OCZ Vertex 3 Preview: Faster and Cheaper than the Vertex 3 Pro
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 24, 2011 9:02 AM ESTFaster than the Vertex 3 Pro?
SandForce’s specs put the SF-2281 at up to 500MB/s reads and writes, just like the SF-2582/2682. OCZ’s specs for the Vertex 3 however put it slightly above the performance of the Vertex 3 Pro:
I asked SandForce to explain the discrepancy. It turns out that SandForce doesn’t really enforce its specs on its partners. It’s up to the partner to test and advertise whatever it would like as long as it can back those claims up. In this case, the Micron 25nm NAND appears to perform a bit better than the 32nm Toshiba NAND that was used on the Vertex 3 Pro. As a result, sequential write speeds are slightly higher.
OCZ also rates the Vertex 3 as having slightly lower random write performance than the Vertex 3 Pro, but the difference is not that great in practice.
For desktop performance this does mean that the Vertex 3 will likely be a bit faster than the Vertex 3 Pro we previewed a week ago. You trade off enterprise level features for price, but you don't sacrifice performance.
The Test
I'll point out once more that this is beta hardware running beta firmware. I've only had the Vertex 3 for a matter of days before publishing this and that's honestly not enough time to put it through anything more than a handful of performance tests. Real reliability and bug testing will take weeks if not months. Keep that in mind if you decide to be an early adopter on one of these drives.
| CPU | Intel Core i7 965 running at 3.2GHz (Turbo & EIST Disabled) Intel Core i7 2600K running at 3.4GHz (Turbo & EIST Disabled) - for AT SB 2011 |
| Motherboard: | Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) Intel H67 Motherboard |
| Chipset: | Intel X58 + Marvell SATA 6Gbps PCIe Intel H67 |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel IMSM 8.9 Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel RST 10.2 |
| Memory: | Qimonda DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 285 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 190.38 64-bit |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows 7 x64 |
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j.harper12 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
I'm just happy that this far along, my Agility 2 is still holding up well. Thanks for all of the great reviews!Dug - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Anand,Could you please run the Anandtech Storage Bench 2011 with 1 standard hard drive, even if it takes forever to run? I always like to see a reference as many of us don't have SSD yet.
Denithor - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Seconded! Just run using like a Caviar Black drive so we can see how much better SSD is versus a top-of-the-line mechanical drive.Would be appreciated!
mckirkus - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Thirded. Perspective is a good thing.cactusdog - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link
Fourthed, and i know a guy who wants fifthed.pandemonium - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link
Would be nice for technicalities, but you can see the comparison on the 2010 version with WD's Velociraptor.Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
I would like to know how the 60GB version performs. Especially if they are cutting the number of chips in half vs the 256GB version.DarkKnight_Y2K - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
According to the press release on OCZ's website the Vertex 3 will be available in 120GB and 240GB capacities. The Vertex 3 Pro wil be available in 100GB, 200GB, & 400GB capacities.Hopefully they will eventually release 60GB version. I would love to have two in RAID 0.
Per Hansson - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Hi, has the much talked about hibernation problem with the Sandforce drives been solved in the 2xxx series?Loosing Hibernation is pretty much a deal killer for me in a laptop :(
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&am...
douglaswilliams - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Will these faster drives speed up virus scans?Currently, when a virus scan is running, my laptop performance is crippled.