Mainstream SSD Shootout: Crucial v4 vs. OCZ Agility 4 256GB

it's true, and it's a well known fact that people tend to report negative reviews more often, and are less likely to report positive ones. but on an overall scale of picture. you're looking at a overall rating/review of two products, one with thousands of negative reviews and one with thousands. it just reinforces the positive conviction of the positive reviews. the product must be really great for someone to put up a positive review, and we're not talking tens of hundreds, we're talking thousands. I personally do not own either, but I do know that OCZ SSD drives are well known in the community as the least, if not one of the least reliable brands based on feedbacks from others.

Nice to see the Kingston HyperX 3K consistently at the top of the charts!

Question: Am I topping out at 177MB/s in writes running Crystal Disk Mark because my HyperX 3K is only 120GB?

You're missing the truth. HDD prices are basically back to pre-flood levels already. When I got my 1TB WD Green before the flooding it was $64cdn, and now it's $69, and the 1TB WD Blue only $79.

I've had mine for 9 months. No failures.

But it isn't significantly cheaper and certainly isn't hdd price.

The third gen OCZ SSDs have a reputation of frequent failures. But I've heard that the 4th gen is much better because they use everest controllers rather than the buggy firmware of the sandforce controllers.

They are significantly cheaper than they were last year. Last year the prices averaged more than $2 per GB and you were able to get $1 per GB with sales and rebates. Now the averaged ~$1.70 per GB and I've seen some SSDs for less than $0.5 per GB with a rebate.

You can find Crucial M4 256 on amazon for just a tad less than $200 now, that's less than a dollar per GB. I might just pull the trigger soon, more towards this holiday season.

I have one for a year and have no problems.
Update firmware maybe?

I think you missed the most important number: 1.5, as in 1.5 gb/s. I use an HP/Compaq NC4400 laptop at live music/dj/kj gigs. It's small (doesn't distract), powerful enough (2ghz duo) and cheap ($135.00). Drive speed is becoming important because I am starting to use softsynths. I'm stuck with a 1.5 gb/s interface. If I want to go the SSD route I don't have many options and so far the V4 seems to be the best and cheapest.

I suspect the V4 was actually intended for laptops with 1.5 gb/s interfaces and the only reason it has a SATA II interface is because it's a technological non-issue to do both. You can think of it as a "retrofit" design with a really good price. Given that perspective, the comparison with a SATA III drive is informative but misses the point.

So you think it is worth saving $10 to buy a far inferior product? It wasn't made for the 1.5Gb/s bus because almost no one uses it anymore and even less are going to invest $100 plus in an SSD for such an old computer. Particularly given you can buy a decent Core i3 laptop brand new for less than $400.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... 4019 600003986&IsNodeId=1&name=Intel Core i3

Why is it that writers do reviews with apples and oranges?

The Crucial M4 is a SATAll drive and the OCZ Agility 4 drive is SATAlll. Why not compare a Corvette ZR1 and a Corvette Z06 and say the Z06 is not as fast?

Do you actually get paid to write stuff like this?

Odd logic . It’s the v4 by the way and it was released around the same time as the Agility 4 for roughly the same price. Both are budget SSDs, the v4 is the budget option to the m4 and the Agility 4 is the budget option to the Vertex 4. Sorry but to me it makes sense to compare them regardless of the SATA spec.

Do I really need to say why? That analogy doesn’t even apply here …. But okay.

I just thought I should update this thread with a little info on our experience with the Crucial v4 drive. The drive has an issue that causes the system to pause for a few seconds every now and then. Crucial has not issue a firmware update that solves this and there are quite a large number of v4 users reporting this problem over on the Crucial forums. We have been running the drive in an office PC for about 4 months now and the system pause happens once every few days, so not a lot but it is still annoying.

2 Vertex 3's for over a year now... working flawlessly!