When OCZ gave us a peek at its Vector SSD, we were curious as to how the drive would fare with a Barefoot 3 controller built through the team from its Indilinx buyout. Would it be the validation of a new strategy, or produce classic rookie mistakes? As long as you're fine with the OCZ badge, it's mostly the former. Reviews don't have the Vector winning outright in every benchmark, but it's one of the more reliably quick drives on the market; multiple sites point out that Barefoot 3's balanced approach to techniques like garbage collection (freeing up data blocks for future use) keeps the overall speed high. Write performance is the strong suit, staying closer to the ideal where others sometimes trail off quickly. Drawbacks most center around the less predictable factors -- Barefoot 3 doesn't have an established track record for reliability, and the pricing isn't always favorable against high-end peers like Samsung's SSD 840 Pro. That OCZ managed to do so well with its first in-house controller is still a positive sign, and those willing to give the Vector a shot may find it worth the initial uncertainty.
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Filed under: Storage
As we were wandering the floor today at IDF 2012, we happened upon an OCZ rep who pulled the company's new 2.5-inch SATA 3 SSD out of his pocket and let us get our mitts on it. Called the Vector, it will replace the well-received Vertex 4 at the top of OCZ's lineup. Like its predecessor, the Vector packs an Indilinx controller, but this time it's the Barefoot 3, which was developed totally in-house without any assistance from Marvell designs. You can expect to see 256GB and 512GB versions of the drive hit the market in Q4, with other sizes possibly showing up after. Of course, IOPS, read/write speeds and pricing remain a mystery, but at least we can share the gallery of shots below.
Myriam Joire contributed to this report.
Filed under: Storage
OCZ's new Vector SSD breaks cover at IDF, packs in-house developed Indilinx controller originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Sep 2012 01:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Solid state drives are the one piece of gear that can turn a dog computer into a cheetah, and it looks like you may not have to scrape much longer to get one. Floods in Thailand made prices for their spinning-plattered brethren climb, but many SSD models like those from Crucial, OCZ and Intel have fallen up to 65 percent in the last year. Lower NAND prices, along with cheaper and better controllers from Sandforce and Indilinx have no doubt contributed to the boon for performance-hungry consumers. All of that means that a 256 GB drive which cost $500+ in June 2011, now runs less than $200 -- and at $.82 / GB, it turns from a near-luxury good to at least a thinkable proposition for many.
Falling SSD prices might give you a swift boot (up) sooner than you think originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jun 2012 09:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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OCZ says its Indilinx controller is actually built by Marvell, but has custom firmware originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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