New Sony Vaio Z speculation/news thread

[noap_]

^yep, there are options for the Gen of SSDs on the CTO page. (at least here in austria)

[Ung_Kung]

unless there are benchmark we will not know what is gen 2 and gen3 mean at all

[ota-con]

There is this clip...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94vPpy03Prs

[fhsieh]

In Japan, the retail units (sold at regular electronics chain stores like Sofmap and Yodobashi) will all have 2nd gen 128GB SSD.

But the Sonystyle CTO, and Sonystyle-exclusive pre-configured units will all feature 3rd gen 128GB/256GB/512GB SSDs.

Sony could be doing the same thing in other countries as well: 2nd gen for standard retail, 3rd gen for CTO and Sonystyle-exclusives. Hopefully people buying from places outside of Japan can get some clarification soon. No doubt the possibility of early demo/review units being "retail" models might be adding to the confusion.

Controller type (Micron, Indilinx, Sandforce, etc) has some influence on performance, as long as you're comparing along the same SATA speed. But when you compare controller speed (3Gbps vs 6Gbps), 6Gbps pretty much always offers better performance than 3Gbps, regardless of what controller is being used. On desktop testing, even 6Gbps worst-case-scenario (no trim, no garbage collection, full drive, non-compressible files) still managed to perform better than 3Gbps best-case. SSD technology, despite still being quite expensive, has actually matured quite a lot after a number of bad controllers in the first couple generations.

Early testing shows the Z's 3rd gen 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB SSDs perform up to 150%, 170%, and 180% better (respectively) than previous the 2nd gen SSDs. So I really doubt anyone would be better off with a 2nd gen SSD; except if you don't really need the performance, and want to save a little money with a retail model.

[Generic User #2]

...did you just copy/paste that off a press release?

specific controllers DO much a difference. As does the SATA version, although this is because many vendors chose sequential speeds over random speeds this generation.

In the real world though, they're ALL so fast that you're not going to notice the difference - unless you're one of those people who use two computers at the same time and do the exact same things on both at the exact same time.

[Louche]

I'm not surprised by the delays. There's too much that's still up in the air, at least on the American site, such as avilability of some colors (gold, etc.) an LTE option, 2nd or 3rd gen ssd, etc. Maybe it will all get straightened out in the next couple of weeks.

As for the delay maybe related to LP, there's always something when it comes to a new technology. I'm glad Sony found out the problem and is fixing it before shipment.

I'm back to leaning in favor of getting a maxed-out Z2 when the details get sorted out. I checked out an SA at a store. It was OK but it was next to a Z13. It's just not in the same league. I'm thinking that even if an SA was offered with a premium display, I would prefer the Z. I do want to see a Z2 before buying.

[Achusaysblessyou]

...did you just copy/paste that off a press release?

specific controllers DO much a difference. As does the SATA version, although this is because many vendors chose sequential speeds over random speeds this generation.

In the real world though, they're ALL so fast that you're not going to notice the difference - unless you're one of those people who use two computers at the same time and do the exact same things on both at the exact same time.

not only in terms of performance but also reliability as well as longevity... not to mention the type of flash memory used, Sony could go cheap and after 2 years all the SSDs fail, but by then they're off the hook so, yeah...

[ahp]

Cutting costs on SSD's in their most premium product sounds extremely stupid, if it's true.

I'd like to know whether the pre-config models in Norway use G2 or G3 SSD's. It seems to vary for every country *confused*

[fhsieh]

...did you just copy/paste that off a press release?

specific controllers DO much a difference. As does the SATA version, although this is because many vendors chose sequential speeds over random speeds this generation.

What I mean is, when you're only comparing different 3Gbps controllers, specific controllers offer better performance (and reliability) in different tests, as one would expecte. But when you start comparing 3Gbps controllers against 6Gbps controllers (both on 6Gbps interface), the 6Gbps controllers, regardless of which specific controller it is (Indilinx, Sandforce, etc) perform better than the 3Gbps controllers by a significant margin in nearly all tests and scenarios.

So even if Sony changed which controller type they're using, it's simply unlikely that a 3rd gen 6Gbps controller would perform worse than a 2nd gen 3Gbps controller.

[goldentreesang]

Did any of you guys watch the benchmark video otacon posted? It renders this entire discussion moot. :P