- Joined
- Jun 6, 2002
Right now even with Intel being out in front with these two SSD's, X25-M and X25-E. as you can see or those that dont know the 80gig MLC X25-M use to be $600ish. since newer ssd drives have come out to challenge Intel. Such as the OCZ Solid OCZSSD2-1SLD60G and SUPER TALENT MasterDrive OX FTM64GL25H and G.SKILL FM-25S2S-64GB, but that isn't then end of it yet. OCZ has announced some new drives for 2009, starting with the Vertex line for January. For those that missed the thread here about the announcement you can read about it here and can read some discussion about it here. Now what is interesting is this thread here, then what Tony says here and then here. Using Froogle shows a few retailer's with pages up already for the Vertex line, here is just on retailer listing two drives, OCZ OCZSSD2-1VTX30G and OCZ OCZSSD2-1VTX60G. The prices may seem high for some but considering that these are nipping at the heals of Intel's SSD's, they are very competitive for the price. With out knowing the Apex's prices right now i would have to say going with the Solid line out now might be a better choice to the cost. Though in that case you would need twice the drives to match/beat one of the Vertex drives. Of course you would wind up with twice the space in a raid 0 config. With all this happening OCZ is pushing for faster/better SSD's as is Intel. The big thing as Tony said in one of the threads i linked to, they no longer use the Jmicron controller. They have also increase the cache the drive has to further increase perfomance, as the links to ZZF show its 32mb of cache. which now matches the larger mechanical hard drives for sale. 2009 is truely going to be the year for SSD's, wiether you want it to be or not. 
Size,speed will continue to increase as well as prices decreasing per/gig. The few reviews i have been able to find of OCZ Solid 30gig drive give it good praises and they report no stuttering issue. Well that is good but now we have another problem. Most may not know/realize this but Sata II or 3.0 Gbit/s isn't going to be enough for future SSD's. right now it already is a problem for the highend drives like the X25-M/X25-E. As you notice both have the same max read speed, wonder why? According to the SATA II/3.0 Gbit/s spec max transfer rate is 300MB/s. That is if we follow the chart shown here by following that chart. Then take into account SATA-IO group is working on the SATA-III/ 6 Gbit/s, that would then give us 600MB/s speeds. Who is to say that Intel's drives arent being held back by SATA II in read speed, what if its really higher? One way to really find out would be to use a raid on a pcie slot. What i found interesting was how much faster PCIE is for sending data vs SATA. A x1 PCIE 1.0 is just under the SATA II spec speed as seen here in this PCIE chart. Now im not a big fan of wiki for different reasons but since you have to be member of the groups to get spec pdf's this will have to due in this case. now as you see by the chart PCIE 1.0 x1 = 250MB/s, then x1 PCIE 2.0 = 500MB/s. I'm intrigued as to why we don't use a direct PCIE interface with just a sata connector. That then allows the future hd's to tap into more pcie lanes for higher transfer rates vs needing a new SATA standard. It makes more sense to me to do it that way but the powers that be deem it otherwise. Also look at how intel's i7 has more direct access to the PCIE buss since the IO is on the cpu. How much faster will this make the drives? Could access times on them drop even more? has anyone seen the or read this review on the Fusion IO Drive it doesn't use SATA a connection but the PCIE buss. As you can see on page 7 of that review how much faster the access time is vs Intel's SSD. I mean 3 times faster all because of the PCIE buss, then people notice you can't use it as a boot drive. Not possible since it doesn't have a SATA or USB port. The mobo/bios has no way to boot directly from a PCIE device such as the Fusion-IO. Fusion-IO is still interesting none the less but right now its not going to be a option for the public unless you just have $2k+ laying around to blow.
OCZ is going a good thing here IMO with there 3 different segmented SSD's. You have the high-end Vertex the mid-range/mainstream Apex and the low-end Solid. While the solid may not look impressive to some vs the Vertex and Apex line. It will be the choice of many that simply a more snappier pc without having to upgrade a new cpu. People just needing basic computing will not need high write or read speeds. I hope we see more diverse SSD lines from other manufactures. This will only help to gain market share that will drive the cost/gig down even more. It works with PC's, why wouldn't it work with SSD's? In 2009 don't leave off SSD's from computer buying list.
Size,speed will continue to increase as well as prices decreasing per/gig. The few reviews i have been able to find of OCZ Solid 30gig drive give it good praises and they report no stuttering issue. Well that is good but now we have another problem. Most may not know/realize this but Sata II or 3.0 Gbit/s isn't going to be enough for future SSD's. right now it already is a problem for the highend drives like the X25-M/X25-E. As you notice both have the same max read speed, wonder why? According to the SATA II/3.0 Gbit/s spec max transfer rate is 300MB/s. That is if we follow the chart shown here by following that chart. Then take into account SATA-IO group is working on the SATA-III/ 6 Gbit/s, that would then give us 600MB/s speeds. Who is to say that Intel's drives arent being held back by SATA II in read speed, what if its really higher? One way to really find out would be to use a raid on a pcie slot. What i found interesting was how much faster PCIE is for sending data vs SATA. A x1 PCIE 1.0 is just under the SATA II spec speed as seen here in this PCIE chart. Now im not a big fan of wiki for different reasons but since you have to be member of the groups to get spec pdf's this will have to due in this case. now as you see by the chart PCIE 1.0 x1 = 250MB/s, then x1 PCIE 2.0 = 500MB/s. I'm intrigued as to why we don't use a direct PCIE interface with just a sata connector. That then allows the future hd's to tap into more pcie lanes for higher transfer rates vs needing a new SATA standard. It makes more sense to me to do it that way but the powers that be deem it otherwise. Also look at how intel's i7 has more direct access to the PCIE buss since the IO is on the cpu. How much faster will this make the drives? Could access times on them drop even more? has anyone seen the or read this review on the Fusion IO Drive it doesn't use SATA a connection but the PCIE buss. As you can see on page 7 of that review how much faster the access time is vs Intel's SSD. I mean 3 times faster all because of the PCIE buss, then people notice you can't use it as a boot drive. Not possible since it doesn't have a SATA or USB port. The mobo/bios has no way to boot directly from a PCIE device such as the Fusion-IO. Fusion-IO is still interesting none the less but right now its not going to be a option for the public unless you just have $2k+ laying around to blow.OCZ is going a good thing here IMO with there 3 different segmented SSD's. You have the high-end Vertex the mid-range/mainstream Apex and the low-end Solid. While the solid may not look impressive to some vs the Vertex and Apex line. It will be the choice of many that simply a more snappier pc without having to upgrade a new cpu. People just needing basic computing will not need high write or read speeds. I hope we see more diverse SSD lines from other manufactures. This will only help to gain market share that will drive the cost/gig down even more. It works with PC's, why wouldn't it work with SSD's? In 2009 don't leave off SSD's from computer buying list.
