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About LinkBacksRead more.OCZ's popular line of Vertex 2 SSDs are now available in a 25nm flavour, but are consumers no longer getting what they paid for?
Read more.OCZ's popular line of Vertex 2 SSDs are now available in a 25nm flavour, but are consumers no longer getting what they paid for?
Dear oh dear. How hard would it have been to call the drives something different? They're seriously going to the hassle of (presumably) paying customers' postage to return inferior drives to them so they can buy the right ones? Instead of letting them buy the ones they want in the first place?
ROLL UP ROLLUP, Buy our new, cheaper, faster, more reliable drives.
Oh wait, there no cheaper, slightly slower, and a smaller capacity to make them reliable.
scaryjim (16-02-2011)
errrrrr..... no. They're suggesting customers can pay to go to a drive with the same number of flash chips as the old 35nm drives. That's what I understand from the link in the article.Originally Posted by miniyazz
They still don't seem to be getting why people are upset at the change in the model specs without telling people. e.g. (http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...OCZ-SSD-drives):
I get his point that the capacity of the flash chips are the same, but suggesting the missing usable capacity is still being used for the over-provisioning and so is not lost seem a bit misleading to me.
And yes, we're not talking huge amounts of space here. But when you've bought a 40 or 60GB drive as a boot disc, a few GB here or there can actually make a difference!
As for performance difference, even with the exchange program they apparently still can't give a formal answer:
As I read that, they're waiting for customers to start posting benchmark results with the replacement drives??
Which SSD is better out the following 2?
OCZ Vertex 2
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/80gb-...rce-controller
Corsair Force
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/90gb-...-write-275mb-s
"Famous like a drug that I've taken too much of. But I never ever trip, just peace, happiness, and love."
The corsair. 32nm doesn't need the same over provisioning so they've enabled you to make more use of the capacity.
But less for your money - the capacity is 12.5% greater (if the stated capacities are to be believed, which I am not confident on) but the price is 13% greater. Plus I see no mention of 25nm flash in that drive. I'd be concerned that Corsair have simply been less diligent in their reservation of cells for longevity, meaning a significantly shorter lifespan than the OCZ, and so given the price difference would choose the OCZ from those two options unless I was desperate for the extra space.
Note that the model number stated on the web page is OCZSSD2-2VTX80G, whereas OCZ have described on the link provided by GaryRW that the 25nm flash drives have model numbers consistent with the OCZSSD2‐2VTXE60G naming format, implying that the drives sold by Scan are the original 34nm drives.
errrrrr..... no. They're suggesting customers can pay to go to a drive with the same number of flash chips as the old 35nm drives. That's what I understand from the link in the article.
They still don't seem to be getting why people are upset at the change in the model specs without telling people. e.g. (http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...OCZ-SSD-drives):
I get his point that the capacity of the flash chips are the same, but suggesting the missing usable capacity is still being used for the over-provisioning and so is not lost seem a bit misleading to me.
And yes, we're not talking huge amounts of space here. But when you've bought a 40 or 60GB drive as a boot disc, a few GB here or there can actually make a difference!
As for performance difference, even with the exchange program they apparently still can't give a formal answer:
As I read that, they're waiting for customers to start posting benchmark results with the replacement drives??
It looks like customers are advised that they can return the 25nm drives and pay the difference in NAND flash at manufacturer pricing to 'upgrade' to the older 34nm drives ($10). It's just not entirely clear what's been happening to the pricing. They seem to say that they switched to 25nm flash for cost benefits, which is fair enough, but all those benefits seem to have stayed with them - apparently the price of their SSDs didn't change as 25nm flash was introduced, but the cost of the 34nm flash drives, where still sold, went up. So technically people (unknowingly) bought an inferior product from the one they thought they were buying, at a cheaper price than the one they thought they were buying is sold at.
I'm not defending OCZ's actions here as it seems ridiculous that they institute a change which may result in not only a drop in speeds but also in usable capacity, without describing it as a new product, and then get surprised when consumers get upset. But IMO their (now) policy of upgrading users to the original drives for the cost of the extra flash is partially defendable, since had the consumers bought the drives they intended to, it would have cost them more money. But they should also be offering full refunds including postage, because it's just deceptive, and not everyone would have bought the drives at the higher price.
Another issue is that for certain RAID purposes both drives ideally need to be the same capacity - users buying the same model drive should expect this to be the case but it is not.
Speed difference figures: http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_ver...czssd22vtxe60g
Real world tests don't show much of a difference, but the synthetics do, and quite extreme in cases e.g. the queue depth tests.
That's not how I understand it. I'm sure I saw them clarify somewhere that they were not offering old 32nm drives, but 25nm drives configures with smaller capacity flash chips but more of the flash chips to reach the same total capacity. Probably not explaining this well, but that would mean all the controller channels would be used as it was e.g. 16 x 4GB chips rather than 8 x 8 GB chips. The link above explains this better and they've even cracked a new drive open to show the empty spaces on the PCB. Anyway, the replacement drive would still be 25nm flash chips though, just configured differently.
That would sort the capacity issue as apparently the drive is set up to use a whole flash chip as over provisioning (or something like that anyway). If the capacity of each individual flash chip doubled, so did the capacity of the one chip used for over-provisioning. It may well sort the speed issue out as well, as all the controller channels would be used. What concerns me is that the 25nm stuff wears out quicker so you do actually need better over-provisioning. I'm not sure I've seen them tackle that when putting forward this replacement "offer"
Anyway, the OCZ reps were saying that over the space of 4 weeks, the price they had to pay for 32nm flash had rocketed well above what it used to be as manufacturing capacity of 32nm was ramping down. They said customers just wouldn't want to pay that much of a difference, hence the offer is to provide a drive with more, but lower capacity 25nm chips.
If the flash market changed that rapidly, I can feel some sympathy for them, but how many SKU's how OCZ thrown out over the last few years?? They couldn't have made this a new model? Or if the 25nm is so much cheaper, couldn't they swallow the $10 they're now saying is what it costs to use twice the number of (smaller) flash chips?
Anyway, there's probably more than enough people having a go at them, so I'll stop now.
Lol
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