OCZ's Vertex 2 Pro Preview: The Fastest MLC SSD We've Ever Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 31, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Inside the Vertex 2 Pro
This time there were no stickers telling me that I’d love this SSD, just a brown ESD bag and a plain looking SSD inside.
Pop the top off and you are greeted with a 90mF capacitor. Its duty is to deliver enough power to the controller to commit any buffered data to flash if there’s ever a sudden loss of power.
I asked SandForce why they needed such a large capacitor as Intel can get away with much smaller caps. It actually has to do with the amount of data buffered. Intel’s X25-M buffers somewhere in the low hundreds of KB of data (with a 512KB L2 cache I’m guessing it’s somewhere below that). The SF controllers buffer a couple of megabytes of data, hence the much larger capacitor.
SandForce did point out that the capacitor is a feature of the SF-1500 design, despite OCZ’s use of it on the Vertex 2 Pro.
That brings us to the controller used in the Vertex 2 Pro. Ultimately SandForce is going to have two controllers - the SF-1200 and the SF-1500. Currently the two controllers have a unified firmware and feature set, which is why both OCZ and SF refer to the Vertex 2 Pro as being somewhere in between a 1200 and a 1500. It’s a SF-1200 controller with the firmware of the SF-1500 as far as I can tell. The final shipping version with be a full fledged SF-1500.
The cost of the Vertex 2 Pro is going to be high. Higher than Intel’s X25-M and any other consumer level SSD on the market today. OCZ is targeting it at the very high end desktop/workstation user or perhaps even entry level enterprise customer.
We won’t see the Vertex 2 Pro available in the channel until March. But this isn’t the only SandForced based SSD we’ll get from OCZ though. At some point in the future we’ll have an SF-1200 based SSD that’s priced around the same level as the top-bin Indilinx based Vertex drives. It’s too early to talk about timing on that one though.
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fertilizer - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
First of all, my complements to a great article!It provided me with great insight!
It seems to me that SSD manufacturers are spending a lot of time complying to the world of HDD based Operating Systems.
Would'nt it be time to get OS's to treat a SSD differently than a HDD?
j718 - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
the ocz vertex ex is an slc drive, not mlc as shown in the charts.j718 - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
whoops, sorry, it's just the anandtech storage bench charts that have the ex mislabeled.Donald99 - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Any thoughts on potential energy use in mobile environment? Compared to intel MLC. Still better energy efficiencey than a traditional drive?Performance results seem uber.
cliffa3 - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Anand,Great article, will be an interesting technology to watch and see how mature it really is.
Question on the timeline for the price drop: When you said 'we'll see 160GB down at $225', were you talking about the mid-year refresh or the end of year next-gen?
MadMan007 - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Is it just me or is it inaccurate to mix GB and GiB when calculating overprovisioning at the bottom of page 5? By my reckoning the overprovisioning should be 6.6% (64GB/60GB, 128GB/120GB) not double that from using (64GB/55.9GiB etc)vol7ron - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Anand, the right column of the table should be marked as GiB.The last paragraph should take that into consideration. Either the second column should first be converted into GiB, or if it already is (and hard to believe it is), then you could do direct division from there.
The new table:
Adv.(GB) Tot.(GB) Tot.(GiB) User(GiB)
50 64 59.6 46.6
100 128 119.2 93.1
200 256 238.4 186.3
400 512 476.8 372.5
The new percentages should be:
(59.6-46.6) / 59.6 x 100 = 21.8% decrease
(119.2-93.1) / 119.2 x 100 = 21.9% decrease
(238.4-186.3) / 238.4 x 100 = 21.9% decrease
(476.8-372.5) / 476.8 x 100 = 21.9% decrease
And the second table:
Adv.(GB) Tot.(GB) Tot.(GiB) User(GiB)
60 64 59.6 55.9
120 128 119.2 111.8
240 256 238.4 223.5
480 512 476.8 447
The new percentages should be:
(59.6-55.9) / 59.6 x 100 = 6.21% decrease
(119.2-111.8) / 119.2 x 100 = 6.21% decrease
(238.4-223.5) / 238.4 x 100 = 6.25% decrease
(476.8-447) / 476.8 x 100 = 6.25% decrease
Note, I did not use significant figures, so all numbers are approximated, yet suitable - the theoretical value may be slightly different.
vol7ron
vol7ron - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Anand, the right column of the table should be marked as GiB.The last paragraph should take that into consideration. Either the second column should first be converted into GiB, or if it already is (and hard to believe it is), then you could do direct division from there.
The new table:
Adv.(GB) Tot.(GB) Tot.(GiB) User(GiB)
50 64 59.6 46.6
100 128 119.2 93.1
200 256 238.4 186.3
400 512 476.8 372.5
The new percentages should be:
(59.6-46.6) / 59.6 x 100 = 21.8% decrease
(119.2-93.1) / 119.2 x 100 = 21.9% decrease
(238.4-186.3) / 238.4 x 100 = 21.9% decrease
(476.8-372.5) / 476.8 x 100 = 21.9% decrease
And the second table:
Adv.(GB) Tot.(GB) Tot.(GiB) User(GiB)
60 64 59.6 55.9
120 128 119.2 111.8
240 256 238.4 223.5
480 512 476.8 447
The new percentages should be:
(59.6-55.9) / 59.6 x 100 = 6.21% decrease
(119.2-111.8) / 119.2 x 100 = 6.21% decrease
(238.4-223.5) / 238.4 x 100 = 6.25% decrease
(476.8-447) / 476.8 x 100 = 6.25% decrease
Note, I did not use significant figures, so all numbers are approximated, yet suitable - the theoretical value may be slightly different.
vol7ron
Guspaz - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
Your pricing estimates for Intel's refreshes worry me, and I worry that you're out of touch with SSD pricing.Intel's G2 x25-m 160GB drive currently sells for $500-550, so claims that Intel will be selling 600GB drives at the same price point raise some eyebrows.
kunedog - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
I couldn't help but roll my eyes a little when I saw that Anand was again making Intel SSD pricing predictions. Even the G1 X-25Ms skyrocketed above his predictions for the G2s:http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=36...">http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=36...
And the G1s are still higher at Newegg (the G2s are still a LOT higher). Anand has never acknowledged the stratospheric X-25M G2 pricing and how dead wrong his predictions were. He's kept us updated on negative aspects like the firmware bugs, slow stock/availability of G2s, and lack of TRIM for G1s, but never pricing.