OCZ SSD buyers beware

B

blurp

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 15, 2006
Messages
282
OCZ is now shipping their SSDs with 25nm NAND.

Since the 25nm memory has lower P/E cycle rating of 3000 instead of 5000. OCZ consequently increased over-provisioning. My Vertex 2 was falsely advertised as a 120 GB but has a capacity of 115 GB. So, without notice, I end up with lower P/E cycle rating memory and lower drive capacity. Just for the heads up for future SSD buyers.

I still think SSD is a great technology (I already own a Agility 128GB) but it's kind of frustrating to receive a product slightly different than advertised. This is not a rant. I'm just informing future buyers. ;)
 
OCZ really should be reducing the price more if they are going to be selling the drives with 4% less available capacity than the other 120GB drives.

It is interesting comparing the reviews of 120GB SSDs on newegg. The vertex 2 has 187 total reviews, 22% of which are below average (1- or 2-eggs). The Intel X25-M 120GB has only 82 reviews (it is relatively new), but only 2 of the Intel reviews (2%) are below average, and both of those are complaining about the rebate, not the drive itself.

Some of the below average OCZ reviews are about rebates, but there are also a number of complaints about DOA and early failure.

As another data point, the 128GB Crucial C300 has 145 reviews, of which 5% are below average.

It seems to me that OCZ needs to really undercut Intel and Crucial in price if they want to get people to choose their 120GB drives. But for me, the OCZ would have to be about half the price of Intel or Crucial before I'd even consider buying the OCZ.
 
Last edited:
The Vertex 2 120GB was either $160 or $170AR last week on NewEgg. Even today the Vertex 2 is $200AR ($220 w/o rebate) vs. $230 for the X25-M G2 and $240 for the C300. I think OCZ is undercutting price wise by a decent amount (15%+ including the rebate... I do hate rebates though.)

Just some thoughts.
 
pjkenned said:
The Vertex 2 120GB was either $160 or $170AR last week on NewEgg. Even today the Vertex 2 is $200AR ($220 w/o rebate) vs. $230 for the X25-M G2 and $240 for the C300. I think OCZ is undercutting price wise by a decent amount (15%+ including the rebate... I do hate rebates though.)
Click to expand...

Not enough! Especially with the rebate hassles (on top of the DOA hassles and early failures)
 
:shrug: upon windows7 64 install my 120GB vertex 2 drive showed up as 117GB....

I've never in my life had a drive read at advertised size. Even my 600GB velociraptor comes in around 570GB...
 
I would have hoped some new SSDs to be available for now; Vertex 3, Marvell C300, Intel G3; but aside from some teasers and pre-production specimens sold in Asia, i've not heard the real news yet.

Instead, we see 25nm being used on the older generation controllers, instead of using them with newer generation controllers instead. This may reveal some problems with the new controllers, delaying their introduction. Kind of a shame though; with Intel having bad luck with the 1 billion southbridge bug, other vendors like Marvell and Sandforce could have exploited this gap by introducing their controllers first. As i recall, Sandforce and Marvell were sold even though bugs existed in their firmware. But with vendors like Samsung and Intel and nVidia doing the same, i guess this is the trend nowadays. ;)

@DisrupTer911: you may want to review the difference between GiB and GB: Wikipedia: Binary prefix.
 
sub.mesa said:
with Intel having bad luck with the 1 billion southbridge bug, other vendors like Marvell and Sandforce could have exploited this gap by introducing their controllers first.
Click to expand...

Huh? Was does Intel's motherboard chipset bug have to do with Marvell and Sandforce SSD controllers?
 
Personally I have never had good luck with anything sandforce. I had one ocz that was slower than my kingston value drive. And two gksill drives die on me in less than a week. My kingston 64gb and intel 120gb are still going strong. Only problem I have had is the intel drive would bsod with the amd ahci drivers but a firmware update fixed that.

Some people really like the ocz/sandforce drives. But I would recommend intel/kingston over them any day.
 
munkle said:
Personally I have never had good luck with anything sandforce. I had one ocz that was slower than my kingston value drive. And two gksill drives die on me in less than a week. My kingston 64gb and intel 120gb are still going strong. Only problem I have had is the intel drive would bsod with the amd ahci drivers but a firmware update fixed that.

Some people really like the ocz/sandforce drives. But I would recommend intel/kingston over them any day.
Click to expand...

you probably like all the sticky shit in walmart, too.

I've had the following in the past year:

7x Intel X25-V 40GBs
4x OCZ Vertex 60GB
1x Crucial X128
1x OCZ Agility 120
1x OCZ Solid 2 120GB
1x Intel X-25M G1 80GB
3x Intel X25-M 80GB
1x OCZ Vertex 2 120GB

I like the Indilinx and Sandforce's the best, to be honest.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top