OCZ Vertex 3 240GB Review

1. Introduction2. OCZ Vertex 3 240GB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. HD Tach 3.0.4.06. ATTO Disk Benchmark7. PCMark Vantage8. AS SSD9. IOMeter10. HD Tune Pro & SiSoft Sandra11. Real World Testing12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

OCZ have been at the forefront of Solid State drive development for a very long time now, the original Vertex and the Vertex 2 were both class leading SATA 3Gbps drives. We will be honest when we say that we have high hopes for the 6Gbps successor, today's review product, the Vertex 3.

The Vertex 3 was first highlighted by OCZ at CES in January and it uses the second generation SandForce controller to help utilise the SATA 6GBps interface. The official figures from OCZ are quoted at up to 525MB/s read and 500MB/s write, which are staggering, if accurate. Importantly, the 4k random write performance is also rated to a very tasty 60,000 IOPS.

When we compare this drive to the last generation Vertex 2 the performance increases are not just modest, they are staggering … over 90 percent faster on paper. Last year many had assumed that the SATA 6 Gbps interface had plenty of life left in it, but with this drive, the 600 MB/s limitations are already under question.

Product	OCZ Vertex 3
Interface	Sata III
Controller	Sandforce 2281
Size	240GB
SSD Type	Multi Level Cell
Trim Support	Yes
Read speed (rated)	525MB/s
Write speed (rated)	500MB/s
MBTF	2 Million hours

To compliment the consumer model, OCZ have also released an Enterprise class drive, the Vertex 3 Pro, which uses the Sandforce SF-2582 controller and offers power loss data protection and data recovery protection.

The Vertex 3 we are reviewing today uses the SF-2281 controller which offers TCG OPAL security with 256bit AES encryption and an improved ECC engine (capable of correcting up to 55 bits per 512 byte sector).

All of the SandForce SF-2000 series controllers still utilise the patented DuraWrite technology, on the fly compression which reduces the size of the data written to the drive. When this is paired up with wear leveling and intelligent block management the drive will require fewer write cycles during regular use.

We received one of the early review samples, which means no retail packaging.

The final retail box should look something like this, according to OCZ anyway.

No sticker on the drive either, the drive looks surprisingly naked without it.

The image above shows a representation of the final retail product.

A fairly standard chassis design. It is opened by removing four small screws on the rear. Please be aware if you do this, you invalidate the warranty. We don't really care, but if you buy one, you should.

The unit we have on review is 240GB and OCZ place a NAND flash partition of 16 ICs onto the PCB. Technically, new 25nm NAND FLASH memory has a reduced overall lifespan from 10,000 upwards to around 5,000 program/erase cycles. Industry insiders have hinted that consumer grade 25nm NAND flash memory will have a slightly lower lifespan, between 3,000 and 4,000 program/erase cycles.

While this sounds concerning, if you work out that under normal conditions only between 20-35 full SSD write cycles will be used each year, there is plenty of life in the product. Drive wearing protection also helps to ensure longer lasting flash memory. Thankfully, there is also full TRIM support.

As many already know Sandforce controllers use real time compression. The controllers store a ‘representation' of your data, not the actual data itself which is achieved by creating a partition of the available NAND flash memory. It can handle around 63 MB/s from one of the eight available channels.

For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.

This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.

CPU: Intel Core i7 2600k
Cooler: Thermaltake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory: ADATA DDR3 2000mhz 9-11-9-24
PSU: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: Sapphire HD6950 Flex Edition
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate
Monitor: Dell U2410

Other Drives for comparisons:
Intel 510 120GB
Corsair F100 100GB
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
Crucial Real SSD C300 64GB
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB

Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark
HD Tach
CrystalMark
AS-SSD Benchmark
IOMeter
PCMark Vantage
HD Tune
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Of Pripyat

All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64.

Incredible performance from the OCZ Vertex 3, dominating this test, even with small uncompressed files. These are the best results we have seen from a single drive SATA unit.

I have been using HDTach for many years now and always find it is an invaluable benchmark to ascertain potential levels of performance. HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device possible.

HD Tach measures an average speed of over 376MB/s which is impressive and the highest score yet from a single drive with this specific benchmark.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

The ATTO benchmark shows a true best case performance level and it also verifies that OCZ's marketing literature is accurate. This drive is easily outperforming all other solutions on test today, by a considerable margin. It feels like two high performance drives in RAID 0, the performance is that strong.

We use Futuremark’s PCMark Vantage in many of our system reviews and we felt that it was worth an inclusion in this review. It is still a synthetic suite, but it uses many real world characteristics to try and judge overall performance levels. We are using the 64 bit version of the HDD Suite for this testing. We also compare against a Samsung F1 1TB drive on this page.

A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security. From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

We are beginning to see the pattern, with the OCZ Vertex 3 taking the performance lead right at the top of the chart. It isn't even close when compared against the other drives on test today.

AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.

AS SSD uses incompressible data so the sequential write speed is lower than it would be otherwise, at just over 290 MB/s. Still it is extremely impressive. Some fantastic results also with the 4k read and write scores, higher than anything else we have tested with a single controller onboard.

IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.

In their official documentation OCZ rate the 4kb random/write performance at up to 60,000 IOPs, and the results we achieved were only slightly lower than anticipated, at 58,345. This is, yet again significantly higher than the Vertex 2 which was a previous leader in this benchmark test.

We don't often use HD Tune Pro but we felt when testing such an exciting new drive that we should give it a working over. It is a small application which scans the hard drive and can measure performance and even errors.

The first test sends 64MB of data in sizes ranging from 0.5KB to 8MB. Once it hits the 32kb file size the drive is scoring 300 MB/s in the write test. It achieves a maximum score of over 525MB/s read and almost 500 MB/s write at the 8MB section of the test, showing again that OCZ are not being dishonest with their marketing campaign.

Sequential read times average around 356 MB/s, peaking at 381 MB/s which is very impressive for this specific software test.

Write performance is fantastic, averaging around 287 MB/s, peaking at almost 381MB/s. CPU demand is also very low throughout which is important to note.

HD Tune Pro offers other test settings, such as random access read and write testing. The figures above are very healthy indeed.

SiSoft Sandra is a benchmark tool that we use fairly regularly, it is a good all round synthetic software suite. Today we are obviously concentrating on the drive sections to ascertain the Vertex 3 performance levels.

The File systems test indicates a performance level over 461 MB/s and the more accurate Physical Disk test scores the drive at almost 491 MB/s. Very strong and easily the best we have seen yet from a single controller based SATA drive.

It doesn’t matter how good any of the synthetic suites are, the real meat of the testing has to be under absolute real world conditions. This proves difficult as to record results we have to narrow down fluctuation. Therefore while we would say these are the most useful results to get from this review, there is always going to be a slight margin for error – its not absolutely scientific.

Firstly we installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Edition onto each of the drives and performed a clean update from Microsoft with all patches and security fixes. We then install a basic suite of software, such as Office, Firefox and Adobe Design, then we install AVG free antivirus. We used a digital watch for this startup and repeated the test five times for each drive – once we had these five results we averaged the results and took that for the final figure.

The sequential read speed of the OCZ Vertex 3 is staggering, meaning it can shave off 4 seconds when compared against the previous leader, the Intel 510 120gb. A four second improvement is massive in this particular test.

STALKER is a demanding game, especially when waiting almost 40 seconds for it to load via a mechanical hard drive. The Vertex 3 240gb records the fastest time yet, taking 3 seconds from the load time when compared against the Intel 510 drive. Class leading results, yet again.

To say the OCZ Vertex 3 240gb is an impressive drive, is an understatement. We had expected some great results, but it is almost twice the speed of the previous generation of drives – in the world of technology this doesn't happen very often.

When compared to competitor products there really is simply nothing we have tested to challenge the Vertex 3. Even Intel's latest 510 SSD seems positively lackluster by comparison. Unlike other drives in the market, the all round performance is what really allows this product to stand out. Sequential results are wicked, but when we look at the 4kb performance, it is in a class of its own.

While synthetic tests are often the best way to analyse the performance of a solid state drive, especially with these kind of speeds, it is also important to have a look at the ‘real world' benefits. If you wanted the quickest boot drive on the market then you need look no further, we can only begin to imagine how two of these in RAID 0 would transform system performance!

We could wax lyrical all day about how wonderful this product is, but there are only so many superlatives we can use. It has set a new benchmark for Solid State performance and if OCZ can tweak the product further then the SATA 6GBps interface is going to need to be replaced, sooner rather than later.

The drive is available for £455 inc vat, which is actually a fairly reasonable price considering the size and performance.

Pros:

• Lightning quick
• Sata 6GBps interface is already under ‘bandwidth limitation' threat
• This drive is leading the way for others to follow

Cons:

• It will hit the bank balance hard

KitGuru says: Two in Raid 0? yes, please.

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