OCZ's 1TB Colossus SSD gets a price and launch timeframe
By Donald Melanson 
posted Aug 3rd 2009 3:08PM
posted Aug 3rd 2009 3:08PM
We already got word of the starting price for the entry-level 128GB drive in OCZ's new Colossus line of SSDs, but details on the standout 1TB model have unfortunately been quite a bit harder to come by. OCZ's now finally cleared up most of those remaining questions, however, and announced that the drive will be available mid-August for a jaw-dropping $2,500 (give or take a few bucks). The 500GB drive will also apparently be available at the same time, although OCZ doesn't seem to be saying anything more than that it'll be "less expensive."
[Via Electronista]
Update: OCZ just hit us up with the official information. The company is actually "about three weeks" out from release, and it'll ship the Colossus 120 (128GB), 250 (256GB), 500 (512GB) and 1TB (1024GB) for $300, $650, $1200 and $2200 in order of mention.
[Via Electronista]
Update: OCZ just hit us up with the official information. The company is actually "about three weeks" out from release, and it'll ship the Colossus 120 (128GB), 250 (256GB), 500 (512GB) and 1TB (1024GB) for $300, $650, $1200 and $2200 in order of mention.
Nice, now drop the price and I'll purchase.
what an awesome name
i can't wait until they are so cheap you can find them in a box of space cereal / space crackerjacks
You can't find anything in a box of cereal nowadays...you have to go the extra mile and pay for some B.S shipping and handling to receive anything...I mean WTH!!!
Sorry, I miss the good old days :*(
Back on point: I'll have to wait for the price to lose a '0' before I become interested.
Whatever happened to Cereal companies putting in Chex Quest into the box, for free.
Bad thing is, I was addicted to that game.
I can haz relevance pls
$2,500 Good Lord....Cant wait for that to drop to about $150....
i already have this
feel like giving me $2,500 for a "cash for HDDs" stimulus plan??
Mama jokes really demonstrate the lowest of human society.
Actually, penis jokes are worse.
@ Matt
Your penis demonstrates the lowest form of humanity cause is was in that guy's mum.
I already have 3 of these set up in RAID 5... which was so blindingly awesome that the Best Buy CreepSquad idiots I showed it to gave me your mom in return for being able to look upon its glory.
Also, such awesomeness apparently attempts to make up for a deficiency in penis size.
dididoitrite?
I'll take two, can't wait to put one of them in my Aspire One, and the other in my other Aspire One...
Its a 3.5" drive. In other words, for Desktop PC's onky!
Kay. These are 3.5" right?
I put a banana in my aspire one...
It doesn't function properly as a result.
Oh thanks! I was gonna be ripped-off!
I can't wait to buy a $2500 HDD to stick in my $300 netbook :D
This is such a copy of the iPhone! YOMG
So who can give feedback on using an SSD in your laptop - not necessarily this one though. Is it worth the price? Does the increase in speed seem to be lasting? A friend tells me that they start off fast, but gradually slow down over time where a SATA drive is a better option in the long run. I don't typically have a lot of stuff stored on the laptop, so a 64 GB one would be fine.
Thoughts?
I did an upgrade on a customers custom laptop from a 7200RPM Seagate drive to an Intel SSD. The system was so much snappier and responsive it felt like a new computer to him. The biggest difference to be is that time of things loading quicker and starting faster. It felt like it had a faster processor in it for alot of small tasks.
I have a 64 GB Vertex. It's unbelievable, my low end laptop runs like a dream. Vista starts in ~10 seconds, all applications etc. launch instantly. Everyone who uses it comments on it. Oh, and OCZ makes a wiper tool that eliminates the slowdown. Not that it matters - the latest version of the firmware automatically cleans itself if you leave idle for an hour or so.
I have the 120 GB Vertex in my Unibody MacPro 13 and it is so fast nowdays. It was worth every penny!
In near future higher speed will come from using fast SSD disks and with the operating system using GPU for extra power.
Thats how I will uppgrade my Mac Pro!
I've got the Intel X25M 160gb in my Macbook Pro and it doubled the speed of the system as far as IO goes. Cold start to desktop in 25 seconds. That said, I wouldn't pay more than about $600 for a SSD right now. Capacity is increasing and cost is decreasing too quickly to spend more than that - in 6-8 months, the price will likely drop by 30-50%.
In terms of a SSD, I'd probably go up to a 300gb drive, but anything more than that you're wasting your money if you buy one right now IMHO. Just use it for a system drive and keep your data elsewhere.
Your friend is full of shit. Yes, right now, SSDs do slow down *a little bit* when they are filled up, but only because of the lack of native TRIM command support in windows XP/Vista. There are tools you can download and run that will speed up your drive, but Windows 7 will have native support for wiping the "dirty" blocks on SSDs, so they will not slow down over time.
But regardless if it is full or not, any decent SSD with a modern controller (i.e. Intel/Indilinx/Samsung) will blow your mind. I'm played with a laptop that had an OCZ Vertex drive, and I was amazed at how fast it could boot up and launch applications. Everything is far smoother and more responsive than any HDD I've used.
By next year this will be about 300 bucks on NewEgg. Don't be stupid people, just wait. They only charge these prices for new tech because certain people will pay for it so they can be the cool kids on the block. It's like buying a 2010 Lexus for $60,000 when you can get the 2008 model for 35, are you really missing out on that much?
Actually, in the case of the Lexus, most likely. Cars have gotten way, way better across all brands in just the past few years. Compared to today's interiors, interiors of just a few years ago are already looking dated and cheap.
I wouldn't say that's the only reason why prices are high initially. Just like anything else, they have to recoup the costs of research and development. Once that's accomplished (at least to an acceptable degree), then you will see the prices fall. I'm pretty cynical and sceptical, but don't think that every company (especially tech companies) are flat-out charging a "new toy" tax.
Also, the Lexus analogy is off because that's a matter of depreciation.
one day we'll look back at this post and laugh : )
@slyd3z
this is also a matter of depreciation.... worth $2200 today, $220 in 3 years... thats a loss in value over time and therefore it depreciated
Engadget's recession antidote: win a OCZ's 1TB Colossus SSD...i bet you would get more comments than the 14 thousand for the Win Seven Licenses
bring out a 60gb or 80gb version please OCZ as i don't need 128GB of space, it would make it a much more reasonable price.
Intel's 80 GB X25-M is about $280. So if you multiply both by 10, you get 800 GB for $2,800.
So 1 TB for $2,500 isn't "bad," all things considered. The only question is whether its performance can match those of Intel's, especially with random read/write.
Obviously, too much for most of us, myself included, but compared to what's out there, it's not unreasonable.
Umm..no. Intel x25-m 80gb is at $230 @ newegg, and it blows vertex away.
I think it's about time for another recession antidote...
It's gonna be nuts when these only cost $100ish.
I remember when 128MB flash memory cards cost $100+, and now you can find 2GB capacity ones for FREE.
So how long until we have 1TB micro-SD cards for under $100??
Where's the spec comparisson between this and another 1 tb hdd ?
No reviews yet that I'm aware of. Obviously faster at seeks. Obviously faster at sequential reads. Probably slower at sequential writes. Find a Vertex review and assume most things are 2X as fast as that.
$2200...damn...SSDs only cost alot because they are new...hopefully...
It's funny how you have to waste your time to put the Pre down. I thought the iPhone was doing well and didn't have any competition? If so, what's the point of your statement about a 2 month old platform?
I wonder why *anyone* would be using a 1TB SSD.
The 120GB model is a relatively good value. Need to see some head to head benchmarks with the X25-m.
RAID a couple if 128 GB SSD and you get instant disk access
Raid the Intels instead.
Head to head review.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3607&p=4
Actually, I was thinking about getting one, and am seriously wondering how many apps were in the app catalog. Thanks.
Anand had this a few weeks ago:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3608
I'll keep my 2 velociraptors in raid 0 for a while thanks, I get unbeatable performance and load times. When the 1tb ssd drive hits about $200 I'll get 2 in raid. Probably a couple years out though.
Total waste of money. The non raid 2.5 already saturate SATA 2. How can these be worth it if they run in raid and have only one SATA 2 port? Any 2x 2.5 in raid will blow these away. OCZ always mentions their sequential transfer rates but never mention what really counts in an OS drive, RANDOM read/writes and latency. The Intels dominate these, even their precious vertex turbos...
They saturate the SATA port at SEQUENTIAL READS only. Not SEQUENTIAL WRITES, which can certainly use some improvement in comparision with rotating media. So for certain applications this makes sense. For you home computer? Probably too expensive.
OCZ Collosus (Native Raid 0)
Seq Reads - SATA 2 Limited @ 300 MB/S minus overhead
OCZ Vertex (2 @ Raid 0)
Seq Reads - 450 MB/s
Seq Writes - 380 MB/s
Collosus is cheaper, but is forfeiting a lot of bandwidth. Should have held out for SATA 3
@Anonymonymous,
Based on the numbers posted by Anand, which I trust, which are AFTER the drive has been "worn in", the Vertex does sequential reads around 250MB/s, sequential writes around 135MB/s, random reads at 35MB/s, and random writes at 6MB/s.
So a Collosus WOULD be limited by SATA 2 @ 300MB/s doing sequential reads, but not doing any of the other things. So using two Vertex drives with independent SATA 2 interfaces WOULD be faster at certain things (large file copies from one of these to something infinitely fast say, like streaming to a gigabit interface off a server or something), but otherwise not.
I'm not all that certain how quickly the whole SATA 3 thing is going to roll out given the recent glitches with the P55 mobos and the Marvell chip. Sounds like there should be something before the end of 2009. I don't see why we shouldn't have the Collosus now, and OCZ can deliver a 6GB/s SATA version before the end of the year.
OCZ Collosus (Native Raid 0)
Seq Reads - SATA 2 Limited @ 300 MB/S minus overhead
OCZ Vertex (2 @ Raid 0)
Seq Reads - 450 MB/s
Seq Writes - 380 MB/s
Collosus is cheaper, but is forfeiting a lot of bandwidth. Should have held out for SATA 3