This a good deal? Or should I wait?

[Skychan]

NCIX.com - Buy OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Sandforce 120GB 2.5IN SATA2 Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD - OCZ Technology - OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G - in Canada

Effectively $165 for the 25nm OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Sandforce 120GB after $20mir and $20 ncix gift card.

I currently have the OCZ Agility 60GB and want to put that in my laptop and have this new puppy replace it in my main machine.

Is this a good deal, or should I wait for Vertex 3 to push prices lower? I haven't been watching the SSD market that closely to know if it would be worth waiting another month or so.

I'm aware of the 25nm vs 34nm issue, but I'm pretty lost in deciding if the price point advantage over say the Corsair Force equivalent drive is worth the performance drop.

Any help figuring this out would be much appreciated ^_^

[dma0991]

To me the Vertex 2 is pretty fast already. Obviously the Vertex 3 is even faster but if there were a choice for a similarly priced SSD where one is faster and the other has a bigger capacity I would go for bigger capacity. It makes more sense to me that it would be better to run more programs fast than it is to run fewer programs at faster speeds.

[Charloz24]

Originally Posted by Skychan

NCIX.com - Buy OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Sandforce 120GB 2.5IN SATA2 Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD - OCZ Technology - OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G - in Canada

Effectively $165 for the 25nm OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Sandforce 120GB after $20mir and $20 ncix gift card.

I currently have the OCZ Agility 60GB and want to put that in my laptop and have this new puppy replace it in my main machine.

Is this a good deal, or should I wait for Vertex 3 to push prices lower? I haven't been watching the SSD market that closely to know if it would be worth waiting another month or so.

I'm aware of the 25nm vs 34nm issue, but I'm pretty lost in deciding if the price point advantage over say the Corsair Force equivalent drive is worth the performance drop.

Any help figuring this out would be much appreciated ^_^

In your situation, if the Vertex 2 is enought fast for you, then wait a couple of weeks because Vertex 3 will be soon available and it will push price lower for sure!

[lowfat]

Don't play the waiting game. That is a good price and you'll be hard pressed to find a better one in the near future. I say go for it.

[JD]

It should be noted that the current Vertex 2 uses 25nm NAND which is a bit slower, has a shorter lifespan and results in less formatted space. I really wouldn't recommend it.

Not sure if OCZ is still doing the replacement program, but you can read of it here: OCZ Forum - New update on the 25nm OCZ SSD drives

[Skychan]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm still really undecided.

I am aware of the 25nm issue but I'm really struggling to decide if the price reduction is worth the loss in performance.

The reality is that in a few weeks or couple months the 34nm SSDs will not be on the market. So I doubt the lifespan and error issues has not been properly accounted for by the extra over-provisioning. However, I don't like the idea of loss in performance.

I've seen tests using incompressible data show the new 25nm SSDs (the ones with 64Gb ICs) performing way worse than the 34nm ones, but the "real world" tests (which use a lot of compressible data) show they perform on par.

OCZ has an SSD (in the following link) that could be either 25/34nm but uses 32Gb ICs instead of 34Gb which supposedly keeps the performance the same as the old 34nm.

NCIX.com - Buy OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Sandforce New 16 Chip Solution 120GB 2.5IN SATA2 Solid State Disk Flash Drive - OCZ Technology - OCZSSD2-2VTX120G - in Canada

So it might be better for me to get that one. It's $225 so it's like $60 more than the one I linked in my first post. Maybe that one will become cheaper once 25nm matures more, though I understand it will still be more expensive than the 25nm ones using 64Gb ICs.

This is not going to be easy for me to decide.

[draemn]

The only reason I'd say hold off on this deal is if:

a) You don't really need another SSD and are fine with your current SSD (but you said you wanted to put that one in your laptop...)
b) You want the fastest of the fastest SSD performance with instant load times... then wait to get something with better speeds (especially 4k is the important one for daily use).
c) The whole MIR and gift card thing... some people are okay with that... others hate it.

For myself, I'm in category a) where I don't see the reason of upgrading because I'm satisfied with my Agility 2 (if I'd know at the time I would have spent the extra $10 for the Vertex). Even with the 25nm thing... I'd say this is a great drive and OCZ has shown they want to fix the mistakes they make and be a good company (although it sucks that they do the sneaky things in the first place). When looking at the performance between the Vertex 2 34nm vs 25nm, I personally feel that it's not going to be noticeable for 'average' users/gamers.

[JD]

Maybe consider the C300 instead? Or an Intel drive?

[Skychan]

Good points, draemn. I guess in reality I probably won't notice much of an improvement on my PC, it will really be a huge improvement for the laptop and that's my main reason for the upgrade.

Maybe you're right, maybe the performance drop in those rare situations with the 25nm thing isn't something I should worry about.

What about the following idea. Newegg has the OCZ Vertex 2 80GB for $160. That's $5 less than the 120GB at NCIX except without the MIR and gift card to worry about. I certainly don't need any larger than 80GB. However my main concern is that I saw some fairly significant performance differences between 60GB and 120GB indilinx drives. Not enough to justify the insane costs of 120GB back then, but prices are so much better now.

Does anyone have any information about Vertex 2 80GB versus 100/120GB (both are 128GB behind the scenes)? I can't find any reviews on the 80GB at all.

[draemn]

It doesn't matter what SSD you buy, as soon as you hit 80GB or lower, performance starts to decrease because you have less parallelism. The gift card is 100% solid if you plan to buy again from NCIX and so far I've gotten both MIR from OCZ (cross fingers), so getting that extra 40GB (50% capacity increase) for $10 or $30 w/o MIR? If you're buying, I don't get why you wouldn't! I was happy when SSDs hit the $2/GB... now getting them below $1.70/GB! (that's without counting the MIR or gift card) is pretty nice. I'd say the new 'best' price with sales is pretty close to $1.50/GB. It's so hard to say if sales like this will be beat in the next couple months...

I expect the non-sale price to stabilize around $1.8/GB in the near future with the next gen drives, but it's not something that's easy to know for sure.