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If you follow the solid state drive market, you may have heard some of the reviewers talk about a tool released by OCZ called the OCZ Toolbox. OCZ released this tool for reviewers many months ago and asked us to keep it under wraps while they perfected this application.
I find OCZ's current situation similar to the early 1990's 49ers. OCZ had a very good run with SandForce, winning best consumer SSD awards with both the Vertex 2 and a year later with Vertex 3. Just like Joe, the SandForce SF-2000 series is starting to look a little older and the young competition from other makers is starting to catch up. SandForce might offer the fastest controller to date, but that might not be the case starting next season.
When the original Vertex and Agility product lines were introduced, we were told that the Vertex had a specific BOM (Build of Materials) list and the Agility had a dynamic BOM. In the end we found the first Vertex to have one set of flash that never changed, but the Agility shipped with three or more different flash configurations. The Agility was sold at a lower price because it used whatever flash was the lowest priced at the time of manufacture. While all who purchased an Agility were rolling the dice as far as what flash was included, some ended up with a drive that was identical to the higher priced Vertex.
What we didn't know at the time (although assumed all along) was that OCZ was also working on consumer level Vertex 3 drives based on a brand new SandForce controller, the SF-2281. The next-generation SandForce controller in OCZ's Vertex 3 consumer grade drive operates across the SATA 6 Gbps interface and is reportedly good for up to 550MB/s read, 525MB/s write at up to 60K IOPS 4k Write. Today we will be taking a look at a beta engineering sample of the new consumer grade Vertex 3 SSD in a 240GB capacity.
In our very first SandForce SF-2200 article we told you that SandForce opened the door for manufacturers to get creative with products this year. When that article went live we had already learned that some SSD manufacturers were taking a good look at what NAND flash they wanted to use in their SF-2281 offerings. So far, we've only seen IMFT (Intel / Micron) 25nm flash paired with the SandForce SF-2281 controller, but that is about to change.
When OCZ started their marketing campaign for the Vertex 3, they sent media websites pre-production units with firmware that was stable, but not as fast as the final shipping version. Since we produce articles that directly compare one product to another, we needed to get a retail 240GB Vertex 3 in for testing and use the data to compare the product to other products in the SSD category.
We plan to see a huge number of SandForce 2000 Series SSDs this year. SandForce has added even more partners in 2011, Intel being one of them. Even though Big Blue will take a shot at fame with a SandForce 2000 Series product, the Vertex 3 will still be the benchmark in which all others are compared. OCZ has dominated the consumer SSD market for the last several years and transitioned from a company making several products into a company whose primary role is solid state drives.
Yesterday we looked at the Corsair Performance 3, the first retail next generation Marvell - BKK2 controlled SSD to hit our lab. Today we have the Performance 3's, and for that matter every other new consumer SSD's main competitor in house; the OCZ Technology Vertex 3. OCZ Technology leads all other manufacturers in SSD development. The company has put forth a vast amount of resources in this market and even all but abandoned their memory products that put OCZ on the map. The payoff has been a near two year domination of the SSD market with sales that dwarf all other manufacturers. OCZ is at this point the SSD manufacturer in which all others strive to be.
OCZ Technology is the Swiss Army of solid state drives. The company has a product in their line-up for every occasion. Until now desktop users have been forced to pay a premium for smaller 2.5" notebook drives that need a desktop adapter bracket. Notebook drives require larger flash modules and need an adapter to fit in desktops. These premium parts raise the cost of the SSD whether you need them or not.
OCZ improves Vector by treating it to 19nm Toggle2 flash, additional spare area, up-to-date accessory package and a new, lower price.
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