OCZ Vertex 3 and Agility 3, G.Skill Falcon and Phoenix Pro

[Guest]

Four SSDs mentioned in the thread title are the only four SSDs I could find that have decent price and quality. Question is, which one to choose? All of them have similar user feedback on NewEgg.

Based on current currency exchange, they're priced like this:

60GB G.Skill Phoenix Pro - $144 - 3 year warranty
64GB G.Skill Falcon - $123 - 2 year warranty
60GB OCZ Vertex 3 - $133 - 3 year warranty
60GB OCZ Agility 3 - $117 - 3 year warranty

I use the computer mainly for gaming, browsing and multimedia. Rest of my configuration is as follows:

Asrock Extreme3 Gen3
Intel Core i5 2500K
MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II
Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB DDR3 1600MHz
Zalman CNPS9900 MAX
WD Caviar Blue 640GB
Zalman Z9 Plus
Scythe Kaze Q8
Dell U2312HM 23'' IPS

Thanks for help.

 

[RealBeast]

I would go with the OCZ Agility 3.

 

[RetiredChief]

Have the agility 3, also have the curcial M4, and the Samsung 830.

Although I would NOT buy an OCZ (personal). I'd have to pick the vertex III over the Aligility III
Overall scores (Read with a grain of salt as there is some difference's between what they show and what you will see. IE some are for 256 Gig drives which score higher than their lower sized brother. Also my score for M4 was higher and my score for the agility III was lower.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2011/AS-SSD-Overall-Total-Score,2792.html

More important take a look at random 4K reads - for a SMALL OS + Program disk this is the most important.

 

[Guest]

Have the agility 3, also have the curcial M4, and the Samsung 830.

Although I would NOT buy an OCZ (personal). I'd have to pick the vertex III over the Aligility III
Overall scores (Read with a grain of salt as there is some difference's between what they show and what you will see. IE some are for 256 Gig drives which score higher than their lower sized brother. Also my score for M4 was higher and my score for the agility III was lower.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2011/AS-SSD-Overall-Total-Score,2792.html

More important take a look at random 4K reads - for a SMALL OS + Program disk this is the most important.

Why not OCZ?

To be honest, I'm not that concerned with speed, reliability is much more important. Almost any SSD is an upgrade over HDD when it comes to speed anyway.

Slower SSD that will last me 2 years is much better than faster SSD that will die within 6 months.

I would go with the OCZ Agility 3.

Why?

Also, any word on G.Skill? I know their RAM has good reputation, but what about SSDs?

 

[RetiredChief]

The SF22xx based controller SSD were more problematic than the marvel based controller SSD. I think they have finally fixed their problems, not 100 % sure.
My problem with OCZ is when the problems started showing up they blamed everyone but their producted - they did not want to admit that thier was a problem. To them the problem was the indiviudal's computer system and/or the individual. If you had read many of the post on the OCZ forum you would ay WOW.

I goofed and Bought 2 agillity IIIs when they first came on the market, one for my desktop and one for my laptop. The desktop one worked fine, the one for the laptop did not - was not compatable. so stuck the 2nd aligity III SSD into the desktop (worked fine as a storage disk) and replaced it with an M4 which installed without a hitch. So I took a oath to never buy an OCZ memory/PSU/SSD.

As to the Agility III, it's at the lowend for performance - in real life close.
For reliability: Intel -> Samsung -> Curcial M4.

Added: currently have 10 SSDs dating back to Intel's G1 and G2 (7 diff brands) and not a failure yet (knock on wood).

 

[Guest]

Crucial M4 is not available in my country and 64GB Samsung 83 is about $147, maybe I should get Samsung then. I probably won't be buying until May so prices could drop a bit by then.

 

[RetiredChief]

(1) Some of the cost difference between the "sandforce" based SSD and Samsung SSD can be justified in that the Samsung is 6.7 % larger (4 gigs more). Then you also have to factor in the "higher" satisfaction with the Samsung.

(2) While you can not buy from Newegg, It is a good sourse for evaluating problem/reliability of various manuf. But here you need to apply a grain of salt.
.. (A) Using the Agility III as an example. If it has High total reviewers then the 1/2 egg negative rating may not be valid as it includes early adaptors. But you can weed this out by looking at just the past 6 Months reviews.
.. (B) Manuf can "game" the system by making a small change that may not address problems, BUT by using a new part number it will start the reviews over thus disregaurding the "older" reviews.
.. (C) Some of the negative comments are "USER" generated and who likes to blame themselfs - so they blame the product, but by reading you can get a feel for this.
Example:
OCZ Agility III Total reviews 1/2 egg = 27 % while just past 6 months 1/2 egg = 20%
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227725
Samsung 830. Newer than Agility III therfore much lower total. 1/2 egg is only 6%. 3x better than agility III ratings.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147133&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo
In both of the above; for the 4/5 egg reviews disregard the "Blazing fast" and then quote high Sequencial reads.

When selecting, based on performance:
.. Don't bother with Sequencial read/write benchmarks as they have little bearing on REAL life performance for 2 reasons. (A) They are the LEAST important Benchmark matrix. and (B) Often the bench mark uses data that is Easily compressable, again not real life. If you look at a OS + Program drive you will find that over 50 % of the files are 16K or less and files greater than say 100k are only a small percentage.
.. Look for benchmarks that more closely mimic real life such as PCMark Vantage - And benchmarks that show specific operations more closely tied to YOUR usage such as productivity suites, video enconding. gaming ect.

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much for detailed replies, definitely something to keep in mind.

 

[ngrego]

I got a Vertex 2 90GB a while ago for a Laptop with a 1.8" drive (I diddn't have many options). The disk lasted 1 week so I sent it back to OCZ. They sent me a new one about a week later. That one also failed after abou 10 days! when I contacted OCZ the third time they offered to replace with an Agility 3 (2.5"). Being a newer model, I took the offer and used it on my PC (not my laptop). The Agility 3 has been runnung for about a month without any problems.
After this whole ordeal, if the Agility 3 also failed, I woldn't be surprised..
I don't mean to bad mouth OCZ, their service was great. I just don't think I would opt for an OCZ SSD again.
The bottom line is that any SSD you chose will give a big speed boost to your pc, the rest is just details...