Quoted from the latest update;

"If you want to dabble with Windows 7 release candidates, fine-tune partition alignments, or roll the dice with a TRIM utility that could corrupt your data, SSDs based on Indilinx's Barefoot controller certainly have intriguing potential. However, for those seeking a solid-state drive that doesn't require extensive tweaking for optimal performance, products based on the latest controllers from Intel and Samsung are much safer bets—including, potentially, OCZ's own recently introduced Summit series.

In highlighting the used-state performance penalty associated with the Barefoot controller, we've focused exclusively on Windows XP performance with our ICH7R-based storage test system. But that's not all we've been doing. A new round of SSD testing has already begun on an updated system built around a Core 2 processor, ICH10R south bridge, and Vista x64. Stay tuned for more."

I have been saying this all along, if you want amazing performance, then you go with the vertex and do what ya gotta do, otherwise, buy an Intel.

I think its very important to rmember here, that Windows7 will support trim,and we are presently waiting for a new FW that will take advantage of it. When this happens, and it will, the vertex will shine brighter than the rest, if only in value versus performance.

I love my Vertex, i am one of the lucky ones that everything works in Vista 64, trim works, bassically it is all good for me and a large percentage of other users as well.

The butthurt trolls are running loose!

I'm afraid you missed my point regarding the Vertex. (I didn't mention UltraDrive because SuperTalent doesn't push so much BS).
OCZ could make the Vertex a great SSD drive: if only guaranteed a 100% reliable SDD with a read/write like 180Mb/s and 120Mb/s and BS free, even I would have bought one.

But no, the information about the "normal" speed a Vertex should perform is so contradicting nowadays that when someone sees a review with lower results they think it's a problem with the review, not the drive.

About TRIM, I just said it's not a reliable or practical solution for now but still is recommended in OCZ forums.
When you say "With my Indilinx (...) One click and the performance is back again for 2+ weeks."... You're kidding right?
First, TRIM is not an exclusive of the Indilinx. It's a plus that will probably come with Windows 7 (32/64bit versions) and it will work with ANY SSD in REAL TIME. That will be nice!
Second, with the Vertex you'll get the performance back with TRIM if it works 100% in the first place (or maybe "seems faster" is good enough for you).
Third, "One click"? Yeah right... I've read that that click could take several hours to finish... again, if it works in the first place - I sure hope so, really, because it could become a normal (any)OS update for any SSD owner (again, it's not for Indilinx controllers only).

Anyway, if it works for you all the time and takes only a few seconds then that's great! But, today, I think everybody else still should make backups before using TRIM (if you value your data) and then you could wait a few seconds, minutes or several hours to finish depending on your system. Also, besides being a risky process the "SSD use less power" statement could go down the drain with it - ever tough of this? It's ridiculous if you own a laptop. It's definitely not a HD replacement. It's more like a freaking time and money waster.

And please don't give me the "it's the OS problem not drive" excuse. If some company makes a hard drive, one of the thing they should check is if the thing actually works with, at least, one OS that is available to the public at that time. Seems too obvious right? But no, some (very few) companies still blame XP, Vista, OSX, Linux...?! What is this?

Finally, I didn't misunderstand Tony's statement. And I still stand by what I said: those SDDs are definitely not HD replacements, and you have to wast some time to get it to work "a little better"; and I still think it's the most HONEST information I got from OCZ's forums.

PS: After reading that part where you wrote... "scandal", "newspapers", "BMW", "Audi", "think" "emotional", etc... well... I have to ask you: are you OK?

since it's been mentioned so much i'll just throw this in

anandtech's bootup times seem fine that the ssd's won based on his test where his "bootup" consists of loading the os from a 'used state', then loading 3 apps as soon as he was able to. the clock stopped when a hardware device had initialised (how all that forms part of "bootup" i don't know. it sounds more like application load times)

but still for what he tested it sounds about right that the mechanical discs were much slower. i don't use ps-cs4 myself. however unless they've changed something significantly, then's a tonne "butterfly-like" reads going on for the plugins at which point the mechanical drives are gonna fall behind. on top of that (for what i've assumed are) 2 other applications are vying for hdd time at the exact same time. mechanical drives weren't going to have a chance

i still don't see how loading 3 apps (assumed at the same time) forms part of "bootup". then again i guess i'm more traditional and have no programs in my startup folder.

The lack of firmware rev levels for the testing environment, is a VERY SERIOUS DEFECIENCY.
Frankly it goes to the core to any serious testing, rather than advertising revenue, directed efforts.
WITHDRAW THE RESULTS AND START ALL OVER.
Otherwise SHAME ON YOU.

I still can't believe people are bashing this review.
I still think it is very plausible and fairly detailed. Like I said before ANY review of this kind only expresses ONE user experience in a specific period of time - it gives you a good clue of what you can expect, not how things will work for you.
Except for the "X25M Recommendation" bit, I really think this is a good review overall - let's face it, the X25M is getting old in the new SSD world, the price is still a rip-off for 80Gb and has low (maximum) writing speeds.

On the other hand, people are bashing this review mainly because of the Vertex...!? Are you crazy?

There's this guy in the OCZ forums named Tony that wrote the only piece of information that I found really important and true, and I quote: "We have tons of valuable info here on the forum, what you need to consider is SSD is NOT a hard drive replacement, it is an alternative method of data/OS storage and it has its own set of rules/issues. Have an open mind to trying new tweaks and spending time looking how you can improve windows so it runs a little better on your system". End quote.

Right on Tony! They should put that information in all SSDs packages! He help me decide that an OCZ SSD is not what I want because when I REMOVE the Hard Drive from the laptop and INSERT a SSD... it's definitely a Hard Drive replacement I'm looking for!

The vertex has a new firmware almost every month just to fool the users that it is a good drive in some benchmark. There's no way I would use a drive that has 100Mb/s sustained write (read OCZ's vertex page) and the manufacture keeps pushing BS firmwares giving steroids to the drive; it works for a few days but in the end you'll get an unstable system that needs constant user intervention. The Vertex looks like a drug addict.

If you want to get a good SSD, performance AND stability are the more important factors nowadays. And I rather have a "100% safe" 100Mb/s write than a "maybe it won't work this time" 200Mb/s write.

An important issue, everybody should be aware, ALL MLC drives have one thing in common: the performance issues after use (you can read about that in this and other reviews).
The Samsung controller seems fairly good even after use (around 60Mb/s is the lowest value I've found) but the x25m can go down to 25Mb/s write and the Vertex is still a mystery - sometimes it goes way down, then there's different firmwares, then you have to use TRIM... but of course, after you use TRIM the performance will go down again after use!

Either the "TRIM effect" is in REAL TIME or it is just a waste of time for SSDs. But to use it in REAL TIME you need a GOOD and FAST writing SSD and who knows what the side effects will be with the need-a-new-firmware-and-tweaks-all-the-time-Vertex.

Read the OCZ forums: there are lots of posts there and many PROBLEMS with the Vertex: some users show pretty good benchmarks but then you never actually see them posting similar results in different periods. It's definitely not a reliable SDD.
It gets a bit ridiculous... PEOPLE PAYING for the Vertex, asking for assistance in the forums because the drive sucks and then OCZ say they have to do this and that and ERASE THE ENTIRE DRIVE... and in the end people THANK OCZ for this?! It gets worse because a week later... there they are again! Same thing all over again: the drive sucks; then there's this new firmware; then performance goes up; fill the drive; there it goes down again...

The OCZ forum resumes to: normal use of SSD, low speeds, need to use TRIM, need new OS install, can’t install OS, TRIM again, normal use, low speeds, TRIM again, BIOS doesn’t recognize SSD, new firmware available, dead SSD after firmware flash, new SSD, normal use, low speeds... and this goes on and on and on…!!!
How can anyone find this acceptable? People are getting ripped off and actually say “thank you” in the end?!
Has an outsider, that forum looks like a bunch of sadistic and masochists playing together... but hey, whatever makes you happy, right?
Forget about the Vertex! It looks like OCZ’s Core story all over again.

From ALL reviews I've found about SSDs, all with different system specs, the new Samsung controller seems to be the best choice: it's very consistent in all benchmarks; just one firmware (already installed); no hidden BS.
The Samsung PB22-J, the Corsair 256Mb version, and the OCZ Summit, are definitely the most fast and reliable SSDs drives... for now.

If Nvidia / ATI fanboys were like OCZ fanboys:
"ugh! you tested that video card with games where the card is not KNOWN to shine!!! Why didnt you use GAMENAMEHERE?? After all, that's where the card really shines! Who cares that the majority doesnt play GAMENAMEHERE.. it's what should have been benchmarked because Nvidia/ATI spent time optimizing there! ugh."

might want to switch to a newer controller?
meybe a dedicated controller or a newer one, the Intel ICH7R is awfuly old, if you compare bit-tech vertex review that uses a new controller
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/05/15/ocz-vertex-ssd-...

EDIT: just made the conversion to MB/s so everybody can get the picture.

Greetings,

I just run the same FC-Test benchmark in my LG P310 with a Scorpio Black 160Gb and the results are better than Chloiber's UD ME.
Even if my system is using RAM in the reading tests to do the job right, I guess it's the final result that matters.
Note: where it reads -- Copying files from "Z:\test name" to "nul" -- it's the reading test. Check it out:

>>> Session start: Sat May 23 20:37:49 2009

Copying files from "Z:\ins" to "nul"
Copied for 608 ms (945.7 MB/s)
Copying files from "Z:\ins" to "Z:\Temp"
Begin directory structure generation: clock 38126
End directory structure generation: clock 38126
Copied for 2714 ms (211.9 MB/s)

Copying files from "Z:\iso" to "nul"
Copied for 1154 ms (1386.5 MB/s)
Copying files from "Z:\iso" to "Z:\Temp"
Begin directory structure generation: clock 111260
End directory structure generation: clock 111260
Copied for 15163 ms (105.5 MB/s)

Copying files from "Z:\mp3" to "nul"
Copied for 1061 ms (933 MB/s)
Copying files from "Z:\mp3" to "Z:\Temp"
Begin directory structure generation: clock 193534
End directory structure generation: clock 193534
Copied for 8112 ms (122 MB/s)

Copying files from "Z:\prog" to "nul"
Copied for 2449 ms (563.5 MB/s)
Copying files from "Z:\prog" to "Z:\Temp"
Begin directory structure generation: clock 282081
End directory structure generation: clock 282081
Copied for 28283 ms (48.8 MB/s)

Copying files from "Z:\win" to "nul"
Copied for 2356 ms (469.9 MB/s)
Copying files from "Z:\win" to "Z:\Temp"
Begin directory structure generation: clock 375198
End directory structure generation: clock 375198
Copied for 16489 ms (64.2 MB/s)

Allright. Because I really couldn't believe that my UD is THAT bad I did the FC Test on my rig myself. E4300 at 2.8Ghz, ICH8R, using Win7 32Bit and a 32GB UD ME.

Results [MB/s]: [ compare to: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/16848/8 ]

CREATE

INS: 153.6
ISO: 106.6
MP3: 114.8
PROG: 73.5
WIN: 70.7

READ:

INS: 136.9
ISO: 157.8
MP3: 143.5
PROG: 117.2
WIN: 94.5

COPY:

INS: 66.4
ISO: 53.7
MP3: 55.7
PROG: 36.3
WIN: 33.21

I know that I have a better machine than you used in the tests. But it's easy to see that there is some compatibility issue. I even used a 32GB Version with much lower write.

Don't intend to critize you in any way - maybe the indilinx ssds DO suck with older machines, I have no idea :)

I found this review very interesting!

I own a pretty good laptop and my HD is the bottleneck... then I've heard about SSDs.
Basically, there are four things I expect to get with an SSD:
1. I can move my laptop safely it even when it's on.
2. Far better performance than my Scorpio Black.
3. Capacity of, at least, 120Gb.
4. Runs out of the box and doesn't make me waste my time afterwards - when I pay for something I expect it to work.

So, after reading this particular review (and comments) and finding a very strange world of SSD brands and fans, I finally figure what SSD I'm going to buy - making a good and safe upgrade for a reasonable price.

Again, thanks for this great review! Thumbs up!

Although we're still conducting further testing, I have some preliminary results to share. We wiped the Vertex, flashed it with the latest 1370 firmware, and ran it through the full test suite again. On our test system, the drive's performance with this latest firmware rev is identical to that of the 1275 firmware revision used initially.

Testing continues, and we should have more results to share soon.

Your analogy is good jackaroon, however, what happened here by not updating the fw to the most rescent, and by not using the trim tool available, they took this jeep out in the forest, with the 4 wheel drive turned off (Trim), and a defective engine (FW).

Then they comapre this to a Lamborghini driving down the highway(intel).

Funny, the jeep lost in all the speed tests, wonder if it was the trees, or the mud lol

Wow changing the page from thread to flat, is like night and day. So much easier to follow what is going on in here. I apologize if i took anything out of context here, because of the way i was reading it.

The bottom line here, is their is something wrong somewere with the the results, and it is not an easy thing to find, thats why mostly enthuiasts are going the SSD route so far. The hardware supplied by most manufacturers in the case of sata hardware drivers is a big issue. Whenthe trim tool first came out, most with Vista 64 on running trim would lose their OS it would become corrupt on reboot. This has been solved, and seems to have been related to sata drivers and setups.

The way it stands now, SSD's overall work very well with updated drivers and operating systems. In XP the drives need to be aligned properly, or the drive does not function properly. In Vista and Win7, the system alligns the drive properly on set up, and with Win7 it turns off defraging on the SSD, and a few other little built in tweaks. So if you had of been installing on either of thoses Os's the chance of problems would have been minimul, there is always going to be some people that are going to have difficulties making these work properly, but thats the way new technology is.

Indilinx came out of nowere, and with a controller that blew away the jmicron, also with a 64 meg cache built in to help with the flow of data and basically kill the stutering issue most drives were facing.

Any software on the internet you can find that can report the size of the cache will report 32Meg, and not 64Meg, why is that? it is because the software is not designed for SSD's, plain and simple. Most benchmarks are no good for SSD's, why is this? because they are looking at mechanical hard drives, they were designed for mechanical hard drives.

Read Anandtechs report on ssd's, and you will all understand, in fact any other review you will read out there states at the beginning of the benches, that the software they are using wasnt made for an SSD, and that a few programs, will actually give us close results. They also have developed different ways to bench the drives to get more realistic real world results.

I think that Techreport is a trusted and respected review site, and i will continue reading the articles here. I just beleive that they messed this one up somehow, and wait patiently for them to report to us that they found what was causing these issues to get such bad results on the only other SSD's recomended by all other reviewers out there besides the intel.

Intel is the best drive out there right now, theres no doubt about that, i mean seriously, look at the resources they have. The little guys like OCZ and Corsiar, etc. do not have those resources, and as such take a little longer to get things right, but what they do have is support from their users in reporting problems, and then acting on them for solutions. This is new technology, and as such thier will be growings pains, theres no doubt about that at all. The results here though point to something much bigger than that though, and the Vertex should have shined here, like they always do.

Guys,

I appreciate the feedback most of you have given us on this review. Let me address a few of the issues.

Looking over it, I don't think most or all of our results are way off or somehow completely wrong. But it does appear that, in our test config, the Indilinx-based drives exhibited some of the same performance problems that they have demonstrated elsewhere. In other configs, those issues were largely resolved by the 1275 firmware revision. I believe the OCZ Vertex drive we tested came to us with the 1275 firmware rev onboard, which we used for testing. It would seem this firmware rev still exhibits performance problems in our test config.

Obviously, Indilinx and its partners are new players in the storage industry and almost certainly lack the robust validation testing that the bigger firms have. The fact that such problems are present in shipping products comes as little surprise. What's funny is how some folks are so upset with us for running into this problem. We do need to get things right, of course, but at the end of the day, our presumption for a consumer product is that it *ought* to work right. If it does not, the company that makes it needs to fix the problem.

Many of the folks coming in here from vendor sites have turned that presumption on its head, which is in no way good for consumers. One pauses to consider how strange the fanboy phenomenon really is.

That's not to say we shouldn't get things right. We absolutely should have been conversant in the Indilinx firmware issues, and we should have documented SSD firms revs up front.

We also should have considered using another test platform. We have stuck with our existing, stable testbed over time because it allows us to do direct cross-comparisons with many, many drives, and because the SATA 3Gbps spec hasn't really changed since its ICH was produced. Obviously, we're still seeing much higher performance out of faster drives (Intel X25-E, for instance) with this testbed, so it still serves its purpose in a basic way just fine. We had hoped to hold out with this setup until Windows 7 and SATA 6Gbps were widely available. Given that this review had almost exclusively new results for recent products, though, going with a newer testbed here might have been a better choice.

That doesn't mean, I must add, that the Indilinx drives have no need to work well with WinXP and/or this storage controller. Those products ought to perform well with such a config, and the fact they do not is a problem to be addressed by Indilinx and its partners.

I've asked Geoff to take several steps to look into these issues on our end. The first is to add SSD firmware revisions to the Testing Methods section of the review. He's collecting that data and should have it posted later today. Also, testing of the 1370 firmware on the Super Talent drive is already underway. I've also asked him to work with OCZ on finding a resolution to this problem, within limits. Testing just one drive config takes many hours in our test suite, and there are no shortcuts when the empty/full state of SSD has a bearing on performance. With luck and some effort on the part of the drive makers, perhaps we can document a fix.

For now, though, I would caution users that the problems we encountered were real. Our evaluation of the product as tested stands. You may not run into these problems in our own system--but you might. I'd consider that possibility seriously before buying an SSD based on this type of disk controller.

Edit:
Geoff, why are you testing $700 cutting-edge hardware on an obsolete machine?
_________________________________________

Having used a 128GB version of the Samsung drive for several weeks now on W7, I'm noticing general performance that seems to completely contradict what I see in all these benchmarks.

From glancing at the numbers, it would seem that the difference in wait times when performing tasks on an SSD versus a mechanical drive aren't massively different.

In practice, I'm comparing the 128MB SSD to an Adaptec U320 Raid card with a couple of striped 15K 74GB disks. HDTune would show access times of around 9ms for the array and read throughput averaging around 130MB/s

I've noticed marginal benefits to heavy "load from disk operations" such as WoW level-load times and opening large files in apps, but what these graphs show no indication of at all is the single most important gain when using an SSD: Snappiness!

Right-click menus, instant.
File properties, instant.
Horrific performance loss as windows loads services in the background after a reboot, gone.
Annoying disk thrashing as two different apps try to stream off the same disk simultaneously? Nonexistant.

The only times you ever notice disk-performance bottlenecks are exactly when SSD drives shine. None of that seems to be reflected in the benchmarks or given much of a mention here, and I'm wondering why not. Sure, single benchmark tests in a clean environment with all other factors removed makes SSD's look marginally better than mechanicals, but the minute you put SSD's into real, everyday desktop use, the feeling of zippiness makes them feel twenty times faster than their mechanical brethren.

There needs to be a new tests written for SSD's SPECIFICALLY for us 'high end geek users"

I need to see tests which stress what bugs me about a HDD and what's mentioned by Chrispy_

When my PC has re-booted, when I click on firefox, vuze (azureus), digsby and Windows media centre, how long until all of them are finished loading?

We need to stress the exact moments when a HDD annoys us, because it's extremely rare that sequential read and writes are what bothers me.

What a bout a disk to disk file extraction (same drive) etc.

I would like to see if the cries of "old hardware" stand up.

BTW, to those of you viewing this as "Thread" instead of "Flat", I can tell. Many of you haven't bothered to read the entire 175+ post. Many posting with arguements that have already been addressed.

It's much easier to read them ALL in "Flat" format and avoid some of the repetition even though it's not the default.

Jason

Quote from another site:

"It is possible that Techreport connected all SSD's as single nonmember on the Raid ICH controller. If they did, they might run into the slowboot error where the Raid Bios Rom version causes iastor timeouts, and boots very slowly, on any OS.
This error happens on ICH9R or earlier controllers on sertain SSD's, and can be fixed by updating the Raid Bios Rom.

Another Quote:

"7.5.0.1017 was the one giving me problems, and the only way to fix it for me was to modd the mainboard bios and remove the 7.5.0.1017 and add the newer one. My Raid bios now posts as a ICH10R with some new features, but they are completely compatible, and every utility shows the controller as a ICH9R. Just horrible that no official updated Raid Rom has been posted for all ICH9R boards, considering the problems and errors this 7.5.0.1017 Rom is producing...

No iastor timeouts, and going from 40+ seconds boot to 9.36 seconds after the Raid Rom change. It was a relief to find out that my suspicions was spot on, and I suspect there are alot of issues out there caused by this or earlier Raid bioses with newer disks, and users desperately trying to fix them... "

Last quote:

"Over at hardware.no we have a 153 page thread with 3100 posts and 91000 views, and a 33 page Vertex only thread, and I can assure you that this review was quickly dissmissed as a pretty bad one, with some results being proven as just plain wrong. I'm sure most, if not all, SSD tech threads will do the same. The SSD specific forums around the world get loads of posts from users in doubt whether to go for SSD or a mechanical drive (happens almost every day in our threads), and the main characters in those threads will sell more SSD's for you and others alike then reviews like this can move them away from SSD tech.

Do not loose any sleep over this review, the word about it's relevance and quality is already out everywhere, not only here, in fact it was dead and burried in our threads before it was even discussed here in your forums."

There is a new FW at ocz coming in the next few days to support the trim that is already built into Win7, this will do it at deletion time, taking a little longer, but not hurting you in the write times. So basically it should be unoticable. With the brute force Trim, it takes maybe 15 to 20 seconds, depending on how long you go before you use it. Most SSD drives that use mlc, limit the size of the drive to 120 gig leaving 20 gig untouched for the wear leveling mechanism to use. I run it manually maybe once a week, depending if ive had a lot of activity on the drive, downloading or what not. The other important thing about SSD's is that its a good ideal to move small writes of the disk, thats why we tweak them the way we do, IE, Firefox, programs like that, have a lot of small writes. Most people using XP, have 4 gig of ram, and as such, the system only sees 3 gig, freeing up 1 gig to play around with a cache file that writes to the HD on closing down, and reloading at startup. remember these operations go fast, its an SSD. Like superfetch and prefefetch, File indexing, why use these services, which take a lot of cpu cycles, when the drive is so fast at searching. This is why we tweak, longer life for the drive, better wear leveling, and better overall performance.

Even if you didnt run trim, most of these drive with the newer versions of FW will still be a hella lot faster than a regular HD in random read/writes. So even once it bogs down, which will never happen once all manufacturers allow native trim in windows 7.

When this happens,no more user inmtervention, wont be needed, in win7 by default it turns off defrag when it detects an SSD, along with a few other services that are not good for the drive. Soon we will be in a true plug and play SSD world :)

This is just one of many reviews, but it just came out, again, the performance is hugely different then what weve seen here. yes they are clean drives, but the difference is the vertex can be trimmed, and you will stay at that lvl a long time.

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/editorial/article.asp?Article=arti...

Every SSD out on the market today has all the same issues basically, at least any MLC nand based. Yes even the Intel, before the last FW the famous Intel drive was brought to its knees by another review site. They had found a problem that no one knew about.

Yes, the first series of drives from all manufacturers sucked, however, they didnt all have Intel backing them. Again, that does not make these drives any less better than a normal HD, the stutering was due to not enough cache onboard, problem easily solved by a few tweaks. I think somehow, Intel figured out how to force a trim on the delete command in their FW, who knows. Maybe this is why their write times arent as good as other SSD's. There is a price to pay somewere. The bottom line is, how is it performing for you? I like instant IE, instant Word, intsant everything. I like being able to search for a file with indexing turned off, and it takes seconds to search the whole drive. I like to be able to run 12 programs, all at light speed, without trashing the HD.

The major point here, is that all SSD's will be awsome in a few months, because windows 7 is supporting it. Bottom line has always been, will the operating systems come around and be SSD freindly. yes Win7 is already, now the manufacturers have to implement it. Just like the raid card companies have to modify their drivers to allow raid trimming, another story alltogether lol.

Like i said, for now, yes, a little more work to have a kick ass SSD, but soon, it will do it on its own, with no user intervention. Thats when the other SSD manufacturers will shine even brighter, and bring the Big Blue machine to reasonable prices again.

The reason i stated that, is because there is so much information out there about SSD's now. You are right about one thing, yes i think this is a legit review, based on an old system, and favoring Intel all the way.

The sadest thing is reading all the comments that say, great article, and good job, blah blah blah.

I think its very sad to misslead people like this, because that is what this is. It is missleading, and if i was an average consumer, i would come away from this saying, wow, only Intel does a good job, the rest suck bad.

Yes i am mad, because you are saying my SSD sucks, and i beg to differ, it rocks! If anybody wants to see real benchmarks on a Vertex 120 with the proper firmware updated like the intel drive was updated, and after filling the drive 3 times, i will run a trim, and run the benches again.

What is the sense of me buying a $600 video card to put into a p3 system? Would i not be an idiot for doing this? This is what this article did.

Funny, you test on a Pentium 4 and ICH7 and everybody here wonders why the results are so different from other sites? On top of that, reviewer, you clearly have no idea what characteristics of SSDs make them faster than mechanical drives. I make no exaggerations when I assert that this is the single worst SSD review I've ever read. I'm no fanboy, I own a Vertex, but I'm just as shocked at the poor treatment you gave the Kingston (X-25M). Ever consider that when your review goes in direct opposition to every other review on the internet maybe, just maybe, you suck at your job?

People, go read Anandtech's SSD article, and ignore this pile of rubbish.

Im guessing the last few posters do not get on the internet much.

The defensive nature of Damage's reply is shocking to me. :(

Perhaps it's not the hardware platform that's causing these ambiguities, but rather the chipset and/or RAID/AHCI driver versions. The versions used in this review seem very old now - try the latest versions on the same hardware and see if the performance improves.

I have to say. This is the first review on TR where I think something is VERY wrong with the results. There are far too many reviews of the OCZ Vertex out there that do not correlate in the least with what Geoff has posted.

I don't not own a Vertex but when the drive was reviewed by Anand I was interested in it. I have read many reviews. The data simply doesnt make sense.

My other question would be where is, and maybe I missed it, the Random write speed test. (kind of important)

Nah, I view this thread in "flat" view. It's an option afterall. I'm sorry if I've hurt anyones feelings.

Jason

#131, don't be such a TR fanboy. LOL

If you're in the market for an SSD and it cost more than your computer is worth, don't bother upgrading. Ok, thanks TR for that valuable information.

I understand reviewing on a stable system, but 4 years old? That system could have been upgraded with spare parts from my closet and still been stable.

I can't help but comment on Damage's post #83. I had already mentioned that I considered the review unprofessionally done but by slipping in that thing about "the fanboy phenomenon" which wasn't necessary info, the unprofessionalism went to a whole different level. Well done. So much for Damage (control).

Jason