Buyer Beware: OCZ Agility2 and Vertex2 issues

deeppow

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 29, 2003
Messages
423
FYI folks --
source: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1095121

Many on these forums including myself have recommended OCZ Vertex 2 in the past.

This is just a head's-up that the current model Vertex 2 (25nm version) is noticeably diminished in write speed, lifespan, and capacity than the previous 34nm version. This affects models 180GB or smaller.

The speed is slower for writing non-sequential data that is not compressible (fallen from 130ish to 80ish MB/s). The lifespan has fallen from 5000 P/E cycles to 3000. The unformatted capacity has fallen by about 4-5GB (for example, a 120GB model is reduced to 115GB, a 4% loss). Obviously this means a larger percentage is lost from a smaller drive (60GB to 56GB is a 9% loss!).

OCZ is indicating that none of this could be helped, as the NAND manufacturer is forcing 25nm on them. I agree. However, particularly damning is that there was no model change, no warning, no decrease in the advertised capacity, and rumor is they are actively deleting complaints on their forums.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...-NAND.-Q-amp-A

http://www.guru3d.com/news/ocz-verte...ported-slower/

There is no visible method for determining whether your Vertex/Agility 2 is 25nm or 34nm other than opening the case, a warranty-ending move. Perhaps it can be checked by way of reported capacity. Does anyone know what the formatted capacity is in OS X of a drive with 120GB unformatted capacity?

NOTE: The OCZ forum thread discussing this issue has been closed for now.
 
Honestly, from a company who just left the RAM industry to focus on the more profitable SSD sector... they could not afford a blunder like this. This is their bread and butter. After reading the whole thread on the OCZ website I can't say I have sympathy for them. They should have a different part number, or anything on the box to denote the difference. Well, I am glad I stuck with intel for my SSD needs, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
 
Well, I am glad I stuck with intel for my SSD needs, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Im on the same boat, i think the speed is not everything that matters, and intel g2 has been perfect since day 1, and im waiting for G3 for my desktop, but the news about the 25nm makes me wonder if all will be like this, or just some....... maybe going with the 510s 34nm doesn't look that bad.
 
I was about to purchase an OCZ Vertex 2 when I discovered the discussion on the OCZ forum. The performance drop off is fairly significant and there is reduction in capacity also. OCZ is taking a beating (well deserved) on their forum and other sites for the way they have handled this. And like the previous post said, there is no way to tell that you have one of the drives externally.

Needless to say I won't be buying an OCZ SSD anytime soon.
 
I was about to the buy the Agility 2 for $175 after rebate, then I read about this and decided not to. I won't be buying OCZ branded products from now on.
 
I was about to the buy the Agility 2 for $175 after rebate, then I read about this and decided not to. I won't be buying OCZ branded products from now on.

Neither will I. Especially since their RAM will be almost BFG-esque, if their SSD business goes under...
 
They have always seemed to be a shady company...to me anyways.

I will stick with Mushkin.
 
They have always seemed to be a shady company...to me anyways.

I will stick with Mushkin.

The problem with Mushkin right now is that they do not have any 90GB or 120GB drives available. I am a big fan of Mushkin memory and was going to try one of their SSD's. Could not find any online and found out via their support forum that they are not currently available.

I am now looking at G-Skill or Intel.
 
The problem with Mushkin right now is that they do not have any 90GB or 120GB drives available. I am a big fan of Mushkin memory and was going to try one of their SSD's. Could not find any online and found out via their support forum that they are not currently available.

I am now looking at G-Skill or Intel.


If they're in that transition to smaller NAND chips too, they're doing the right thing by not boxing them up as the 'same' part and selling them. So, I'm not sure that's bad of Muskin or anything.
 
If they're in that transition to smaller NAND chips too, they're doing the right thing by not boxing them up as the 'same' part and selling them. So, I'm not sure that's bad of Muskin or anything.

I agree that it is not bad, I was just pointing out that they don't have anything available in the size I want right now.

The only problem I have had with Mushkin is that they seem to EOL the memory that I want quicker then other vendors. I would buy 4GB of a certain model and go back a couple months later and it would be EOL and not available. So I have started buying 8GB of memory at a time of the same memory.
 
They have unlocked the thread on the OCZ site and seem to be taking a little more consolatory attitude today then yesterday.

Must have read some of the comments going on about this and decided they had better start some "damage control".
 
I thought OCZ was the brand to avoid. I've read that multiple times on this forum and others. Now this bit of info is just another reason to avoid them.

So yeah, morale of the story here is avoid OCZ.
 
OCZ has always been marred by various shady actions throughout it's history. They seemed to turn it after a few years ago for awhile but now it seems like it coming back around again.
 
OCZ has always been marred by various shady actions throughout it's history. They seemed to turn it after a few years ago for awhile but now it seems like it coming back around again.

This. I've been around along enough to see the name "OCZ" attributed to so many shady things, the biggest creating fake review sites that raved about their products no matter what (about 8-9 years ago)
 
This. I've been around along enough to see the name "OCZ" attributed to so many shady things, the biggest creating fake review sites that raved about their products no matter what (about 8-9 years ago)

Wow, is this true? If so, holy crap.
 
They have unlocked the thread on the OCZ site and seem to be taking a little more consolatory attitude today then yesterday.

Must have read some of the comments going on about this and decided they had better start some "damage control".

I think they just pulled and Intel, but I don't think they have the balance sheet necessary to absorb the sunk costs.

The Agility/Vertex 1 SSDs were decent, but the series 2 seem to be plagued with problems, it's really unfortunate.
 
This. I've been around along enough to see the name "OCZ" attributed to so many shady things, the biggest creating fake review sites that raved about their products no matter what (about 8-9 years ago)

Yeah, also about that time that Kyle, IIRC had OCZ completely banned from mentioning on hocp, remember it was about some ram sticks that they had lied about. :D

I've been happy for my Vertex 30gb (first edition) though. :) but never dared buying any of their ram since those days way back.
 
Damage control, you say? Its all over the world now. Every main hardware forum is discussing the fact that OCZ sold two different products as one, which is fraud.

Yeah, sure, now they can apologize and shit, but I will never trust them. Their business practice is totally shady...because I'm ok at buying an inferior product rated at exactly what it is: an inferior product. But silently screwing people like that...not good, deffinitely not.
 
Damage control, you say? Its all over the world now. Every main hardware forum is discussing the fact that OCZ sold two different products as one, which is fraud.

Yeah, sure, now they can apologize and shit, but I will never trust them. Their business practice is totally shady...because I'm ok at buying an inferior product rated at exactly what it is: an inferior product. But silently screwing people like that...not good, deffinitely not.

Yeah, I have two stick of OCZ ram they were nice enough to support, however... this? I'm now Intel SSD only, from now on. I'm not really interested in the other types of Sandforce drives, either.
 
Hmm, I have a 120G Vertex 2 I bought at the beginning of November, 111GB NTFS-formatted capacity in Windows. Looks like I got shafted with new NAND?

e: No, I guess not, the new drives appear to be around 107GB in Windows post-NTFS formatting. So guess I'm "lucky". Will definitely be picking up an Intel G3 for my Macbook Pro though, I want reliability on the road.
 
You do remember Intel had some issues with its SSDs in the past, it isn't as if any company can exactly claim to be perfect.
 
Neither will I. Especially since their RAM will be almost BFG-esque, if their SSD business goes under...

Ok, I went against my word that I will never buy their products and just bought the Vertex 2 120GB drive. I was able to land one for $150 brand new. (I had a unique coupon) OCZ is now doing exchanges for free, if it turns out to the slower revision, so all is good.
 
Whoever ok'd this bonehead move at OCZ needs to be fired. It's hard to earn back customer trust after something like this.
 
You do remember Intel had some issues with its SSDs in the past, it isn't as if any company can exactly claim to be perfect.

Especially when you consider who drove the price of the good 34nm ram to a level where a Sandforce drive couldn't compete. This was a hardball played , Intel wants the SSD market bad for some reason. .
 
Ok, I went against my word that I will never buy their products and just bought the Vertex 2 120GB drive. I was able to land one for $150 brand new. (I had a unique coupon) OCZ is now doing exchanges for free, if it turns out to the slower revision, so all is good.

According to Tony at the OCZ forums, their 34nm stock is scarce and the market price has skyrocketed due to it no longer being in production, so you won't be able to switch your 25nm for a 34. What they did say is that you can pay the difference to upgrade to a 16 IC model if your unit is only an 8 IC model... But that the 16 IC model would still be 25nm.
 
I know for sure that the way this was handled by OCZ has cost them at least one sale, Me. I had every intention of buying another OCZ SSD (I have a Vertex LE currently and I am well pleased with it) and was doing my normal research before buying when I came across the crap going on. The main problem is the way it was handled, no model # change, no revision version of any kind. And on certain models you couldn't even tell by formatted capacity. You had to roll the dice and hope you got an older 34nm or go through an RMA process to get an upgraded 25nm. Supposedly, from the response on the OCZ forum the replacement upgraded 25nm drives will have similar performance to the old 34nm.

It just wasn't worth it when there are still good alternates. I finally found a Mushkin Callisto deluxe at a good price. The Mushkin was what I really wanted but they were out of stock when I started looking. Performance figures for the 2 are almost identical and I like the attitude of the support Forum staff at Mushkin.

That's my $02 worth.
 
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You do remember Intel had some issues with its SSDs in the past, it isn't as if any company can exactly claim to be perfect.

On the other hand, Intel did a decent job of getting the firmware update out, along with getting the word out that there was a fault. In that aspect, Intel did much better than OCZ's current customer service fiasco.
 
I bought a vertex 2 around 3 weeks ago and it formated to 107gb. I did find it odd but I did not look into it.

I guess I got a 25nm drive... doubt I'll try and exchange it.

But I'll definitely send them an email to let them know I know what they did. lol
 
I bought a vertex 2 around 3 weeks ago and it formated to 107gb. I did find it odd but I did not look into it.

I guess I got a 25nm drive... doubt I'll try and exchange it.

But I'll definitely send them an email to let them know I know what they did. lol

You definitely have the 25nm drive with the reduced performance. If you are coming from a regular HDD the performance increase will still be greatly improved, just not what was advertised.
 
You definitely have the 25nm drive with the reduced performance. If you are coming from a regular HDD the performance increase will still be greatly improved, just not what was advertised.

I was coming from a Vertex 1 lol. I was sidegrading. Vertex 1 was acting up and in order to upgrade firmware I had to do some destructive flashing. Saw a vertex 2 on sale (coincidence? probably not, they wanted those 25nm drives sold lol).
 
I bought a 60gb vertex 2 two days ago and got stung by this bullshit, i have just sent off rma request and those barstards had better make it right otherwise i am legally going to clip their nuts...fraud anyone? :mad:
 
I bought a vertex 2 around 3 weeks ago and it formated to 107gb. I did find it odd but I did not look into it.

To be more accurate, your SSD has a usable capacity of 107GiB. If you did not get tricked by OCZ, your 120GB SSD should equivalently have a capacity of about 111.76GiB, but since it is only 107GiB, you obviously got one of OCZ's falsely-labeled 120GB SSDs that are actually only about 115GB.


GiB = 1024^3 bytes
GB = 10^9 bytes
 
My OCZ 34nm Vertex 2 60GB SSDs in RAID 0 are smoking fast. No problems with them at all since I installed them over 2 months ago.

From what I have read OCZ had a problem with the new 25nm Vertex 2's because the new memory chips are smaller and don't require as many so they kept the same circuit board for the old design but went with higher memory chips with less of them.
OCZ is now replacing the 1st generation 25nm 60gb SSD to a much better designed 25nm design that uses up all the circuit distribution as before with smaller size chips.

To me that shows that OCZ is commited to providing high quality SSDs. IMO OCZ has the best customer support that I have seen in their efforts to move SSD technology forward.
 
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To me that shows that OCZ is commited to providing high quality SSDs. IMO OCZ has the best customer support that I have seen in their efforts to move SSD technology forward.

LOL! Yes, if OCZ's fraud is exposed after they fail to trick their customers into getting less performance and less capacity for the same money, if the internet is full of bad publicity about OCZ's shenanigans, if most of OCZ's customers are telling OCZ that they are abandoning them, and if OCZ finds that they are about to be sued for fraud with multiple class-action suits, then YES, OCZ decides to do the right thing!
 
According to Tony at the OCZ forums, their 34nm stock is scarce and the market price has skyrocketed due to it no longer being in production, so you won't be able to switch your 25nm for a 34. What they did say is that you can pay the difference to upgrade to a 16 IC model if your unit is only an 8 IC model... But that the 16 IC model would still be 25nm.

I'm cool with the 25nm chip. All future SSD's will be 25nm from what I heard, I might be wrong though. The important thing is they upgrade (exchange) me to the 16 IC model which will bring up the speed and capacity. Also, the fee has been waved, it's free to exchange.
 
Corsair's blog with some test results for their 25nm SSD replacement(s).

Some very good information on the link, Kudos to Corsair for being up front about the new 25nm ssd's, this release may have been triggered by the uproar at OCZ but they are being upfront about the transition.

If OCZ had done some of these things they wouldn't be in the crap they are in.
 
I have one of these drives. How can I tell if I have the 34nm or 25nm version? I bought it about 2 or 3 months ago. My formatted capacity is 111 GB so I take it I have the 34nm version.
 
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