Vertex 4 - mini review

10.5.0.1007

Motherboard = MSI Z68A-GD55 (G3)
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z68A-GD55--G3-.html

Motherboard BIOS and drivers updated last night.
Clean install of Windows 7 64-bit today.
Ran Windows Experience Index, disabled hibernate/sleep, disabled indexing.

Your version is the 256 though, mine is only 128GB.
Anyone know why the write speeds on the 128 are lower than the larger Vertex 4's?
 
e8q43m.png


I'm well happy with my Vertex 4 drive !
 
ShakeNBake said:
10.5.0.1007

Motherboard = MSI Z68A-GD55 (G3)
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z68A-GD55--G3-.html

Motherboard BIOS and drivers updated last night.
Clean install of Windows 7 64-bit today.
Ran Windows Experience Index, disabled hibernate/sleep, disabled indexing.

Your version is the 256 though, mine is only 128GB.
Anyone know why the write speeds on the 128 are lower than the larger Vertex 4's?
Click to expand...

Thanks for that :)

I've got both a 128GB and a 256GB. Maybe the difference is because you've got a new Windows install (mines been around a year+ and was restored by Acronis TI onto the Vertex 4)? Not too worried, was interested more than anything.

The bigger capacity drives always seem to be slightly quicker. To quote one article:

"It's no secret that larger capacity SSDs are faster than the smaller capacity drives. The way data travels can be similar to a highway system, the more lanes a highway has the more cars you can push through at the same time. If SSDs only read and wrote on a one lane highway then we would be limited to less than 200MB/s on the highest rated flash available today. By opening up several lanes drives are able to reach very high speeds and do so without the limits of moving parts." .. clear as mud then ;)
 
Ok I decided to do a few tests just to show the difference from one to the other, tried rebooting, defragging drive & reg, cleaning system files & reg etc then rebooting after each time I done each test.

The 256GB Vertex 4 driver I am using is 11.2.0.1006, I tried the more recent one than that thats litrally just out but it just blue screened, so I just went back to the one I am using.

Strange how the readings fluctuate so much in some tests, but there again, maybe thats normal, I dont know, this is the first SSD ive had.

Even though its a 256GB drive, the capacity is 238GB and I have 195GB free, meaning I have used about 43GB so far.

I would be interested to know if you guys done your tests on a bare drive or a fully loaded one or what please ?

Would also like to know if it is much better to keep as much things as possible (even the SSD BENCH programmes) saved/installed onto a backup drive like I have (old 1TB mechanical sata drive) and have the shortcuts on the desktop ?

Hope some of you can answer my questions please, and now here are the test results, please tell me they are fine or I will go bananas, :mad: ;) lol.

p.s
intel speedstep enabled & C state disabled in bios.

CDM1.png

CDM2.png

CDM3.png

atto1.png

atto2.png

atto3.png

ASSSD.png
 
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scotslad

Speedtest look fine to me. No two tests even on the same machine will produce identical results.

Though I would be wary about running so many speed tests, else "your drive slowing down" becomes a self fore filling prophecy! (due to write amplification and the firmware trying to protect your drive) !!! The tests you've run above, especially the CDM ones with 1000MB file size alone, have written countless gigabytes to your drive!!!

Your statement " tried rebooting, defragging drive & reg, cleaning system files & reg etc then rebooting after each time I done each test." worries me somewhat as well. As defragging an SSD is pretty much considered as a no-no. Unless you have some SSD friendly de-frag tool!? Again due to write amplification (GOOGLE or the OCZ SSD FAQ can explain if interested).

As to what to store where, everyone pretty much has their own ideas here. But I tend (besides the OS obviously) to keep most of my serious software that will benefit from the extra speed on the SSD and re-direct everything else elsewhere (IE. Music, Pictures, documents and games etc.). Though in my case I have three SSD's in my PC and 2 external 1TB drives.

My testing was done on an empty drive. As I basically wanted to check that speeds were as advertised (use ATTO for this), no reason they would not be I suppose, but paranoid I am. All SSD's to a certain extent will start to slow up as the fill up.

From your statement "The 256GB Vertex 4 driver I am using is 11.2.0.1006" I'm assuming you are running the Intel RST version 11 drivers. Now I know that some folks have no problems with these. But as you've discovered yourself, the latest versions don't suit your board. These drivers are specifically targeted at Intel motherboards and it's not guaranteed that they will either work, or work well, with other motherboards. Though some have found that they are fine. You might be better running the latest version recommended by your motherboard manufacturer. Obviously a personal choice here.

PS. The fact that your SSD has not slowed up too significantly is a testimony to the fact that it looks like OCZ have got a good hold on the write amplification issue on this drive. If this had been a Sandforce based drive, you might well have slowed it up to the point that no amount of TRIMing / Garbage Collection would have recovered the speed!

PPS. AnandTech has a very good article explaining all about Write amplification:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/4
 
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you defo do not want to be running that many benchmarks on an SSD ;)

57.
Advice on using Benchmarks is as follows:
Do not use AS_SSD (writes between 3-5 GiB) on default settings.
Do not use CDM (writes between 15-19 GiB) on default settings.
Do not use AS_SSD and CDM together in the same Logged On session.
Do not run FF pattern on ATTO. Default settings are ok.
Run IOmeter with 4KiB 'sector' alignment. Do not run it to fill the drive.
Do not use 'Full' Benchmarks more than once in the same Logged On session.
Do not use any Benchmark (compressible data) more than once a week.
Do not use any Benchmark (un-compressible data) more than once a month.
Do not run Random patterns straight after Sequential or vice versa.
Best to run individual tests with small file sizes and not full suite default.


from:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...BC-for-OCZ-SSD&p=567574&viewfull=1#post567574
 
mikeo said:
scotslad

Speedtest look fine to me. No two tests even on the same machine will produce identical results.

Though I would be wary about running so many speed tests, else "your drive slowing down" becomes a self fore filling prophecy! (due to write amplification and the firmware trying to protect your drive) !!! The tests you've run above, especially the CDM ones with 1000MB file size alone, have written countless gigabytes to your drive!!!

Your statement " tried rebooting, defragging drive & reg, cleaning system files & reg etc then rebooting after each time I done each test." worries me somewhat as well. As defragging an SSD is pretty much considered as a no-no. Unless you have some SSD friendly de-frag tool!? Again due to write amplification (GOOGLE or the OCZ SSD FAQ can explain if interested).

As to what to store where, everyone pretty much has their own ideas here. But I tend (besides the OS obviously) to keep most of my serious software that will benefit from the extra speed on the SSD and re-direct everything else elsewhere (IE. Music, Pictures, documents and games etc.). Though in my case I have three SSD's in my PC and 2 external 1TB drives.

My testing was done on an empty drive. As I basically wanted to check that speeds were as advertised (use ATTO for this), no reason they would not be I suppose, but paranoid I am. All SSD's to a certain extent will start to slow up as the fill up.

From your statement "The 256GB Vertex 4 driver I am using is 11.2.0.1006" I'm assuming you are running the Intel RST version 11 drivers. Now I know that some folks have no problems with these. But as you've discovered yourself, the latest versions don't suit your board. These drivers are specifically targeted at Intel motherboards and it's not guaranteed that they will either work, or work well, with other motherboards. Though some have found that they are fine. You might be better running the latest version recommended by your motherboard manufacturer. Obviously a personal choice here.

PS. The fact that your SSD has not slowed up too significantly is a testimony to the fact that it looks like OCZ have got a good hold on the write amplification issue on this drive. If this had been a Sandforce based drive, you might well have slowed it up to the point that no amount of TRIMing / Garbage Collection would have recovered the speed!

PPS. AnandTech has a very good article explaining all about Write amplification:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/4
Click to expand...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks as usual Mikeo and also shakeNbake :)

Tell me first please, surely you guys arent telling me cause I have defragged my SSD that I have effectively cut a chunk off its life ?

I know it comes with a 5 year warranty but still, I honestly didnt think defragging as much as I did, maybe errrm, guessing 10 times, surely that wouldnt have dont any permanent damage man, if so, I wish someone would have mentioned this very very strongly to me before now as its too late now :( .

Also, are youz saying too I have screwed my drive just by doing the benchmark test too ??
I mean, I ran some more than the ones I posted, maybe about 10, not exactly sure :(

Mikeo, I didnt get that "11.2.0.1006" from intel or asus, it was from that site that guy posted earlier on your thread mate ( http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel raid.htm ).

However, since then I have now got the correct one from the asus website and I am now using that, thats version 11.1.0.1006 incase your wondering ;)

Now I have the new proper driver I am choking to run another couple of ATTO tests to see if its any faster now, lol, should I just not bother with that incase I will cause damage the drive etc ?

Another thing mikeo, what was this you mentioned earlier in the thread "you done a Secure Erase done between each test." ?
Was/is that only possible when the disk is running bare, yea ?
If not please tell me what you mean mate eh ?

I noticed you said that your drive was bare when doing the tests so maybe thats why you got better results, I dunno, probably, eh ?

One last thing, about installing things on the SSD or on backup old style mechanical sata's and having a shortcut to them on the SSD.
Whats your feelings on this honestly ?
Do you feel that things like any type of benchmarking program for any components etc should defo be installed on the SSD ?
What about a game, lets for example say FIFA 12 and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier.
Do you feel that if they are installed to the old style sata mechanical drive with a shortcut on the SSD that they will run 100% perfect or do you feel that you may lose a vital second in the middle of an offline or online game that could infact cost you to lose the game, I have no clue about this myself as I havent even got round to installing a game yet with all the messing about with drivers etc, lol :(

Sorry for all the questions but the only way to learn is to ask isnt it ;)

Cheers guys ;)
 
To add to the last message,

ooops, sorry, should have added another question.

while I was in the asus sata driver section, there was 4 drivers that were available for me to use, but there was one called (ISCT) intel smart connect technology 2.1.

But no way will it install, I just get an error saying - unsupported hardware.

This is what it is > http://m.intel.com/content/intel-us/en/technology/smart-connect.touch.html

Any ideas why that wont install ? i would have thought any driver for my board on the asus site would install, seemingly not with this, not unless it requires another bit of hardware or something, I dunno ?
 
scotslad

phew... a lot of questions...

I'll try and answer as best I can. Though I'm no expert, just an interested amateur like yourself. So please excuse me if someone with a more in depth understanding reads this and thinks I'm being a bit simplistic.

Question. "Tell me first please, surely you guys arent telling me cause I have defragged my SSD that I have effectively cut a chunk off its life ?"

Simple answer... unluckily yes.
Long answer... Each NAND cell can be put through a limited number of erase cycles (usually around 3,000/5,000 cycles). So in effect each time you write to a cell, you are using up part of its life! In normal day-to-day use this should not be an issue, as the firmware in the drive does something called "wear levelling" that to an extent mitigates this. So in normal use, an SSD should hopefully remain usable for it's intended life. It's a complicated issue and if interested, you need to do a bit more reading.

You said. "surely that wouldnt have dont any permanent damage man, if so, I wish someone would have mentioned this very very strongly to me before now as its too late now".

I think the OCZ FAQ that I pointed to earlier on in the thread does in fact stress this quite strongly! Though this was in reply to someone else I think.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...BC-for-OCZ-SSD&p=567574&viewfull=1#post567574

Question. "Also, are youz saying too I have screwed my drive just by doing the benchmark test too ??
I mean, I ran some more than the ones I posted, maybe about 10, not exactly sure "

Answer. I'm not sure I'd say "screwed" but you've certainly both shortened its life slightly and probably caused the firmware to throttle the performance back as well (to protect the drive). Not too sure how much of an effect it will have had but it will have had one! 10 consecutive speedtest and 10 de-frags will not have done it a power of good.

TRIM and garbage collection over time will start to recover the drive but as to whether it's had a permanent impact, I don't know enough about how the firmware works in the Vertex 4 drives. The only real way to get the drive back to "out of the box state", would be to Secure Erase the SSD and either re-install Windows and STOP running loads of speed test and DON'T de-frag your SSD (it's pointless anyway.. it's the job of the firmware in the SSD to sort out how the data's stored!!!). Or.... backup your current installation, secure Erase the SSD and then recover the backup to the SSD.

As to what a Secure Erase is, this is a command (can be done either via the OCZ toolbox, or via a bootable Linux utility that OCZ can also supply) that is sent to the firmware in the SSD that will then destructively erase the data. This is the way to effectively re-set your SSD.

As to where to store things. As I've said before, I would stick any application / utility that you think might benefit from the extra speed, on your SSD. As to games... to be totally honest, I don't think you will notice much difference, only maybe on loading times and even that appears to depend on what game and how it loads the data. I have my Steam folder (IE. games) on a separate SSD and to be honest, I can't say that I notice a BIG difference (any?). But again, on a free roaming game (EG.Stalker, Metro 2033) that loads a lot of stuff on the fly as you move around, it might make the transition from one area to another, less noticeable.

As to "Intel® Smart Connect Technology" I suspect your PC simply does not support this. Is it not meant for certain Laptops?

Got to be totally honest, a good read of the OCZ SSD FAQ is time very well spent.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/content.php?306-SSD-ABC-Guide

Have fun....

PS. No disrespect intended.... But this is in fact why I've made the comment "that SSD's are not quite as plug-and-play as mechanical HD's" a number of times over the last couple of years to people. No great issues, but I think you do need to do a little bit of re-search before buying / installing one. As you are not the first person to fall into the traps that you unluckily have.

PPS. I think it's a major testimony to the resilience of these drives, that even after all your speed test etc. that things on the face of it don't look too bad. If this had a Sandforce controller in it, I suspect it might well have looked a little sick by now!
 
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Ahh, thanks mikeo ;)

I see the secure erase thing in the ocz toolbox now, so now I know and its something I might do now that I have seemingly been messing about too much. lol.

One other thing I meant to say was, when I upgraded my firmware, I only needed to do it once to get to 1.5, not twice, so I guess i must have already had firmware 1.4.1.2 on there according to the ocz instructions :D

I dont doubt you at all or anything like that, but I find it really hard to beleive that in this day and age you could ruin a small OCZ 256GB SSD by simply running some ATTO benchmarks on it and accidentally defragging it too :confused:

And now you say I can return the drive back to its original state with a secure erase and then reinstall windows, that sounds like the drive might just not operate at full blast speed in windows if you mess with it doing like I done but then if you want it back to as good as new just do a secure erase and windows install, strange, very strange :confused:

Especially when you think of it from the point of view that everyone across the world will want to test the speed of any SSD they get, know what I mean ?

I was wanting to ask you too, what are these SSD defrag friendly programmes you say that are available, especially if they seemingly never need defragged anyway, do you know of any out of curiosity, I tried having a quick google and all I see is "you dont need to defrag an SSD", cant see any programmes for doing it even if ya wanted to :confused:

This is just my opinion on the damaging the SSD issue with bench test and defrag, I think its just hysteria, why else would they give you a 5 year warranty, lol, I wont even keep this build of pc for probably any longer than maybe 3 years, by that time sata 3 ssd's will be so cheap they will be giving them away and sata 4 or maybe even sata 5 will be all the rage, lol.;)
 
To add to my last message,

So just to double check because this would be very relieving to know, doing a new secure erase, that would turn the SSD back to its brand new state would it then ?

Be good to know that for sure as then no one needs to even worry about it, as it stands just now SSD's and thier rules and regulation are slightly worrying to me.

Hope someone can let me know, either mikeo or if hes not around then anyone that knows all about SSD's please.

Thank you.
 
scotslad

Write amplification and NAND write/erase cycles are a fact of all flash memory based products and very much SSD's. GOOGLE some of these issues, the information is all out there. Though in normal use, an SSD should easily last it's intended lifespan and work at, or close to the advertised speeds. :)

Just to clarify. You do not need and should not de-frag an SSD. It is the job of the firmware in the controller in the SSD to manage how and where it stores the data. Most applications (including de-frag utilities) and Windows itself come to that, does not actually know where the data is stored on the SSD, again it's the job of the controller/firmware in the SSD to manage this. So if I was you, in terms of your SSD, just leave it alone, it knows what its doing ;)

As to:
"Especially when you think of it from the point of view that everyone across the world will want to test the speed of any SSD they get, know what I mean ?"

Fair comment. But like any product you really need to know it's limitations and quirks. If you want to test the speed. Then do it before installing Windows, then prior to your Windows install, Secure Erase it. This really applies to all SSD's, not just this one.

Question. If you had bought a mechanical drive (EG Samsung F3) would you keep on repeatedly running speed test on it? I suspect most people would not even run a single one. They would take at face value that it works as specified. Though I do appreciate SSD's are shiny new tech. and people want to check that they are getting what they paid for. But why folks want to keep on running test after test, is beyond me. Not getting at you in particular mate, it's just an endemic issue.

scotslad
"This is just my opinion on the damaging the SSD issue with bench test and defrag, I think its just hysteria, why else would they give you a 5 year warranty, lol, I wont even keep this build of pc for probably any longer than maybe 3 years, by that time sata 3 ssd's will be so cheap they will be giving them away and sata 4 or maybe even sata 5 will be all the rage, lol."

It's not hysteria, it's a fact. Should you continue to run these volume of speedtests (which I'm assuming you wont now) your drive WILL start to slow up due to write amplification issues and the firmware throttling the speed back to protect the lifespan of the drive. And at some point you would actually start to notice this slowup (EG. transferring files within the SSD).

Go and have a look at the OCZ forums (or even raise the query there yourself) if you want confirmation of this.

Enjoy your new purchase.:)

PS. As to "what are these SSD defrag friendly programmes you say that are available, especially if they seemingly never need defragged anyway, do you know of any out of curiosity". I suspect the only option that one of these programs could offer that would be of benefit to an SSD, would be a Secure Erase option (something that's been around before SSD's appeared on the scene).
 
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Just thought about something whilst reading back on this thread here as we were talking about defragging or not defragging SSD's etc.

What I just thought about was this,

I took you guyz advice and stopped defragging my drive as its a no no, I done that when I learned from you'z and also OCZ, but what about defragging the registry, the program I use to defrag my old mechanical drives also defrags the registry too if you want it to, but there isnt an option to stop it from defragging the registry on certain drives, it does them all at the same time is this safe for the SSD ? :confused:

Another question while I am at it, what about disk clean ups, this program cleans the disk drives up including the SSD, you know like it gets rid of junk bits n pieces of data etc and makes extra space on the drives, sometimes a lot of space depending on if you dont use it very often, is this safe for the SSD ?

The program I use ive used for years now and from what ive heard over the years its meant to be one of the best, its http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/boost-speed/

I dont use that latest version in the link though, I use version version 4.5.15.280 as I find the latest version has far too many options I simply will never use.

Anyways, what you guys think on my new questions please ?;)

p.s
as far as Ive always been made aware its not just quite important to defrag and clean the old style drives, but also to defrag and clean the the registry's on them too, so I was told years ago anyway, if I'm wrong I'm sure someone will be quick to point that out, lol. cheers.
 
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Hi Scotslad

These are only my personal opinions and I know some others will disagree, but here you go...

- Registry cleaning. Since the advent of more modern versions of Windows (IE. XP/Vista/7/8) I've never felt the urge to run any sort of cleaning tool. It's doubtful to be honest that this will make any real difference what so ever to how well (or otherwise) the OS performs. Up to individuals obviously...

- Disk clean/tidying up. If you are talking about the drive that holds your OS. Then occasionally running something like this to delete temporary files, clear browsing cache etc. can be worthwhile. Though most of these things can be quite easily deleted by hand (EG. %temp% in windows search will pull up any temporary files still lurking around). Though maybe scheduling a decent program to automatically do this sort of thing "might be worthwhile". Again up to individuals to decide how they want to handle this sort of thing.

Hope that helps.
 
mikeo said:
Hi Scotslad

These are only my personal opinions and I know some others will disagree, but here you go...

- Registry cleaning. Since the advent of more modern versions of Windows (IE. XP/Vista/7/8) I've never felt the urge to run any sort of cleaning tool. It's doubtful to be honest that this will make any real difference what so ever to how well (or otherwise) the OS performs. Up to individuals obviously...

- Disk clean/tidying up. If you are talking about the drive that holds your OS. Then occasionally running something like this to delete temporary files, clear browsing cache etc. can be worthwhile. Though most of these things can be quite easily deleted by hand (EG. %temp% in windows search will pull up any temporary files still lurking around). Though maybe scheduling a decent program to automatically do this sort of thing "might be worthwhile". Again up to individuals to decide how they want to handle this sort of thing.

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

cheers mate ;)

what about the registry defrag side of it too though ? ;) just wondering if thats not a good idea with the SSD same as ordinary defragging is a bad idea with an SSD if done too often as we spoke about before. ;)
 
Regarding registry de-frag. Again I've never been convinced this was worthwhile myself. But for an SSD, I suspect once again it's not really a good idea. For the same reason probably that a de-frag on an SSD in general isn't a good idea (IE. only the controller in the SSD "really" knows where the data is being stored). Though maybe someone else with more in depth knowledge of this area may wish to chip in.

Got to be totally honest. I'm yet to see any evidence that running these sorts of utilities on a regular basis make an real difference. Though once again, up to the individual to decide what they want and are happy with.

I've only ever used one of these sorts of utilities about twice in the last 10+ years and that was to try and sort a specific problem. And for that I used CCLEANER.

If it was me, I'd just leave the SSD to sort itself out :)
 
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