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OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD Review (120GB)by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/5/2011 1:45 AM EST
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Concillian - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - link
OCZ is still SandForce's favorite partner and thus it gets preferential treatment when it comes to firmware.
This is why I won't buy a SandForce SSD. Yeah, I can get a brand that doesn't have a cap. Or I can go with a different SSD that doesn't force me to jump through hoops to make sure I'm the same hardware from the right vendor.
The same hardware from different vendors should not have vastly different performance. How many people would put up with a memory bandwidth limit on P67 chipset motherboards from Gigabyte, but not ASUS? (or whatever brands.) No memory bandwidth doesn't have a huge impact on overall PC performance, but I think it would still be a big deal if something like that actually happened.
The SF-2281 either needs all vendors capped or none. It's a really shady tactic to offer two versions of the same hardware IMO. Reply
semo - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkNobody in the know likes the SF games but the whole thing is so complicated that most people won't understand it. Suits OCZ as the recent bad publicity doesn't seem to have affected them and everyone thinks they are the best choice for SSDs.
Where are the Corsair force GT drives? Also, why are there no reviews of the Samsung 470? Reply
Mr Perfect - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI agree. If you want to offer vendors special products, fine, but give them a different model number. Call a controller capable of 27k a 2280 and the 52k version the 2281. You can still have incentive products, but the consumer doesn't get duped. Everyone's happy. Reply
Flunk - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkAlmost all IC vendors do this. Intel is probably the worst by far. Selling essentially the same chip up to 50 different ways but lasering off parts of it. Almost all onboard sound chips, network chips, drive controllers, GPUs and anything else you can think of uses the same strategy. Reply
Chloiber - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkSo the huge IOPS are pretty much useless, if the QD needs to be high - which is the case with every SSD.
Anand, how is the "burst" rate of the Mercury regarding Random Write IOPS? I remember that with SF 12xx, the burst rate was exactly the same (for some seconds), only after 5-20s you could see a difference between the "unlocked" Vertex 2 and the rest. Considering how often one needs the random write performance for several seconds or even minutes (= never) I still think those huge IOPS numbers and the "unlocked firmware" stuff are just a huge marketing stunt. The benefit for the "normal" home user is = zero. Reply
semo - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkWhy is a high IOPS figure useless? Just because average Joe facebook doesn't do continuous IO intensive operations doesn't mean we don't need fast SSDs. You can apply your "logic" to CPU, GPU and pretty much any other technological advancement. Reply
kmmatney - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkFor the normal home user, the Anand light workload test is really the best thing to look at - no need to look at any other metric. The drive does really well here. Reply
Robear - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI believe most people who are interested in the power consumption are most interested in how it performs in a notebook. 2W versus 7W in power is negligible on a desktop. Instead of using a Velociraptor, can you please compare the SSD to a notebook hard drive, like maybe a Seagate Momentus? Reply
krazyderek - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkthe momentus XT is included, the XT was a little more power hungry then typical notebook drives, have a look at the past review for more info to compare
looks like some the new round of SSD's forgo power savings to move up the performance latter (ie: 240gb OCZ V3) Reply
mschira - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI was wondering if one could fit this drive into a 7mm slimline slot such as the Lenovo T420s.
Lenovo only offers an Intel 160gb drive but I would fancy the possibility to insert a speedier 240gb SSD. maybe when removing some of the casing?
M. Reply
altermaan - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linknice review though I'll most likely buy either the vertex 3 120GB max iops or the crucial m4 128GB. speaking of which: are there any plans of reviewing those two drives in the near future? I (and I think I'm might not be the only one) am desperately waiting for this as I don't wanna spend $300 for the wrong drive.
A Reply
Nicolas Pillot - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI see from the graphs, that
- sequential read are faster than sequencial write, which seems ok
- random write are faster than random read, which seems illogical
That's the case for each and every ssd drive (well as far as i have checked)
Could somebody please explain this to me ? Reply
Nihility - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI'm not promising that this is the 100% correct reason, however it's possible that the random writes are being made to the cache (SSD's RAM) so that's quicker. While the reads have to be made from the actual flash storage. Reply
andymcca - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkCaching is another possible explanation, but if you run a test for any length of time (and I'm guessing the reviewers here do) logic dictates that your buffer will fill up if input rate > output rate. Reply
7Enigma - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkMakes sense to me. Writing to the drive only requires knowing where to put the data (ie is this block of space free or not). It's basically a limitation of how fast the cpu can deliver write requests to the SSD (so only 2 variables essentially).
Random read on the other hand has an added variable of first FINDING the data on the SSD after the read request is made by the CPU. The latency of finding that data (as compared to writing in a free block) is where the performance difference occurs. This is why mechanical drives are so much slower than SSD's, but there still is an overhead on the "finding" part. Reply
andymcca - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkWrites on SSDs are to wherever the drive wants to put them (not to a pre-defined physical location). Reads have to come from a pre-defined location, since that is where the data was already put. Basically, SSDs have to hunt for your read data, but put your write data somewhere convenient. Reply
JasonInofuentes - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkCould the power differences be a result of binning? Could be part of the perk of being Sandforce's favorite client.
Jason Reply
andymcca - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkMy guess is that it has to do more with the memory and less with the controller, but IANAexpert Reply
araczynski - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI don't mean this as a stupid question (apologies if it is) but why not include a traditional platter driver in the ATStorageBench2011? Sometimes comparing apples to apples doesn't have the impact as when you also throw in an orange into the mix to help visualize what you're seeing.
average MB/s of 100-200 on a certain bench doesn't mean much to me personally when i don't know how it compares to a traditional drive. Reply
MilwaukeeMike - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI agree. I like the Velociraptor included on some graphs because I own one, and know what the comparison is. These charts help us realize which SSD might suit our purposes best, but the question many of us are really wondering is 'should I upgrade to one at all?'
The easy answer is 'yes', but having MS Word open in 1 second instead of 2 doesn't matter to me. Having my games load in 5 seconds instead of 25 does. But without an old school drive on the benchmark table we can't quantify SSD to HDD.
Review is great for SSD to SSD, don't get me wrong :) Reply
wombat2k - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - link"The two come with comparable warranties which brings the decision down to pricing, where OCZ currently has a $20 advantage. "
I don't think that's the complete picture. OWC is more of a Mac shop so provides ways to easily update your firmware from a Mac. OCZ relies on you burning an ISO file. This might have changed for the Vertex 3, but I doubt it. OWC sells directly through macsales.com, and I hear their service is pretty good, so if you're a Mac owner, you would tend to naturally gravitate around the OWC solution, even with the price markup.
* Not a OWC user yet, but considering them * Reply
NCM - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThe table on page 1 shows the same specs (other than price...) for all three versions. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI paid $95 for my 60GB Agility 2. I cant fathom paying 3 times the money for 2X the capacity and a negligable increase in noticable performance. Reply
sor - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI for one hope Anand will figure out what's up with the OCZ 'max iops' Vertex 3. Seems to me that he was promised that his test sample's performance would be the same as the shipping Vertex 3, and now we have a Vertex 3 with and without a firmware cap, and the firmware capped one was shipped first. Perhaps that's not the case and the 'max iops' is some new tweaks above and beyond, but it's been out a few weeks and so far I've yet to read anything about it anywhere. Reply
Mr Perfect - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkIsn't anyone making 64GB drives this generation? With the Z68 chipset reportedly only supporting up to 64G for the SSD/HD hybrid drive configuration, they're going to be in demand. Reply
Stargrazer - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - link
Interestingly enough the 4KB random write cap isn't enough to impact any of our real world tests.
I would argue that you don't *have* any real world tests.
Sure, the AnandTech Storage Bench tests are *based on* real world workloads, but since you're playing them back at a faster than normal rate, they stop being real world tests. Just take the case of playing back a movie for example. You have a lot of reads there, but you don't get any increase in performance from being able to perform those reads faster than what is necessary to keep your buffers filled (non-empty really). In addition to this, many of the writes that are performed during the tests should be non-blocking, so increasing the write performance would in many cases not lead to any actual real world performance increases (you'd "free up" the drive faster, but that's mostly a benefit when there's other stuff that needs to be done).
There is presumably a lot of stuff in there that *is* limited by your IO speed, but it's all mixed up with stuff that *isn't*, so you can't tell which speed increases give a real world improvement, and which do not. You simply can't tell how much real world performance an increase in results represent, the relationship most certainly will not be linear (e.g. a 10 point difference could have different meaning depending on how high the values are), and you can't even conclusively tell that a drive that gets a higher score actually performs better in any real world sense.
The tests do provide some information, but it's not something that tells you how much you would benefit from upgrading your drive.
I personally think that it would be interesting if you would provide some *actual* real world tests too, so that people could tell if they would actually see some real world differences between different SSDs. Maybe some program/game loading/zoning tests?
At least people would then be able to judge if the difference they see would be significant enough (for them) to warrant an upgrade. You know how to value a 10s difference, but how much is a 10 MB/s difference in the storage bench worth? Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkNote that both the 2011 and 2010 Storage Bench do playback in real time. The 2011 benches in particular even preserve idle times properly so all that's sped up are actual I/O requests. You are correct in that this will speed up things like decoding video, however note that many video players already do a lot of read ahead and pre-decode on frames in order to avoid stuttering. Note that very few of the IOs in these tests are for things like video decode so I don't believe they're biasing the results too much.
You are correct in that we're focusing exclusively on the I/O aspect of performance. And that a 10% increase in I/O performance won't result in a 10% increase in system performance (except in IO bound tasks).
I've toyed with doing timing based tests, the issue is that modern SSDs don't show any difference when measuring the launch time of a single application. It's really under heavy multitasking and behavior over time that they differ from one another. Both of these types of tests are very difficult to time in a repeatable fashion, which is why we turn to our trace based performance tools.
I do agree that there's a need for some perspective on these performance improvements, which is what I tried to do by including disk busy time in our 2011 results. There you can see that over the course of a 3 hour use period (for example in the case of the heavy workload) that one drive may shave off x number of seconds vs another drive. How annoying those seconds are is really up to the end user.
Personally I find that there are three categories that drives fall into these days. There are those that offer performance around that of an X25-M G2, the next group is around the Vertex 2 and the final group is the 6Gbps 240GB Vertex 3. I feel like there's a noticeable difference going from any one of those groups to the other, but going from an X25-M G2 to something that's slower than the Vertex 2 makes less sense.
I hope this helps :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
seapeople - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkConsidering that it's now a given that someone will ask for a graph of loading an application on the comments of any new SSD article, I think you should just pick 5 or 10 current drives and show everyone a graph that spans from 5.2 seconds to 5.5 seconds (or whatever it is) with a tag line of "There, are you happy? Now stop asking about this!" Reply
AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkReal world tests shouldn't be a "There, are you happy?" afterthought. Real world is all that matters.
Let me refer back to this classic example: http://tinyurl.com/yamfwmg . RAID0 was 20-38% faster in IOPS, and in the time-based comparison it was equal or slightly slower. Anand concluded "RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance."
Do you buy an SSD to use it, or to sit there and run benchmarks? Reply
Stargrazer - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThe chipset drivers are listed as being Intel 220.127.116.115. Aren't those drivers from December 2009? Do they work well for H67?
I can understand if you want to keep the same drivers for consistency in the tests, but have you checked if there are any significant performance benefits from using more recent drivers? If there are any changes, it could be interesting to see how it affects some of the more recent drives. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThose drivers were only used on the X58 platform, I use Intel's RST10 on the SNB platform for all of the newer tests/results. :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
iwod - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI lost count of many times i post this series. Anyway people continue to worship 4K Random Read Write now have seen the truth. Seq Read Write is much more important then u think.
Since the test are basically two identical pieces of Hardware, but one with Random Write Cap, the results shows real world doesn't show any advantage. We need more Seq performance!
Interestingly we aren't limited by the controller or NAND itself. But the connection method, SATA 6Gbps. We need to start using PCI-Express 4x slot, as Intel has shown in the leaked roadmap. Going to PCI-E 3.0 would give us 4GB/s with 4x slot. That should be plenty of room for improvement. ONFI 3.0 next year should allow us to reach 2GB+ Seq Read Write easily. Reply
krumme - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI think Anand heard to much to Intel voice in this ssd story
4k random madness was Intel g2 business
And all went in the wrong direction
Anand was - and is - the ssd review site Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThe fact of the matter is that both random and sequential performance is important. It's Amdahl's law at its best - if you simply increase the sequential read/write speed of these drives without touching random performance, you'll eventually be limited by random performance. Today I don't believe we are limited by random performance but it's still something that has to keep improving in order for us to continue to see overall gains across the board.
Take care,
Anand Reply
Hrel - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkDamn! 200 dollars too expensive for the 120GB. Stopped reading. Reply
snuuggles - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkGood lord, every single article that discusses OWC seems to include some sort of odd-ball tangent or half-baked excuse for some crazy s**t they are pulling.
Hey, I know they have the fastest stuff around, but there's just something so lame about these guys, I have to say on principle: "never, ever, will I buy from OWC" Reply
nish0323 - Thursday, August 11, 2011 - linkWhat crazy s**t are they pulling? I've got 5 drives from them, all SSDs, all perform great. The 6G ones have a 5-year warranty, 2 longer than all other SSD manufacturers right now. Reply
neotiger - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkA lot of people and hosting companies use consumer SSD for server workload such as MySQL and Solr.
Can you benchmark these SSD's performances on server workload? Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkIt's on our roadmap to do just that... :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
rasmussb - Saturday, May 07, 2011 - linkPerhaps you have answered this elsewhere, or it will be answered in your future tests. If so, please forgive me.
As you point out, the drive performance is based in large part upon the compressibility of the source data. Relatively incompressible data results in slower speeds. What happens when you put a pair (or more) of these in a RAID 0 array? Since units of data are alternating between drives, how does the SF compression work then? Does previously compressible data get less compressible because any given drive is only getting, at best (2-drive array) half of the original data?
Conversely, does incompressible data happen to get more compressible when you're splitting it amongst two or more drives in an array?
Server workload on a single drive versus in say a RAID 5 array would be an interesting comparison. I'm sure your tech savvy minds are already over this in your roadmap. I'm just asking in the event it isn't. Reply
taltamir - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkdoesn't the Z version let you access the CPU's video decoding/encoding engine while having an external GPU?
While with the P and H versions you have to choose one or the other? Reply
jb510 - Friday, May 06, 2011 - linkIn considerin an SSD for an OS X boot volume should one be more concerned with compressible data or incompressible data? I wondering because I know OS X compreses some of it's OS files and presumably many apps do the same thing. Further I'm assuming the light workload test uses a windows simulation, can anyone say if/how that would differ from OS X?
I'm probably more worried about it than I need to be but trying to decide between OCZ/OWC, Intel and Crucial and still not clear which is best for a dual drive setup in a MacBook pro. Reply
dhfkjah - Friday, May 06, 2011 - link
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zilab - Saturday, June 04, 2011 - link"OCZ is still SandForce's favorite partner and thus it gets preferential treatment when it comes to firmware."
I just confirmed with OWC, they're shipping the 6G with the 60K IOPS read/write frimware. Hope you update your article soon. This is kinda misleading, I'm reading comments here and people think that only OCZ drives have the 60K IOPS firmware. Reply
nish0323 - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkI had the Crucial C300, OCZ Vertex 3, and the OWC Extreme 6G in my laptop on a Sata6G connection... and honestly I didn't notice a difference in speed between the three of them. Against the Vertex 2 and the Intel X-25, there was a slight difference. In the end, I decided to go with OWC Extreme 6G for one reason... **** FIVE YEAR WARRANTY ****!!! That's friggin' awesome... ONLY SSD to offer a 5 year warranty on an SSD. And costwise, they're around the same or lower as the rest of the competition. Reply


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Bulldogs edge UF to even up series
Published: Friday, May 17, 2013 at 11:10 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, May 17, 2013 at 11:10 p.m.
ATHENS, Ga. — A three-run sixth inning Friday propelled Georgia to a 3-1 win over Florida that evened the SEC weekend series.
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Who: Florida (29-26, 14-15 SEC) at Georgia (20-32, 6-20)
When: Saturday, 2 p.m.
Where: Foley Field, Athens, Ga.
Gainesville-area radio: 103.7 FM
Bulldogs freshman right-hander Sean McLaughlin (5-6) gave up four hits and one run over seven innings before redshirt freshman Mike Mancuso worked a scoreless eighth and junior Dylan Cole retired the Gators (29-26, 14-15 SEC) in order in the ninth to collect his fourth save.
Sophomore Josh Tobias opened the scoring in the second inning against McLaughlin with a two-out RBI double. Sophomore Justin Shafer drew a leadoff walk and took second on a grounder by senior Vickash Ramjit, setting the stage for Tobias' double to straightaway center field.
Sophomore left-hander Bobby Poyner (3-3) had retired 10 consecutive Bulldogs before Georgia (20-32, 6-20) seized a 3-1 lead in the sixth inning on three runs, two hits and a pair of Gator errors.
After sophomore Heath Holder drew a leadoff walk, redshirt freshman DJ Smith laid down a bunt to move Holder to second base and reached base on Poyner's throwing error. Sophomore Nelson Ward then executed a sacrifice bunt to advance his teammates into scoring position, and an error by freshman shortstop Richie Martin on a grounder by senior Curt Powell enabled Powell to reach and Holder to come across with the tying run.
Redshirt freshman Aaron Rhodes replaced Poyner and yielded a go-ahead RBI single into right field by sophomore Hunter Cole (2-for-3) that brought in Smith. A grounder by senior Kyle Farmer gave the Bulldogs runners on second and third base. Senior Brett DeLoach was walked intentionally to load the bases with two down. Freshman Danny Young came in for Rhodes, and an RBI single by freshman Daniel Nichols (2-for-4) scored Powell for a 3-1 advantage before Cole was tagged out in a run-down trying to reach third base.
The teams will meet in the rubber game and the regular-season finale Saturday at 2 p.m.
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Understanding SandForce's SF-1200 & SF-1500, Not All Drives are Equalby Anand Lal Shimpi on 4/16/2010 11:30 AM EST
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willscary - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkWhere does the Mercury Extreme fit in? 5 days ago I purchased 3 of these drives. The website touted 10,000,000 hr life, etc. of the Sandforce 1500. Suddenly, this morning, (after my 1st two drives have shipped, but 3rd drive is out of stock) the OWC site lists 2,000,000 hr life.
Did OWC switch to the 1200? Am I stuck with a lesser controller? Did OWC always use the 1200 controller and now just change their website after your article appeared?
If so, I will cry "FOUL"!!! Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkWhen OWC started shipping the Mercury Extreme there were no SF-1200s as far as I can tell. The early set of drives were almost surely this odd SF-1200/SF-1500 hybrid similar to what OCZ shipped with the Vertex LE.
Remember that those controllers were a limited run. I wouldn't be surprised if the newer drives are SF-1200 based, although that's super sketch to change specs without changing the drive's name at all. I'm going to find out for you what's going on asap.
Take care,
Anand Reply
MrSpadge - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkTechnically they could still go for the "odd SF-1200/SF-1500 hybrid" as the chips are identical anyway. It's a matter of supporting this operation mode in newer firmware, though. Reply
yodasz - Monday, April 19, 2010 - linkhttp://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD-OWC-Mer... Reply
willscary - Monday, April 19, 2010 - linkNice catch on the post. However, the author can claim whatever he wants about the "flavor" variations...OWC TOLD ME VERBALLY that all current and future Mercury Extreme SSDs were shipping with the Sandforce 1200 controller. This was NOT speculation. While I understand that specifications may have little or no impact on the actual, real world performance, the fact is that I paid for something and in return was sent something that cost them between $100-150 less than the original. This was not labor or process efficiency cost savings. It was not a reduction in R&D. It was a change in the actual product hardware. It would be the same as an auto manufacturer selling me a car with a V6, then actually delivering the same model with a turbocharged 4 cylinder. The overall performance may be nearly the same, but the longevity may be different and the cost would be less for them. If the auto dealer failed to tell me they had switched mortors and also failed to discount the price, I would sue them. What makes this OK for OWC? Reply
punjabiplaya - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkReally good insight. Just looks like business got in the way of the drive's performance. Hopefully SandForce has acknowledged their mistake and will not repeat it. Their controller looks really promising. Reply
newsh.it - Sunday, April 18, 2010 - linkyes Anand is a top notch reviewer... keep up the good work!!! Reply
Zenthar - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI'm probably not the first to say it, but as my first comment ever I felt I had to say it: Anand you're the best. You do a better job investigating the tech industry products and practices than most journalists do for any kind of articles; this article is a clear example of that. People might start reviewing other SF-1200 drives based on the "wrong" F/W and thus review drives better than they should be; I can't but suspect SandForce did this consciously and with that objective in mind.
Keep on the good work. Reply
Doraemond - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI agree wholeheartedly! Unlike other sites which just rehash and aggregate other news sites, AnandTech really takes the extra effort to go out, investigate, benchmark and analyze technology. You guys really make me come back for more!
I remember one of the first magazines I subscribed to was Byte. Though now defunct, I thoroughly enjoyed their very in-depth articles on everything from microprocessor architecture to the run-of-the-mill experiences of an author who loves tech (Jerry Pournelle). I miss that publication greatly but everytime I go to AnandTech, this site really reminds me of how technical and professional Byte was in their journalism and how great a service AT has been to both technical jargon-inclined people such as myself as well as the average Joe.
Thanks guys! Reply
semo - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkThis is obviously a blunder that only a new and inexperienced company can make. Like someone else said, it's probably more like the business unit failing rather than the engineers but it just shows that this market segmentation crap looks really silly unless executed well and come up with sufficient amount of bs to cover it. Intel seems to got the hang of it Reply
Dazex - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkArticles like these is what make Anand stand out from other tech blog and the reason why I value his take on hardware, even if it's an Apple dock. His experience and thinking adds great insight into all his articles.
Thanks. Reply
Spivonious - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link+10000000000
Keep up the fantastic work, Anand! Reply
vshah - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkIts good to know that we have people looking out for us who are willing to bring it up with companies when there are issues like these. keep it up! Reply
7Enigma - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkAnand,
Can you wager a guess at how the performance will be hampered by cutting the random write IOPS by 2/3rd's? Reply
willscary - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkYes, I always read his articles. I only wish this article would have appeared prior to OWC changing their specs this morning. Now I am wondering. The site still calls it an "Enterprise" class unit, but yet went from the higher specs of the 1500 to the lower specs of the 1200 across the board. Although it may end up meaning nothing...I am still worried that it could make a difference if I recieve the 1200 instead of the 1500 controller units, and I really feel a bit cheated by OWC at the moment, although I have not yet received the units. The first two should be here within an hour or so. The 3rd, a 200GB model, has not yet shipped. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI specifically asked SandForce this question yesterday and they answered saying that they had no idea what chips OWC purchased for the Mercury drives. That floored me.
In any case, I've contacted OWC and I'm waiting for their reply. I will also update the OWC review with a warning to anyone making any purchasing decisions today.
Take care,
Anand Reply
willscary - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkAnand,
This was not directed at you and I apologize if my writing skills made it look that way. I have begun installing SSDs in all of our new computers based on your articles. The Crucial M225 SSDs that I had been using had a 5 year warranty, just as the Mercury Extreme.
What made me decide on the OWC SSDs on these 3 computers was the added reliability and reduced data loss of the 1500 controller. These were theoretical specs, but they sounded promising enough to put my faith in OWC. It was a tosup between them and OCZ, but I read many good things about the people at OWC and decided to give them a chance.
I only hope that my 3 units will contain the 1500 controller. When I purchased them, their website touted the 1500 specs listed in this article. Now the OWC site lists the specs for the 1200. The rediced data loss chances of the 1500 were what drove me to this SSD over the Crucial.
Thanks Anand! Keep up the great work! Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkOh I didn't take it as directed at me at all :) I was just sharing your frustrations.
We'll get to the bottom of this one way or another.
Take care,
Anand Reply
willscary - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkIn the mean time, I will not open the packaging of the two that will be here in the next half hour or so. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI have confirmed with OWC, the specs have changed. The Mercury Extreme is now a SF-1200 based part with lower IOPS. I asked OWC to consider changing the name given that the controller has changed, we'll see what happens.
If you have any questions/issues/concerns I can put you in touch with someone over there that can help you deal with your order. Email me for more info :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
cactusdog - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI hope this isnt a case of bait and switch. Did they make a few parts with the quality controller then once the reviews are up switch to the cheaper controller for the masses? We've seen it before..... Reply
aconu - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkHello
I purchase an 200GB OWC drive the first day of their availability.
Unfortunately, i encountered troubles with the drive (growing I/O errors over one week of use, until heavy data corruption and unbootable OS). After tree secure erases, and tree weeks of repeated symptoms, i decided to return the SSD.
The drive was unavailable until yesterday, and suddenly the specs changes.
That's mean OWC will going to replace my drive with a lower specs one ? Reply
willscary - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkI was told that ALL Mercury Extreme SSDs now utilize the Sandforce 1200 controller. Reply
eva2000 - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkThanks Anand great info, saved me alot of $$$ as i wait and see, already got a 256GB Crucial C300. Was thinking of getting OWC 100/200GB but last month emailed them to ask about their units and compatibility list and they said they mainly cater to Mac users so OWC SSD has no guarantee for compatibility on PC systems. That already put me off unfortunately. Reply
skimike - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - linkHow did you perform your secure erase? The last time I contacted OWC about ANY utilities for the Mercury Extreme drives, their tech support had no clue. They didn't even know what a secure erase was. The guy I talked to told me to "write 0's to the entire drive". Reply
et01267 - Sunday, April 18, 2010 - linkInteresting, I also ordered the 200GB Mercury extreme from OWC/Macsales a couple of days ago and there was a delay in availability (and then the specs on the site were changed). However, my invoice states:
200GB OWC Mercury ExtremeSSD EntRAID 200GB Mercury Extreme RAID-Ready Enterprise Class SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 9.5mm Solid State Drive. High Performance internal storage. Fastest read and write times of any SSD available today! 10 million hours MTBF. 5 Year OWC Warranty.
So, did will I get a Sandforce 1500 or 1200 controller? I should find out tomorrow when it arrives.
In the meantime, I'd appreciate you putting me in touch with your contacts at OWC.
Thanks for the informative, if somewhat ill-timed (for me) article. Reply
willscary - Monday, April 19, 2010 - linkThis was exactly what happened to me. Check with the website and see what their current specs are. I was in the exact same boat and my SSDs had already shipped. When I called OWC, it took a while, but they did admit that all Mercury Extremes are now utilizing the Sandforce 1200 controller. They got their product reviewed glowingly with one controller and used that controllers specifications, then changed hardware without telling those of us who had already purchased and were waiting for delivery. I was upset about the deception and the failure to offer a discount, as the 1200 costs $100-150 less than the 1500 (per Digitalloyd's update from yesterday). By the way, this digitalloyd seems to have NO problem with this practice! Reply
bludragon - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link"In a population of 10,000,000 controllers, with a rating of 10,000,000 hours, the probability is that 1 unit would fail in an hour. The SF-1200 would have 5 units fail in the same time. The failure probability drops as the number of controllers drops (SF won't be shipping anywhere near 10M of these things)."
This make no sense as it implies that somehow sandforce producing more controllers after they shipped mine is going to reduce the lifetime of my controller.
I think what you mean is that MTBF is listed for a single device. If I use 2, then the MTBF of the 2 combined will halve, and so having such high figures is relevant. Reply
Lifted - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkMTBF is meaningless with 1 or 2 drives. It's meant for large Enterprise customers and data centers where they may have thousands of drives. These customers need to know how often to expect drive failures in order to know how many resources need to be dedicated to this (personnel and spare drives).
The strange thing is that Anand has been reviewing hard drives and SSD's for so many years now, with direct access to the manufacturers, but he never once asked what MTBF was. Why did he only find it strange now when hard drives have always had 1,000,000+ hour MTBF ratings?
Anyway, nice article. Keep them coming. Reply
pzkfwg - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI suppose this stat can be converted into a probability which would be relevant to a single drive. Indeed, saying that "1 drive out of 10,000,000 will die within an hour of operation" means exactly the same thing as "you have 0,00001% chance of having your single drive dying within its first hour of operation" which is kind of relevant to a single drive and isn't linked to the number of controllers produced by SandForce.
Out of this number, there is probably a way to have a more useful probability such as the chance of having your drive fail within its first two years of operation, but I don't know how to compute it (maybe a so called "normal" distribution or something would be the key). Reply
bplewis24 - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkIt's pretty sad that one of the only places I can go to get real, actual (somewhat investigative) journalism and insight is a tech site. This is great stuff, Anand. Keep up the good work.
Brandon Reply
NGneer - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkJust wondering if the last line on page 2 has a typo regarding MP vs RC or possibly I'm just confused.
"just slower than with the MP firmware and slower than OCZ's Vertex 2." Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkWoops, you're correct :) Fixed.
Take care,
Anand Reply
529th - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkIn an infant market segment, it seems Sandforce is trying it's best to get as much user feedback from their product stepping over their exclusive agreements. But it seems OCZ and Corsair are in the same boat with their SF1200 controlled SSD drives. It's basically a morality call from Sandforce that falls on some segment of end-users in order for a company to speed up the development of their firmware for their controllers in order to not fall behind in the best controller war. Q4 is right around the corner for Intel and while the 25nm chips will help even further push their proven conglomerate that makes up their SSD drive lets hope we have a few different companies that keep the prices competitive. Reply
cjl - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkThe comment in the article
" In a population of 10,000,000 controllers, with a rating of 10,000,000 hours, the probability is that 1 unit would fail in an hour. The SF-1200 would have 5 units fail in the same time. The failure probability drops as the number of controllers drops (SF won't be shipping anywhere near 10M of these things)."
is flawed in several ways. It assumes a linear failure rate (I.E. that your drive is just as likely to fail in the first hour as it is after 200,000 hours), and it assumes that 100% of drives will fail by the rated lifetime (in other words, in a population of 10,000,000, 1 will fail each hour and all will be dead at 10,000,000 hours). In reality, the failure distribution is quite different, usually with a higher failure rate in early life, a lower failure rate for most of the rated lifetime, and a rising failure rate again as you approach the MTBF.
To use the same example as above, if you had 10,000,000 drives, you would probably see more than one fail per hour in the first couple of weeks, followed by a much lower than 1 per hour failure rate once the initial ones had died. Then, when approaching the design lifetime, you would again begin to see the failure rate climb, with an expected 5,000,000 drives to be dead by the MTBF of 10,000,000 hours (assuming a somewhat symmetric failure distribution). Reply
jasperjones - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link"The failure probability drops as the number of controllers drops (SF won't be shipping anywhere near 10M of these things)."
Why should the probability be a function of the number of controllers? That doesn't make any sense. Reply
taltamir - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkprobability is not affected by number of controllers, MTBF is a bullshit metric that means nothing at all... also check out the MTBF on spindle drives (1.5 million most common vs the 2 million and 10 million listed by sandforce, the smallest i have seen was 300 thousand hours (still it means decades)) Reply
Ramesh Rawat - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkHaving visited AnandTech recently, and with my very poor limitations and knowledge in this field, more specifically about the technical evaluations done by Anand, I was and I cannot resist to thank this site for making me aware about SSD. Subsequently I am upgrading to Intel SSD purely because of the reviews of Anand ji.
Thanks to Mr. Anand. Reply
Ditiris - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkThis deserves an "attaboy." Thanks for alerting your readers, and please keep up the good work. Reply
Exodite - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkVery interesting article.
Like many others this is the kind of information that keeps bringing me back to Anandtech.
The question on my mind then would be if there's even any SF1500 drives shipping, or known to be planned?
As it seems to every SandForce-based drive on the market, or having been announced, either run the SF1200 (with or without high-performing firmware) or the limited run hybrid chip.
What pricing and performance differences can we expect?
If the main differences are mainly reliability and SLC support I see no reason to artificially limit performance of the SF1200, not that I'd ever support that anyway, as the benefits of the SF1500 would be mostly meaningless for consumers but still attractive for enterprise use.
Ah well, time will tell I suppose. Reply
superjojo - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI'm sorry if I'm mistaken, but while reading the article I had a feeling that Anand was kind of retaliating against SandForce for something they might have done/said at that meeting. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI'm not sure what's shipping to OEMs right now, but the Vertex LE is the only thing I can point at as being a SF-1500 without the supercap and some of the other enterprise features.
There are more SF-1500 devices in the pipeline, but the focus is on SF-1200 as the full 1500 solution is quite pricey.
Take care,
Anand Reply
arehaas - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkOCZ Vertex 2 is advertised as Sandforce-1500, and Agility 2 as Sandforce-1500. With 50,000 and 10,000 write IOPs, respectively. They have been available in Europe for two weeks already. Reply
arehaas - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkSorry, a typo - Agility 2 is Sandforce-1200. Reply
SirZ - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkWhy on earth would a business want to "throttle" their product? They could make all these "business" problems go away just by giving everyone the exclusive firmware (with the power saving thing fixed, in MP mode). There has to be a better way to reward the company that stood by you from the start (OCZ) than punishing everyone else. Why not just give them a better deal? OCZ wins, customers win. Reply
Mr Perfect - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkI think the problem is who SandForce perceives their customers to be.The drive OEMs may be the one's writing checks to them, but it's ultimately the end user who is creating the demand.
OCZ certainly should be given something extra for helping SandForce develop the tech, but giving them a SF-1200 that outperforms all other SF-1200s is at best confusing, and at worst deceptive. Give them a new SKU if you really must give them a performance edge. Call it a SF-1300 or SF-1400, and the consumer won't feel like they are being mislead. Reply
SirZ - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkRight now, they all lose. I have been getting ready to jump on the real SSD bandwagon (bought a 30 GB Vertex a couple months ago, still sitting in the box, to small for anything useful, call it a 90 dollar impulse buy), and this Sandforce thing has been promising, and I have been favoring some flavor of the Vertex (the cheaper ones anyway), but this silliness about sending the "better" performing product to review sites, makes me suspicious and is pushing me closer to Intel's drive. (If only it was 10-15% cheaper...)
So, OCZ, Sandforce, etc... you all lose. Thanks Anand, and double thanks for not caving in to the usual corporate pressure to keeping this stuff hush-hush (I know how these review things go ;) Reply
willscary - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkIt took a bit over 1/2 hour and being put on hold twice, but I finally got a straight answer. The 3 Mercury Extreme SSDs that I bought on Monday under the premise and specifications of the Sandforce 1500 controller do NOT have the 1500 controller, but instead the 1200 controller.
I was given no explanation other than "All Mercury Extreme SSDs now shipping have the Sandforce 1200 controller onboard"
OWC had no problem offering an RMA for these drives, but I still feel cheated. The cost of the lesser controllers means that the drives should have been cheaper, but OWC decided to try to pull a "bait and switch" and pocket the extra cash. I will now be ordering OCX Vertex LEs.
Again, thank you Anand for this article. While performance may be equal, I want to know what I am buying and get what I paid for. This article, along with a quick change to the OWC website this morning, turned on the lightbulb.
Its too bad. These are probably still superb drives, but the fact that I was really misled on the components leaves me feeling like OWC attempted to get away with robbery. Luckily, as soon as caught, they are quick to comply with an RMA to make themselves look like it was a mistake, but the person on the other end of the phone was CLEARLY annoyed as he quickly sent the RMAs. Reply
Ipreferspam - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkDo you know what SF-1200 firmware the OWC drives are shipping with? Reply
ggathagan - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkPerhaps at least some of your ire should be directed at Sandforce, not OWC.
Remember that the difference comes down to firmware and put yourself in OWC's place:
Do you continue to ship Extreme SSD's with the RC firmware and hope that you don't have any reliability issues, or do you use the MP firmware?
Given that they weren't privy to the special agreement that OCZ was, they will not be receiving MP firmware for the 1200 with the higher specs.
Having decided to go with the MP firmware for reliability's sake, at what point do you suggest that they change the published specs?
Granted, it would have been nice if they sent an email to all whose purchase might have been impacted, but given that they were more then willing to RMA the drives, I fail to see how bait-and-switch comes in to play. Reply
Crypticone - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkRemember this is the same company that asked reviewers to NOT open the product. They started out with one product, got it reviewed favorably then switched to a lesser and much less expensive chip and left prices and model numbers the same.
If that is not bait and switch in your mind, I am not sure what is.. Reply
ggathagan - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkAfter re-reading willscary's comment, I have to agree that I was wrong on the bait-and-switch aspect of it.
If OWC had sent an email stating that there had been a spec change and asking if the drives were still desired, that would be one thing.
Since they were not upfront with the change to customers who had already purchased, but had not yet received their drives, you are correct; clearly duplicitous. Reply
529th - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkSo, Corsair found that a power saving feature on the Sandforce controllers was the culprit to it's reliability stigma?
Then they went ahead and fixed it with their own firmware thus negating the "MP" released by Sandforce thereby maintaining Vertex 2 like performance?
My main concern is for my 2 OCZ Vertex LE SSD drives. One in the machine I have now: firmware 1.0; and on that should be delivered the 19th. So, if Sandforce borrows the idea from Corsair, if indeed that is the reliability problem, then the next time you put the OCZ Vertex LE on the 2mb power consumption it should relatively read the same as the Corsair Force 100 (Sandforce 1200) SSD drive right? Anand, could you do that for us? Thanks
529th Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI'm not sure what the 3.0.5 fix is for the power state bug. I've been meaning to put that fw on my Vertex LE but haven't had the opportunity to yet. As soon as I do, I will let you know :)
In light of all of these issues, both drives with their latest firmware will be going in mission critical systems in my office. Gonna try and break em :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
GullLars - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkPutting them into mission critical systems in order to try to break them... Sounds kind of reckless if the systems are indeed mission critical. If they are riggs that simulate servers/workstations that typically require mission critical storage, it would be an entirely different scenario.
Great reporting on this kind of stuff BTW, keep it up ;)
It makes me kind of sad to see this kind of sketchy an unorganized behaviour from a company that seems to have great engineering skills. I've been impressed with their tech and architecture since they came out of stealth mode last spring, and the benchmarks didn't disappoint (only the price tag :P). IMO they should not cripple the drives if it's not neccesary due to the lack of the supercap, and even then, providing the full performance FW to enthusiasts willing to take the risk of dataloss would be a good idea to gain goodwill.
I hope manifacturers will provide enthusiasts with the 3.0.1 FW with the power savings feature disabled (modded FW), even if they decide to go for the reduced performance MP FW SF-1200 drives off the shelves. Reply
nycromes - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkAnand,
I was highly critical of you in another review the other day. That being said, articles like this are what I have come to expect from Anandtech. In depth explanations of what is going on with new tech, and as evidenced here, sometimes what is going on in the business as well. Thanks for digging deeper into this situation and letting us all in on what is going on. Its sad to see companies do this to both trusted partners, customers, and the industry. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkThe criticism is always welcome - I take everything to heart. I am trying to do the best job possible here and you guys really help me in doing that. You give me encouragement when you feel that I've done a good job and you give me pointers on how to be better when you feel that I haven't. It's free feedback from you all and I do appreciate it, regardless of tone :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
SANDAR - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkAnand Shimpi: proving once again that the pen may be mightier than the sword, but having a highly trafficked website is akin to a boatload of Hellfire Missiles. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkYou rock :) Reply
willscary - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkAfter this change, I have decided to go back to Crucial 128GB M225s for the two lesser machines. I have been using these with great success for a couple months now. Instead of the 200GB OWC, I am now torn between the 200GB OCZ Vertex LE and the Crucial offerings. The new Crucial 300 looks much faster, but the M225 is much cheaper and has a 5 year warranty.
This is a quickly changing technology, I know. However, I feel that each manufacturer and supplier MUST be truthful about the products they are selling. As said above, a simple email and perhaps a slight refund would have done wonders in my case, but I sure don't want to pay for a much more expensive product and get less. As I said earlier...to me, that is the definition of Bait and Switch, even if the above poster was correct and Sandforce shipped a different controller. I, however, doubt that OWC did not know, or at least that they would not have either rejected the shipment when they found out or demanded credit for the cheaper controllers. Reply
Barshj - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkGreat info, Anand! I have been a reader of yours since the beginning and have appreciated all your work! This is my first comment. I have been thiinking about getting a Sandforce drive since your first vertex 2 article and quickly decided to go get the ocz limited edition for a good price from newegg before they sell out. You probably did ocz a good service by talking about this as they will probably sell out quickly now.
One thing I continually wonder regarding ssd reviews is why you need to publish the "new" drive test results rather than just testing and publishing your findings on a "used" drive. Soon enough all of us ssd owners will have their drives in the "used" condition so the "new" drive results are somewhat irrelevant to us buyers. It would probably make your job easier and tend to force vendors to ensure their drives hold up well after use, if you just conditioned the drive into a "used" state and only publish those results. Reply
529th - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkDoes the OCZ Toolbox now work with the Vertex LE ?? Reply
ClagMaster - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI always though firmware was the Achilles heel of these SSD's and have a profound effect on performance. I expressed in earlier posts that it's a bad situation when the many SSD vendors do not have a clue how their firmware works and rely on third-party vendors. Although, to be fair, Corsair knew enough about this Release Candidate Firmware to turnoff the power bug, then sold their SSD's as if the Release Candidate Firmware was the Production Firmware.
Are you sure SandForce is culpable here. SandForce gave Corsair the Release Candidate Firmware so they could do development work with their SSD's and perfect them for market. But its Corsair who decided to ship this RC firmware on its SSD's. I am not satisfied the key players in the SSD industry have their configuration control together. Reply
krazyderek - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkwhere does OCW stand in terms of firmware? i had one of their 50gb drives at the top of my list, did they just disable the power saving feature as well, can anand include the OCW drives in the power draw metric and make an educated guess?
in terms of "new technologies" and reliability, i've had a 2007 raptor and a foxconn retail motherboard both die in two different machines in my office this week, i don't think SSD's are any less an option then your typical HDD, i mean just look at the reviews on newegg to see how many HDD's arrive DOA, or brick after a month, granted, it's probably a lower percentage since it's a bigger market then SSD right now, but i think trying new controllers just comes with SSD territory right now, as you've pointed out in the past, every controller manufacturer worth looking at in the enthusiast field has had problems, and they're always covered under warranties, like you say, just keep a clone image of your drive ready for a couple of months when you first give SSD's a go. Reply
willscary - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI am sorry to those readers and also to Anand, who may be tiring of this, but I just read my new (arrived today via mail) PCWorld. The inside back cover is a full page OWC advertizement touting the Mercury Extreme SSD. The specs are clearly the SF 1500 specs, incuding 10 million hr MTBF and less than 1 sector per 10^17 bits read. I know how long ago they finalized this ad (a few weeks) and how long since print (perhaps a week), but still.
I only wish that everyone knew the true facts as this is dishonest. Again, I will also say that OWC was great when I ordered and quick to RMA, even though the guy who set up the RMA seemed VERY annoyed with my questioning of the controller. Reply
cditty - Friday, April 16, 2010 - linkI can't see why anyone would want a Sandforce drive... It is more expensive per Gigabyte that the Intel. That is crazy. The Intel drives are proven (as proven as an SSD can be) drives that deliver great performance. I use G2's in my laptop and desktop and have been using their 40 Gigabyte value drives for boot drives in systems at work that need an extremely fast boot time. I would never trust my data to a 'new' controller. I don't even fully trust it to Intel yet, as I keep a nightly backup on a platter based RAID 1. Reply
iwod - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkDo you actually feel the difference between an C300 SSD, Intel SSD and a SandForce SSD?
Ofcoz on paper SandForce would be the best, but does it actually gives anymore precipitable performance difference? From HDD to SSD was like from Horse to Racing Cars. But what if i already had a Intel SSD?
Also, any news on when are we expecting SATA 3.0 ( 6Gbps ) based SSD? It seems SATA 2.0 is the bottle neck right now. Reply
soundseeker - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkcan some onem please make clear: Are these points about the self cleaning aspects of the drive relevant to MAC OS. The big worry about getting a macbook pro with a SSD is you pay crazy amounts and then it deteriorates because Mac doesnt support TRIM.
Anand and the guy with the 3 ssd's on order, are you installing the drives in Macs????
thanks Reply
willscary - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkAll of the SSDs that I have plus the 3 that I have on order are for PCs and all of the PCs are running Windows 7 Professional. I am sorry, but I can not help you with their long term health in a Mac environment. Reply
soundseeker - Sunday, April 18, 2010 - linkthanks for your answer
anyone help verify the mac thing. is there no answer coz you are mostly pc users?
Im confused about the best approach for mac.- fill issues, controller issues and there's been no verification yet as to who manufactures the Apple stock SSD's. so this is a minefield of speculation Reply
_Q_ - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkSorry for being a little off-topic (still SSD though)...
Are there any news on when is the Indilinx JetStream going to be released in some drive from any vendor?
Cause as far as I know, this was initially going to be out in end of 2009, then there was a delay... but no further info that I could find more recently.
Thanks for any help. Reply
1921Photoelectric - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkWhat this says to me, companies will re-write firmware to get the competitive edge. Also it will spur on hacked firmware to get the most out of the drive and than don't forget cross flashing, being blocked or not it will be circumnavigated. Been doing that with cd\dvd burners for quite some time. The one big downturn in this is, unscrupulous relabeling of the controller chip. This use to happen with CPU's a lot before Intel and AMD started locking the chips. Reply
Movieman420 - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkSandForce is the sole FW coder...;) Reply
shawkie - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - linkI've just posted a comment on the previous article on this subject but I thought it might be worth repeating it here. I've taken a look at the source code for the 2008 build of IOMeter and I don't think it should be trusted to produce realistic benchmarks for SandForce drives. The problem is that the data written to the disk is not sufficiently random and as a result will be very highly compressed by the SandForce controller. Reply
velis - Monday, April 19, 2010 - linkI think this deliberate FW throttling is a load of c**p.
Sandforce is hurting its own sales by doing this. While before I liked what was said about these controllers, now I only see a deliberately crippled *and* overpriced chip. IMHO this is just as bad a business practice as when Intel decided to lock processor multipliers. With an unimportant exception that Intel could certainly afford it as they were more or less a monopoly then as they are now. SF on the other hand is a startup...
It doesn't really matter that real life performance won't be affected much by this. It's the thought that counts!
They should offer a really good explanation for this throttling or give their customers something in return (an extra SF-1200 only feature). As it is, hacked FW will be all over the net, assuming of course that anyone will be buying these drives at all. Reply
ToeCutter - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - linkI couldn't agree more. Artificially reducing performance just fails the smell test.
And while the performance numbers look impressive, the usable capacity numbers don't.
Oh well, looks like the Intel SSDs are the only reliable game in town.
It has been kinda nice not having to worry about which SSD to buy for the past couple of quarters?
Sometimes it seems that choice, just for the sake of choice, can be a pain in the ass more times than not! Reply
lemonadesoda - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link"Your best bet at this point is to hold off on any SF-1200 purchases unless you're willing to accept the risks that comes with."
I agree with you 100%. But I'm sure SandForce never realised that inviting you to their meeting would result in you discovering their mismanagement of firmware, specs and partner relationships.
Not so sure they will be inviting you again. At least, not before you sign some "right to review copy" NDA or somthing. LOL ;) Reply
ToeCutter - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - linkI'd like to extend a hearty "THANKS!" to Anand for demonstrating his values on this topic. As a storage engineer working for a reputable vendor, I understand first hand how much pressure can be exerted on engineers to "overlook" certain aspects of a products behavior.
I can say, with a degree of pride, that I've always played it straight with my customers, even when hurt. And they rewarded me for maintaining my credibility with repeat business and friendship, which is so much more important to me than making a few extra bucks.
Kudos to Anand for keeping everyone honest. While it might seem like "geek drama" to the uninitiated, Anand said it when he explained to these vendors that "this is serious, it's our DATA"!
Well done, Mr. Shimpi. Reply
Hrel - Saturday, May 08, 2010 - linkBasically, SSD's aren' ready for the mainstream yet, there's apparently a LOT of stuff that needs to be worked out before that can happen, not to mention the insane cost per GB. Also, when are people gonna really start making a fuss about companies "artificially" reducing performance. Like disabling cores that are fully functional then selling the CPU at a lower price. The sale price of a product should be based on what it costs to make, I shouldn't have to pay a premium for a chip just because some features aren't locked. Intel does this all the time and it seriously pisses me off. What's the physical difference between an E8400 and and E8600? nothing! They're just clocked different yet one costs more than the other even though they cost the same to make. Same thing with GPU's. It's maddening! Reply
TheRealAnalogkid - Friday, June 04, 2010 - linkKudos to Anand and his journalistic talent (not a term frequently used online) to not only discover but to expose this.
I've read his site for many years and this is one of the best articles I've seen. Keep up the good work. Reply
sunbear - Monday, July 19, 2010 - linkIt seems that months after this article was published, OCZ is STILL supposedly shipping the last remaining LE vertex's. But you can pick up a Vertex 2 for almost the same price and this also includes a 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch converter tray (unlike the LE). This review seems to confirm that for everything except high queue depth situations, the Vertex 2 is the superior SSD:
The article states that they believe that the silicon used for the SF-1200 and SF-1500 are identical.
So I wonder - is this all just a marketing gimmick running off the back of Anand's article?
Anand - what are your thoughts at this point? Reply


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Gianfranco Zola was critical of Watford's "sloppy" first-half performance after his side's 4-3 defeat to Charlton Athletic this afternoon.
Despite taking an early lead through Daniel Pudil's first goal for the club, the Hornets were very disappointing in the opening period and found themselves behind at the break after a Tommie Hoban own goal and Yann Kermorgant's header.
Zola's side needed to improve after the break, and they did, taking the lead by midway through the second half thanks to an Almen Abdi penalty and Alex Geijo. However, Kermorgant turned in the equaliser before Johnnie Jackson won the three points 12 minutes from time.
The Watford boss said: "I think that today the reason why we didn't win is we gave away 45 minutes, something you cannot afford in this Championship. Maybe we had too many compliments the other day [after beating Brighton] and we went on the pitch with probably not the same awareness they had because they were winning all the second balls, they were winning all the headers and they found themselves 2-1 doing little, it was more us allowing them to get into the game.
"No disrespect towards them but we let them get into the game too much because we were not sharp enough. That sharpness for me comes mainly because we didn't manage to get the attention right and you can't afford that in this league.
"The second half was better. We tried to get the rhythm a little bit better, higher, more quality in the passing but unfortunately our defending today as well wasn't the best. It's disappointing but a good lesson again for us. We will certainly next time be aware that after a good game you need to make sure you get the same concentration."
Although one change was enforced following Fitz Hall's hamstring injury in the win at Brighton & Hove Albion, Zola also chose to drop Ikechi Anya, Troy Deeney and Matej Vydra down to the bench, while Jonathan Hogg was left out of the matchday squad.
Asked if he regretted making five changes, he replied: "Not at all. I've made them before and it worked. I don't think the problem lies in there, I think it was more like that [they] just didn't focus.
"The players that played, Geijo, Forestieri, they did quite well, so I don't think the fact we changed many players has got something to do with the game."
Zola added later: "We went in front but we were not certainly the normal time that we are. The passing wasn't good enough, we were sloppy, honestly, we were sloppy and it was very costly. We tried to get into the game, in the second half we did better, but sometimes it's too late. If you don't prepare and you aren't mentally [focused] before the game, it becomes very, very difficult to do when you are in the game."