSDs will probably be mostly SATA III Drives though, same as the OCZ Vertex 3.

The Corsair Performance 3 has some good read/write speed as well, has Garbage Collection. Also a SATA III however.

Makes them a bit more expensive, although you don't need to worry about upgrading when OS X gets SATA III support (at least for a while)?

ok thanks for info

 

[WanderLustMan]

ok, well that is disappointing! I just got a Vertex 2 in the last few days. How can I check if it has 34nm NAND or 25nm NAND? Also what is a good app to benchmark this thing in OS X? I'm pissed that I may have been swindled here!

 

[edgeuser99]

Hey,

I bought the intel 80 GB SSD for an xserve build. I put the OS and apps on the SDD, build a raid array for data (2x2TB). Works great - when the raid array spins down, the rig is completely silent.

Good luck!

 

[Implied]

ok, well that is disappointing! I just got a Vertex 2 in the last few days. How can I check if it has 34nm NAND or 25nm NAND? Also what is a good app to benchmark this thing in OS X? I'm pissed that I may have been swindled here!

Not 100% sure if this method will work, but from what I understand, the 25nm should have slightly less total Storage, so a 60 GB Drive might show up as 55 GB or something. Try opening Disk Utility and see how much total storage it says the Drive has. Method might work, might not.

I think they offer re-imbursements if you want to get a 34nm Drive btw.

 

[WanderLustMan]

Hmm, Disk Utility shows the drive as 120GB capacity. So I'm ok? jesus this is annoying.

Here's what Disk Utility reports on it http://d.pr/YGAC

 

[justr]

ok, well that is disappointing! I just got a Vertex 2 in the last few days. How can I check if it has 34nm NAND or 25nm NAND? Also what is a good app to benchmark this thing in OS X? I'm pissed that I may have been swindled here!

OCZ has said that they will be releasing a tool in days so that people can check. The best way is to compare the drive's formatted capacity (in windows) to the formatted capacity posted by those with known 34nm and 25nm drives respectively.

Apparently, firmware prior to 1.27 does NOT support 25nm NAND, so before 1.27 is 34 nm, 1.27 or higher doesn't tell you much.

Finally, OCZ says that they will replace the drive for free (I think with a drive that still has 25nm NAND, but more ICs for better performance and less over provisioning).

In any case, I'm not your best source of information on this. Go to the OCZ support forum... all the details are there!

Don't worry. Now that they're fixing the situation you should get everything taken care of!

(I know all this because I was minutes away from buying the 60 GB Vertex 2 when I saw that info... and followed closely to see what would happen.)

 

[Implied]

Can we still buy 34nm Drives though, or are they scrapping those entirely? My order on Newegg is still lacking some parts that aren't in stock just yet and I'd rather do 1 shipment than several. I'm getting a RevoDrive X2 for Windows, but would rather have a 32nm for the extra storage + speed than a 25nm.

Corsair is tagging their 25nm Drives with a suffix... "-A" I think or something now, but OCZ?

 

[justr]

Can we still buy 34nm Drives though, or are they scrapping those entirely? My order on Newegg is still lacking some parts that aren't in stock just yet and I'd rather do 1 shipment than several. I'm getting a RevoDrive X2 for Windows, but would rather have a 32nm for the extra storage + speed than a 25nm.

Corsair is tagging their 25nm Drives with a suffix... "-A" I think or something now, but OCZ?

I don't know if OCZ is changing their packaging/labels. And not all their products have switched to 34nm.

The whole industry will almost definitely switch over soon, because of costs. I called GSkill and the tech called up to corporate, called me back the next day and said that the Sniper models still uses 34nm, at least right now.

A prediction: companies, seeing all the terrible publicity OCZ just got, are going to change skews, add labels, or otherwise make it clear when drives are shipping with 25nm.

Of course, in the longrun none of this matters. The key problems with 25nm drives are i) having to over provision more but not adding additional NAND to make up the difference between advertised and real available capacity (different than the 1024 = 1 GB thing), and ii) lower speeds on low-capacity drives when using fewer ICs/NAND chips, meaning the controller is only accessing half or a quarter as many chips at the same time.

Both those problems can be overcome pretty easily. Advertise capacity/speeds more realistically, use lower capacity (different than 25nm vs 34nm) NAND on small capacity drives so you use the same number of chips/IC as older drives so you can saturate the controller...

 

[Stork]

Tom's Hardware published a report on the OCZ Vertex 2 switch from 32 vs 25 nm chips today. Here's the link:
The OCZ Vertex 2 Conspiracy: Lost Space, Lost Speed?

To summarize, read the whole article if you can tell what the impact of Tom's reviewer's tests on your system - I can't tell if its good or bad. Firmware updates are being readied by OCZ. And OCZ isn't the only mfgr that will be going to the 25nm chipset. All of them will over the next couple of months.

Although, the capacity dropped on the 60GB drive to 55GB, Neweeg's price dropped from $155 to $105 (free shipping & before the $10 rebate). Dragging out the olde calculator, the cost per GB drops - $2.58 to $1.91 per GB. With the rebate, the true 55GB drive (25nm chipset) drops to $1.73 per GB. Hmmm. I think I deserve another beer tonight for making such a good decision.

So, I bought the OCS Vertex 2 60GB (now 55GB) drive this weekend, which was part of Newegg's Presidents Day sale, I still got a good deal price wise. I truly don't know what performance hits I'll have to take, if any. But, I still got a good buy.