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Vertex Frist Impressions
- Thread starter notsane
- Start date
I have not done any tests since I don't have one. What I do know about apex is that is similar to the gskill Titan drives in that it uses two jmicron controllers in what amounts to a raid 0 (or similar). There is no inboard cache on the apex either. There are some OS tweaks that can help improve performance, but now that vertex is out... Why not?
Here is my last Benchmark. This is on a properly aligned partition (128k) [using diskpart], 4096byte allocation unit size [using disk managment to do a quick format], clean install of Vista 64 onto the aligned partition [make sure not to delete your partition you have created when you go to do the Vista install], and using the OCZ forum member elpamyelhsa's tweak utility [thanks! this saves a bunch of work in the registry], no page file, no indexing, no system restore and a 1GB ram drive [http://www.dataram.com/Home.asp] for readyboost. Looks like my 51k writes went up by 10MB/s
Tweak utility thread here:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49779
Tweak utility thread here:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49779
Everything opens almost instantly, couldn't be happier for the $$. SSD has hit my price range.
othellomcbane
Weaksauce
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Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but why would you have a RAMdrive for Readyboost? Isn't Readyboost purely to compensate for machines with low amounts of RAM? It seems redundant.
I got the idea from the guide on OCZ, not sure if it really speeds things up in day to day use.. It does help to put your IE for firefox cache onto the ramdrive.
From Wiki:
Using ReadyBoost-capable flash memory (NAND memory devices) for caching allows Windows Vista to service random disk reads with performance that is typically 80-100 times faster than random reads from traditional hard drives. This caching is applied to all disk content, not just the page file or system DLLs.
From Wiki:
Using ReadyBoost-capable flash memory (NAND memory devices) for caching allows Windows Vista to service random disk reads with performance that is typically 80-100 times faster than random reads from traditional hard drives. This caching is applied to all disk content, not just the page file or system DLLs.
Damn, I just bit on an OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD after reading this thread. I've been itching to get on the SSD bandwagon for some ti'me now. Got 9% cashback from eBay with $50 MIR with free shipping. This equates to $2.62 per gigabyte (paid $314 total after rebates). I can live with that for the performance boost I will be getting in return.
Will put this puppy in my 14" killer ASUS notebook. I got this thing OC'd to 3.0ghz (C2D T9300) when plugged in and the slow 5400 rpm HDD has been getting on my nerves, lol.
Will put this puppy in my 14" killer ASUS notebook. I got this thing OC'd to 3.0ghz (C2D T9300) when plugged in and the slow 5400 rpm HDD has been getting on my nerves, lol.
You will not be sorry~
Make sure you do all of the setup right the first time so you don't find yourself going back and re-loading to squeeze that little more perfomance out lol~
You would probably just be fine to install vista and disable defrag, but better if you follow the steps I did.
You need to delete the partition that comes on the drive indisk managment, align your partition using diskpart (128k for single SSD), format using 4096 byte allocation unit size in disk management console, then do a clean install of vista onto the partition you created in your other OS without deleting it. Once you are all loaded up and happy, you need to disable defrag (super critical step) for that drive (and indexing too). If you don't do it this way you won't max out performance. There are also many other registry and services tweaks that will give you varying levels of results (like disabling superfetch etc).
astrallite
Gawd
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Any idea about gaming performance? I/O performance is still a huge bottleneck for games.
Anandtech's Intel X25 review the Intel SSD managed a much higher minimum framerate in Crysis vs the Velociraptor (25.7 vs 19 I believe) although the other SSDs had less than stellar performance in that benchmark. I was wondering where the Vertex would fall in a gaming benchmark. From what I've seen Anandtech is the only review site that's even bothered with gaming benchmarks, which is a real shame considering how brilliant the Intel X25 SSD is which shows what a SSD would really be capable in an intense gaming environment.
Anandtech's Intel X25 review the Intel SSD managed a much higher minimum framerate in Crysis vs the Velociraptor (25.7 vs 19 I believe) although the other SSDs had less than stellar performance in that benchmark. I was wondering where the Vertex would fall in a gaming benchmark. From what I've seen Anandtech is the only review site that's even bothered with gaming benchmarks, which is a real shame considering how brilliant the Intel X25 SSD is which shows what a SSD would really be capable in an intense gaming environment.
astrallite
Gawd
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I found this post on ign. Sorry for no-link but I'm at work, no access to ign!
I sat on the side line watching SSD drives with some envy and some concern. Those sub zero access times are pretty nice, but it seems many of the early SSD drives have been plagued with issues such as stuttering and poor performance.
When OCZ announced the Vertex drive, I thought this might be the one that finally gets it right. They moved away from the cheap Jmicron controller that many blamed for stuttering, and they added two controllers for more performance and a on board cache. This has to work right? I sure thought enough so to spend $420 on the 120GB version.
I've had mine for about 5 days. And I've been pretty annoyed with this for 5 days. But I decided to try to work through the problems. However I'm here now to say I freaking give up. This drive may be supper fast in some ways, it is still not up to the task of real desktop usage though.
First I get the drive, but I didn't want to install an OS on it yet because OCZ mentioned a new firmware was coming out real soon to improve the write speeds. And installing that firmware will wipe out the drive. So no since going through the trouble and having to start over again.
So I just used it for games. However we first need to put a partition on the drive. And the partition should have a certain alignment or offset to it. They tell us 64KB or 128KB is optimal. By default XP uses 63KB which doesn't work and Vista uses 1024KB, which does work but isn't optimal. I followed their instructions and made a partition with the correct 128KB alignment.
Then I copied LOTRO to the drive since that game seems to be more hard drive demanding that most. The game seems to constantly be needing to read texture data from the drive, so leads to some annoying stuttering. With LOTRO on the Vertex drive, I did notice a small improvement in the reduction of stuttering. I was hoping for something more dramatic like the complete elimination of stuttering in LOTRO though, so I was a little disappointed. However I won't blame the SSD since a real game engine shouldn't need a super fast hard drive to work.
The firmware for the Vertex comes out a couple days later. The flashing process was pretty simple. Getting an OS onto the drive wasn't as simple. Ideally I would of liked to image my existing OS hard drive to the SSD drive. However when you do this you lose the partition alignment. On the forums they seem to suggest it's possible to do this with Snapshot, but I dinked around with this for a few hours and didn't have any luck getting my Vista image on the SSD drive and keeping the 128KB alignment size.
So I gave up on the Vista image and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 instead. I followed their tweak suggestions and disabled Indexing, Superfetch, and the page file (I have 8GB of RAM). While updating drivers and Windows, I needed to reboot often. However for some reason Windows 7 would never shut down. It would just stay on the shutting down screen forever until I hard booted it. Then I also started getting random freezes while in Windows, which I had to power off the computer again. Needless to say, this sucked.
I still had Vista installed on my regular hard drive and booted back up to that. I wiped out the Windows 7 partition on the SSD drive and this time just copied my Vista image over with the 1024KB partition alignment. This is suppose to work, though it seems to be a little bit slower than the 128KB alignment. So I gave Vista a try. At first it seemed to be working well. Then I fired up bittorrent. Goodnight! It was a frequent stutter fest filled with occassional long freezes. The computer didn't totally freeze up and require a hard boot like Windows 7, but the freezing became very annoying.
I think I've wasted enough time trying to get this thing to work unsuccessfully. I'm going to see if NewEgg will give me a full refund. This wasn't $420 worth of performance. I probably wouldn't pay more than $50 for this and then only use it as a secondary drive to run some games off of since the only benefit I saw from this was that LOTRO did run slightly smoother. But it sure can't host my operating system.
Anyway, that was just my experience with it.
Anyone here with a Vertex that might chime in on this? Sounds like the Windows install bit with the hanging restart would be a nightmare since installing Windows requires so many restarts.
I sat on the side line watching SSD drives with some envy and some concern. Those sub zero access times are pretty nice, but it seems many of the early SSD drives have been plagued with issues such as stuttering and poor performance.
When OCZ announced the Vertex drive, I thought this might be the one that finally gets it right. They moved away from the cheap Jmicron controller that many blamed for stuttering, and they added two controllers for more performance and a on board cache. This has to work right? I sure thought enough so to spend $420 on the 120GB version.
I've had mine for about 5 days. And I've been pretty annoyed with this for 5 days. But I decided to try to work through the problems. However I'm here now to say I freaking give up. This drive may be supper fast in some ways, it is still not up to the task of real desktop usage though.
First I get the drive, but I didn't want to install an OS on it yet because OCZ mentioned a new firmware was coming out real soon to improve the write speeds. And installing that firmware will wipe out the drive. So no since going through the trouble and having to start over again.
So I just used it for games. However we first need to put a partition on the drive. And the partition should have a certain alignment or offset to it. They tell us 64KB or 128KB is optimal. By default XP uses 63KB which doesn't work and Vista uses 1024KB, which does work but isn't optimal. I followed their instructions and made a partition with the correct 128KB alignment.
Then I copied LOTRO to the drive since that game seems to be more hard drive demanding that most. The game seems to constantly be needing to read texture data from the drive, so leads to some annoying stuttering. With LOTRO on the Vertex drive, I did notice a small improvement in the reduction of stuttering. I was hoping for something more dramatic like the complete elimination of stuttering in LOTRO though, so I was a little disappointed. However I won't blame the SSD since a real game engine shouldn't need a super fast hard drive to work.
The firmware for the Vertex comes out a couple days later. The flashing process was pretty simple. Getting an OS onto the drive wasn't as simple. Ideally I would of liked to image my existing OS hard drive to the SSD drive. However when you do this you lose the partition alignment. On the forums they seem to suggest it's possible to do this with Snapshot, but I dinked around with this for a few hours and didn't have any luck getting my Vista image on the SSD drive and keeping the 128KB alignment size.
So I gave up on the Vista image and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 instead. I followed their tweak suggestions and disabled Indexing, Superfetch, and the page file (I have 8GB of RAM). While updating drivers and Windows, I needed to reboot often. However for some reason Windows 7 would never shut down. It would just stay on the shutting down screen forever until I hard booted it. Then I also started getting random freezes while in Windows, which I had to power off the computer again. Needless to say, this sucked.
I still had Vista installed on my regular hard drive and booted back up to that. I wiped out the Windows 7 partition on the SSD drive and this time just copied my Vista image over with the 1024KB partition alignment. This is suppose to work, though it seems to be a little bit slower than the 128KB alignment. So I gave Vista a try. At first it seemed to be working well. Then I fired up bittorrent. Goodnight! It was a frequent stutter fest filled with occassional long freezes. The computer didn't totally freeze up and require a hard boot like Windows 7, but the freezing became very annoying.
I think I've wasted enough time trying to get this thing to work unsuccessfully. I'm going to see if NewEgg will give me a full refund. This wasn't $420 worth of performance. I probably wouldn't pay more than $50 for this and then only use it as a secondary drive to run some games off of since the only benefit I saw from this was that LOTRO did run slightly smoother. But it sure can't host my operating system.
Anyway, that was just my experience with it.
Anyone here with a Vertex that might chime in on this? Sounds like the Windows install bit with the hanging restart would be a nightmare since installing Windows requires so many restarts.
Thanks.
Your post, plus some others on OCZ forums (which also mention freezing) are enough to make be not buy a Vertex or any OCZ right now. Granted, Windows 7 is a pure BETA, and nothing conclusive can really be said about issues with it, but VISTA (and XP) should work without glitches as on any other hard drive, in my opinion, after any SSD tweaks are perfomed.
Is it your opinion that an Intel X25-M will not have such issues, and, if so, is the write speed of the X25-M fast enough for enhanced desktop use?
I have read the Anandtech and most of the other glowing reviews of the X25-M.
Your post, plus some others on OCZ forums (which also mention freezing) are enough to make be not buy a Vertex or any OCZ right now. Granted, Windows 7 is a pure BETA, and nothing conclusive can really be said about issues with it, but VISTA (and XP) should work without glitches as on any other hard drive, in my opinion, after any SSD tweaks are perfomed.
Is it your opinion that an Intel X25-M will not have such issues, and, if so, is the write speed of the X25-M fast enough for enhanced desktop use?
I have read the Anandtech and most of the other glowing reviews of the X25-M.
Stereodude
2[H]4U
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Not with Acronis. If you look through the task list you'll see one of the items it does is delete the partition.
I wrote a partition with an XP install back to a SSD (not an OCZ one) with Drive Snapshot, and the partition stayed intact after setting it up with the proper offset.
astrallite
Gawd
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I'm gonna pick one up for the gaming PC but like aamsel I'm highly skeptical and my guess is there's a 50% chance I'll end up returning this given the online reviews which point to deteriorating performance over time.
I may just use this for pagefile/game installation only.
I may just use this for pagefile/game installation only.
Yeah, that was my post on IGN. I wish I could be happy, but I'm pretty miserable with my Vertex.
I was getting a lot of freezing with my fresh Windows 7 install (128K alignment, 4K cluster size). And when it wasn't freezing up, it really didn't feel any snappier or quicker than my Velociraptor RAID 0.
I have removed the new firmware and will be loading a fresh copy of Windows Vista this time. I'm hoping for better luck this time.
astrallite
Gawd
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I'm going from single Velociraptor. I imagine I'd probably see a pretty big improvement?
Freezing is the only problem I assume? Is there stuttering too?
I haven't seen a stutter. I just have full blown complete system freeze ups from 20 seconds to over a minute. I don't think most owners have this problem, so I'm still investigating on what is causing it for me. But I'm not alone with the problem either.
I would like to see something like this too, but I will leave it to the professionals. I can only let you know that things are working just fine for me.
I have not had the kinds of problems noted here. There was some research and configuration involved, but I am not sure that there is much improvement over just doing a clean install with Vista (SP2)... XP however is another story.
I think that performace has been very good on my new hardware and I question what other issues could have been causing the stuttering noted in this post. I have never even purchased an OCZ product before this, but I will say their support forum is top notch and it is nice to see more companys making good SSDs. Vertex is a very good SSD.
This is not for everyone. I have enjoyed working with the configuration and tweaking the drive, but some may not.
Results 260.24
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.6 (9G55)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,1
Drive Type OCZ-VERTEX 1199
Disk Test 260.24
Sequential 212.18
Uncached Write 282.10 173.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 294.28 166.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 106.75 31.24 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 393.43 197.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 336.45
Uncached Write 120.06 12.71 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 539.05 172.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2088.71 14.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 815.66 151.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
86gb/120gb used.
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.6 (9G55)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,1
Drive Type OCZ-VERTEX 1199
Disk Test 260.24
Sequential 212.18
Uncached Write 282.10 173.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 294.28 166.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 106.75 31.24 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 393.43 197.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 336.45
Uncached Write 120.06 12.71 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 539.05 172.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2088.71 14.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 815.66 151.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
86gb/120gb used.
Just keep in mind that most places consider them "non-returnable", i.e. at least a restocking fee.
Yeah, that is what has me bummed out right now. I would have returned mine to NewEgg, even paid the 15% restocking fee. However as Aamsel noted, it seems SSDs are one of those special items that you can't return for a refund. Something I wish I had taken note of before ordering.
james__bean
Weaksauce
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- Jun 19, 2004
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- 126
I have a couple 30GB Vertex's in Raid-0. Windows 7 actually worked great for me until I filled up the drives extracting a file. Here's some performance tests I ran with Windows 7.
astrallite
Gawd
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Depends how you paid. If you paid with a credit card, and you tell the merchant that the merchandise is defective and request a refund (not an exchange), they are obligated to take the merchandise back. If they don't, and you report this to your CC company, they will have to give you your money back, and typically pay a chargeback fine (around $35). That's the cost of doing business with electronic fund transfers. You HAVE rights. What newegg writes on their website does not supersede their service agreement with Mastercard/Visa/Discover/AMEX (the agreements are more or less the same, mainly fees differ).
Never pay with paypal for something critical. Your rights are as good as grass. ebay doesn't give a shit (which is why they get sued all the time).
astrallite
Gawd
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Is this before, or after extracting the file? It still looks pretty impressive.
I've heard some people will create a 10GB or so partition of untouched space when using SSDs, I wonder if this may be of some benefit?
How about your read speeds, are they affected?
I wonder if anyone plays Crysis in this thread? There's one thing I've always wanted to see if a SSD can remedy. On Crysis VH @ 1080p, even though the intro C-130 cargo plane scene is running at 40-50fps, every 3-4 seconds there will be a half second stutter which seems like a major I/O dump. Now since its non-interactive cutscene, I assume read performance is major deal.
Wonder if anyone with SSDs has any experience with this, lol.
I have 90GB of free space on the SSD.
My read speeds do not appear to be affected, they are around 230MB/s.
PS. If I delete the partition completely, and remake it (using diskpar to get the 128K alignment), I do get my read speeds back up again. So I'm not exactly sure what's going on there.
astrallite
Gawd
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You mean write speeds right...lol
30gigs? Thats a brand new, clean install.
I can put up 70 gigs within a few hours of a fresh install of an OS.
30gigs? Thats a brand new, clean install.
I can put up 70 gigs within a few hours of a fresh install of an OS.
No, read speeds. With a fresh partition my read speed is 230MB/s and my write is 160MB/s.
However after a day or so, my read speeds stay at 230MB/s, but my write speed dips to 60MB/s.
And yeah, it's a brand new install. That is kinda the frustrating part. This is a fresh install from scratch, I barely have anything else installed and I'm already getting pretty disappointing performance.
I feel like I must be missing something obvious that maybe others are taking for granted, but I can't figure out what it is.
I put the drive on an ICH10R or ICH9R (testing with two different machines).
I put the controller in IDE mode (hear AHCI can cause problems).
From another computer I pre-make a partition using diskpar with a 128K offset and 4K NTFS cluster size (quick format).
I then put the drive in the computer, boot of my Vista CD and install Vista using the existing partition.
After Vista is installed, I install updates and drivers.
I then disable Windows Search, Superfetch, and Defrag.
Sometimes I've left the page file the way it is, other times I've put it on a mechanical drive.
Write speeds will be good that evening. The next day I boot up the computer and they have dropped. I put the drive in another computer and the same results, low write speeds.
If I delete the partition and remake it, then my write speeds immediately go up again. *shrug*
hello notsane
how much cost it?
can you bench your ssd with ATTO and hdtune (only read) please
i want buy one ssd for my notebook but I do not want to spend too much not worth it
They are around $250 for the 60GB Model
Don't want to use the other benches because theya are not set up for SSD. See here:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53035&highlight=Benchmark
Do lots of research before you buy. Your chipset may not support the full speed of the vertex.
james__bean
Weaksauce
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- Jun 19, 2004
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That was after a fresh install with all the drivers. What happened was I had a 6GB rar file I transferred to the drive and then proceeded to extract it. I only had about 10GB of space left so the system locked up when it ran out of space. Then I powered down in the middle of a disk check.
It still booted but the windows install was completely corrupted at that point so I formatted. It was completely my fault though. I won't be doing any long term testing until I get my 3rd vertex. Right now I'm just folding with this system heh.http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53035&highlight=Benchmark
Could be related to benchmarking.
Yeah, I have noticed owning an SSD is like walking on egg shells.
I'll stop screwing with this and take another look at it tomorrow. I have a feeling I'm going to have to reload the OS again. Because when I image the OS off the drive and create a new partition, it's fine, when I put the OS image back on, it instantly goes to crap again (this image was a fresh install yesterday). *shrug*
Tony did make a thread about a new firmware coming. And some guy that apparently got an early version of it from tech support seems pretty impressed. And it seems like he was having the same freezing problem I was.
So hopefully my momentary disappointment will soon be replaced. At the very least I really appreciate OCZ hosting their own forum and being so much a part of the support and communication.
I'll stop screwing with this and take another look at it tomorrow. I have a feeling I'm going to have to reload the OS again. Because when I image the OS off the drive and create a new partition, it's fine, when I put the OS image back on, it instantly goes to crap again (this image was a fresh install yesterday). *shrug*
Tony did make a thread about a new firmware coming. And some guy that apparently got an early version of it from tech support seems pretty impressed. And it seems like he was having the same freezing problem I was.
So hopefully my momentary disappointment will soon be replaced. At the very least I really appreciate OCZ hosting their own forum and being so much a part of the support and communication.