Vertex 3 - The Sata 6GBs problem

[TheodanUK]

I really do want to buy a Vertex 3 but no matter how much I read.. the only way to ensure full performance from this drive is to buy a new P67 or Z68 motherboard and use the onboard Sata 6GBPS ports.

There are numerous PCI-E SATA3 6gb cards available, but they all use the rubbish marvel controller board and do not provide the required hardware to obtain max speed from the Vertex3.

It is amazing that this seems to be the case but if anyone can tell me otherwise I would love to here from them as I do not fancey spending £700 on a new motherboard, cpu, ram and SSD.

[Terbinator]

Pretty much although you would be hard pressed to notice the performance loss IMO. On the other hand, you could get a PCI-e SSD?

[gmwal]

you have hit the nail on the head. I have a gigabyte x58a ud3r mobo that uses the marvel 9128 controller and i returned two vertex 3's b/c they do not work on that controller. set up a raid 0, got speeds comparable to a single sata 2 drive. Need to get a new mobo or get a solid pci expess card like an ozc revo drive if you want to run a vertex 3 and you have the marvel controller on board.

[TheodanUK]

Thanks for the feedback chaps..

I have been looking at the OCZ Revodrives since reading these message, as I also have the same motherboard (EX58-UD3R)...

Scan appears to have just taken off the OCZ 120 Revodrive 35nm from a stock item and are now only selling the OCZ 110 Revodrive2 25nm.. which I am reading too many worrying comments about them being faulty and not as good performance as the 35nm ones.....

Alternatively, the Revodrive3 looks amazing (975MB/s read /875MB/s write) but it is really expensive....

So either a £200 Revodrive2 (if problems no longer exist), £300 revodrive 3.. or a £700 upgrade (motherboard, cpu, ram, Vertex3) .. I dont think apart from the Vertex 3 the £700 upgrade is good value.. going from Core i7 to Core i7 sandybridge is hardly going to make much difference to me I do not think.

[ik9000]

and there's another problem with the vertex 3 - and other sandforce SSDs. Random BSODs on certain motherboards for reasons yet to be determined. You can read all about it here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4604/t...sds-compared/2

[TheodanUK]

Well .. I took the plunge and decided to go for the Revodrive 3 PCI-E solution....

I will let you know how it pans out if anyone is interested?

[Terbinator]

Yeah. It would be nice to hear what boot speeds you get and such.

[TheodanUK]

Well, I purchased the OCZ Revodrive 3 (120gb) and fitted it this evening.. installing a fresh windows 7 (64-bit) pro onto it..

the results are rubbish and I am totally devestated in this product.. if I can return it I will as it is not fit for the purpose .... it states.. Read 975MB/s, Write 875MB/s, 120K IOPS

My results are nothing like that.. I have spent hours checking forums for things I could have done wrong but nothing seems to be an issue. I have used a PCI-E x16 and PCI-E x4 slot to no avail (both v2.0).

My results with latest AS SSD benchmark are;
Seq 335.85 / 134.61
4k 21.23 / 62.55
4k-64Thrd 119.30 / 131.41
Acc.time 0.091 ms / 0.249ms
Score 174 / 207
Overall 469.

A complete waste of money and effort.........

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well, I purchased the OCZ Revodrive 3 (120gb) and fitted it this evening.. installing a fresh windows 7 (64-bit) pro onto it..

the results are rubbish and I am totally devestated in this product.. if I can return it I will as it is not fit for the purpose .... it states.. Read 975MB/s, Write 875MB/s, 120K IOPS

My results are nothing like that.. I have spent hours checking forums for things I could have done wrong but nothing seems to be an issue. I have used a PCI-E x16 and PCI-E x4 slot to no avail (both v2.0).

My results with latest AS SSD benchmark are;
Seq 335.85 / 134.61
4k 21.23 / 62.55
4k-64Thrd 119.30 / 131.41
Acc.time 0.091 ms / 0.249ms
Score 174 / 207
Overall 469.

A complete waste of money and effort.........

Have you tried contacting OCZ about this??

I know that non-SandForce SSDs are not the vogue on Hexus ATM but have you considered the Intel 510 series:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/250gb...plus-free-game

The Intel SSDs are the most reliable and tend to be closest to their advertised performance figures. There is also the Crucial M4 which is also relatively bug free ATM:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/cruci...-write-260mb-s

[TheodanUK]

Update..

I may have been a bit hasty in my verdict on this drive now....... I read more on the OCZ forum and there are some really helpful chaps on there.. it appears that AS SSD benchmark does not return true figures for the Revodrive 3 and they recommend using ATTO benchmark software

Running this ATTO benchmark test I am getting crazy speeds of 975read / 825 write at 8192k block size... everything over 64k block size is also over 600 read and write..

I dont know what to think now.. the boot up time of the machine is still not impressive so I need to test some real world games and apps to get a fair opinion now...

Very confused by these massive differences in results the bench marking apps provide.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Update..

I may have been a bit hasty in my verdict on this drive now....... I read more on the OCZ forum and there are some really helpful chaps on there.. it appears that AS SSD benchmark does not return true figures for the Revodrive 3 and they recommend using ATTO benchmark software

Running this ATTO benchmark test I am getting crazy speeds of 975read / 825 write at 8192k block size... everything over 64k block size is also over 600 read and write..

I dont know what to think now.. the boot up time of the machine is still not impressive so I need to test some real world games and apps to get a fair opinion now...

Very confused by these massive differences in results the bench marking apps provide.

How long does you system take to boot up??

Hexus does seem to get much higher scores for AS-SSD with the OCZ RevoDrive 120GB:

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=27607&page=5

[kalniel]

Update..

I may have been a bit hasty in my verdict on this drive now....... I read more on the OCZ forum and there are some really helpful chaps on there.. it appears that AS SSD benchmark does not return true figures for the Revodrive 3 and they recommend using ATTO benchmark software

Running this ATTO benchmark test I am getting crazy speeds of 975read / 825 write at 8192k block size... everything over 64k block size is also over 600 read and write..

I dont know what to think now.. the boot up time of the machine is still not impressive so I need to test some real world games and apps to get a fair opinion now...

Very confused by these massive differences in results the bench marking apps provide.

AS SSD is the compressed benchmark isn't it? So it's the worst case scenario for sandforce controller. ATTO is the best case. You'll fall somewhere in the middle depending on your workload. Windows stuff will be nearer the best case, h.264 and jpeg handling will be nearer the worst case.

I bought my X58 based system with PCI-E based SSDs in mind.. just haven't been able to justify the cost yet

But don't buy an SSD for boot times - the proportion of stuff during boot that they can speed up is actually quite small - so much time is waiting for the BIOS or device initialisation/ACHI controllers.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The OP is getting lower speeds for their SSD in the AS-SSD benchmark than reported in this review :

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1370/5/

The scores they are getting are between 10% to 30% slower.

However,with this review at least the scores for sequential read and write look consistent with TRIM enabled:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/sto...review-120gb/3

I suspect the other reviews do not have TRIM enabled.

[ik9000]

it's not something to do with alignment and the size of blocks selected is it?

[TheodanUK]

it's not something to do with alignment and the size of blocks selected is it?

I would hope not, specifically as the install advice from OCZ indicates that you should not format the drive at all if you are installing it as the boot device.