Toshiba OCZ Announces the VX500 Series Performance SSDs

[btarunr]

Toshiba company OCZ today announced the new VX500 line of performance SSDs in the 2.5-inch form-factor, featuring SATA 6 Gb/s interface. The drives are based on a new-generation platform by OCZ's parent company Toshiba. The drives combine Toshiba TC358790 controller with 15 nm MLC NAND flash memory chips by Toshiba. The drives come in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB, and offer price/GB comparable to TLC NAND flash-based drives; yet with performance comparable to high-end MLC NAND flash drives.

All four variants offer up to 550 MB/s sequential reads. The 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB variants offer up to 485 MB/s, 510 MB/s, 515 MB/s, and 515 MB/s of sequential writes, respectively. Random access performance is rated around 90,000 IOPS reads, with up to 65,000 IOPS writes. The 128 GB variant is priced at US $63.99, the 256 GB variant at $92.79, the 512 GB variant at $152.52, and the 1 TB variant at $337.06. The drives are backed by 5-year warranty. Acronis TrueImage disk cloning software comes included.



Read our review of the VX500 512GB here.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Ungari]

I'm not liking the price differential between the variants. Why is the 1 TB so much more than two 512 GBs?

 

[Prima.Vera]

I'm not liking the price differential between the variants. Why is the 1 TB so much more than two 512 GBs?

Because they're greedy b-sterds?

 

[hojnikb]

What exactly is the point releasing 2d mlc drives when 3d is a thing ?

 

[RejZoR]

I'm not liking the price differential between the variants. Why is the 1 TB so much more than two 512 GBs?

Because it's always like that? Can you fit 2x512GB into laptops with one slot? Nope. Can you have a single partition with 2x512GB? Nope. Unless you RAID them which essentially means twice the likelihood you lose the data in an event of failure. Also cramming more electronics into same sized enclosure means higher cost. One of few reasons why single drives are more expensive.

 

[hojnikb]

Also cramming more electronics into same sized enclosure means higher cost. One of few reasons why single drives are more expensive.

Actually, there is no more electronic with higher capacity drives. Controllers can usually address 1-2TB of flash and you can even package more dies in the same amount of packages.
So there is really no reason why higher capacity drives would have to be more expensive per GB. If anything, they should be cheaper, since controller cost is fixed.

But it usually comes down to economy of scale; higher capacity drives simply aren't produced in quantities smaller ones are and thus carry a premium because of it.

 

[RejZoR]

You need to put twice as much NAND in 1TB drive as you do in 512GB drive...

 

[hojnikb]

You need to put twice as much NAND in 1TB drive as you do in 512GB drive...

But you can still cram those dies into the same amount of packages, so drive itself should be unchanged on the outside.
Obviously more nand costs more money. But twice as much flash should not cost 2.5x as much.

 

[W1zzard]

I'm not liking the price differential between the variants. Why is the 1 TB so much more than two 512 GBs?

More (not just larger) chips needed + DRAM chip I think

 

[ssdpro]

So, is this old OCZ unit that is now part of Toshiba just a rebranding unit for retail sale? They don't appear to be any more organized than they used to be. These reviews have been up for hours but the product is still absent from their website....

Also, they aren't OCZ Technology anymore, that went defunct in 2014.

 

[evernessince]

But you can still cram those dies into the same amount of packages, so drive itself should be unchanged on the outside.
Obviously more nand costs more money. But twice as much flash should not cost 2.5x as much.

You are paying for the form factor. Laptops can only take one SSD. It's either you buy one high capacity drive or not at all.

 

[dreamer2908]

What exactly is the point releasing 2d mlc drives when 3d is a thing ?

Profit.

The old fabs are still working and 2D products still sell well. 3D NAND is more expensive.
Samsung still released 750 EVO with TLC 2D NAND after having 3D NAND for more than a year.