The OCZ Vertex 3 Review (120GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2011 6:32 PM ESTThe NAND Matrix
It's not common for SSD manufacturers to give you a full list of all of the different NAND configurations they ship. Regardless how much we appreciate transparency, it's rarely offered in this industry. Manufacturers love to package all information into nice marketable nuggets and the truth doesn't always have the right PR tone to it. Despite what I just said, below is a table of every NAND device OCZ ships in its Vertex 2 and Vertex 3 products:
| OCZ Vertex 2 & Vertex 3 NAND Usage | ||||
| Process Node | Capacities | |||
| Intel L63B | 34nm | Up to 240GB | ||
| Micron L63B | 34nm | Up to 480GB | ||
| Spectek L63B | 34nm | 240GB to 360GB | ||
| Hynix | 32nm | Up to 120GB | ||
| Micron L73A | 25nm | Up to 120GB | ||
| Micron L74A | 25nm | 160GB to 480GB | ||
| Intel L74A | 25nm | 160GB to 480GB | ||
The data came from OCZ and I didn't have to sneak around to get it, it was given to me by Alex Mei, Executive Vice President of OCZ.
You've seen the end result, now let me explain how we got here.
OCZ accidentally sent me a 120GB Vertex 2 built with 32nm Hynix NAND. I say it was an accident because the drive was supposed to be one of the new 25nm Vertex 2s, but there was a screwup in ordering and I ended up with this one. Here's a shot of its internals:
You'll see that there are a ton of NAND devices on the board. Thirty two to be exact. That's four per channel. Do the math and you'll see we've got 32 x 4GB 32nm MLC NAND die on the PCB. This drive has the same number of NAND die per package as the new 25nm 120GB Vertex 2 so in theory performance should be the same. It isn't however:
| Vertex 2 NAND Performance Comparison | ||||
| AT Storage Bench Heavy 2011 | AT Storage Bench Light 2011 | |||
| 34nm IMFT | 120.1 MB/s | 155.9 MB/s | ||
| 25nm IMFT | 110.9 MB/s | 145.8 MB/s | ||
| 32nm Hynix | 92.1 MB/s | 125.6 MB/s | ||
Performance is measurably worse. You'll notice that I also threw in some 34nm IMFT numbers to show just how far performance has fallen since the old launch NAND.
Why not just keep using 34nm IMFT NAND? Ultimately that product won't be available. It's like asking for 90nm CPUs today, the whole point to Moore's Law is to transition to smaller manufacturing processes as quickly as possible.
Why is the Hynix 32nm NAND so much slower? That part is a little less clear to me. For starters we're only dealing with one die per package, we've established can have a negative performance impact. On top of that, SandForce's firmware may only be optimized for a couple of NAND devices. OCZ admitted that around 90% of all Vertex 2 shipments use Intel or Micron NAND and as a result SandForce's firmware optimization focus is likely targeted at those NAND types first and foremost. There are differences in NAND interfaces as well as signaling speeds which could contribute to performance differences unless a controller takes these things into account.
25nm Micron NAND
The 25nm NAND is slower than the 34nm offerings for a number of reasons. For starters page size increased from 4KB to 8KB with the transition to 25nm. Intel used this transition as a way to extract more performance out of the SSD 320, however that may have actually impeded SF-1200 performance as the firmware architecture wasn't designed around 8KB page sizes. I suspect SandForce just focused on compatibility here and not performance.
Secondly, 25nm NAND is physically slower than 34nm NAND:
| NAND Performance Comparison | ||||
| Intel 34nm NAND | Intel 25nm NAND | |||
| Read | 50 µs | 50 µs | ||
| Program | 900 µs | 1200 µs | ||
| Block Erase | 2 µs | 3 µs | ||
Program and erase latency are both higher, although admittedly you're working with much larger page sizes (it's unclear whether Intel's 1200 µs figure is for a full page program or a partial program).
The bad news is that eventually all of the 34nm IMFT drives will dry up. The worse news is that the 25nm IMFT drives, even with the same number of NAND devices on board, are lower in performance. And the worst news is that the drives that use 32nm Hynix NAND are the slowest of them all.
I have to mention here that this issue isn't exclusive to OCZ. All other SF drive manufacturers are faced with the same potential problem as they too must shop around for NAND and can't guarantee that they will always ship the same NAND in every single drive.
The Problem With Ratings
You'll notice that although the three NAND types I've tested perform differently in our Heavy 2011 workload, a quick run through Iometer reveals that they perform identically:
| Vertex 2 NAND Performance Comparison | ||||
| AT Storage Bench Heavy 2011 | Iometer 128KB Sequential Write | |||
| 34nm IMFT | 120.1 MB/s | 214.8 MB/s | ||
| 25nm IMFT | 110.9 MB/s | 221.8 MB/s | ||
| 32nm Hynix | 92.1 MB/s | 221.3 MB/s | ||
SandForce's architecture works by reducing the amount of data that actually has to be written to the NAND. When writing highly compressible data, not all NAND devices are active and we're not bound by the performance of the NAND itself since most of it is actually idle. SandForce is able to hide even significant performance differences between NAND implementations. This is likely why SandForce is more focused on NAND compatibility than performance across devices from all vendors.
Let's see what happens if we write incompressible data to these three drives however:
| Vertex 2 NAND Performance Comparison | ||||
| Iometer 128KB Sequential Write (Incompressible Data) | Iometer 128KB Sequential Write | |||
| 34nm IMFT | 136.6 MB/s | 214.8 MB/s | ||
| 25nm IMFT | 118.5 MB/s | 221.8 MB/s | ||
| 32nm Hynix | 95.8 MB/s | 221.3 MB/s | ||
It's only when you force SandForce's controller to write as much data in parallel as possible that you see the performance differences between NAND vendors. As a result, the label on the back of your Vertex 2 box isn't lying - whether you have 34nm IMFT, 25nm IMFT or 32nm Hynix the drive will actually hit the same peak performance numbers. The problem is that the metrics depicted on the spec sheets aren't adequate to be considered fully honest.
A quick survey of all SF-1200 based drives shows the same problem. Everyone rates according to maximum performance specifications and no one provides any hint of what you're actually getting inside the drive.
| SF-1200 Drive Rating Comparison | ||||
| 120GB Drive | Rated Sequential Read Speed | Rated Sequential Write Speed | ||
| Corsair Force F120 | 285 MB/s | 275 MB/s | ||
| G.Skill Phoenix Pro | 285 MB/s | 275 MB/s | ||
| OCZ Vertex 2 | Up to 280 MB/s | Up to 270 MB/s | ||
I should stop right here and mention that specs are rarely all that honest on the back of any box. Whether we're talking about battery life or SSD performance, if specs told the complete truth then I'd probably be out of a job. If one manufacturer is totally honest, its competitors will just capitalize on the aforementioned honesty by advertising better looking specs. And thus all companies are forced to bend the truth because if they don't, someone else will.
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jharmon - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
It's been almost a month since an update in the SSD world from Anandtech. Are there any reviews on the near horizon? You said one might want to wait for a purchase until you got some of the lower capacity drives in to test to compare with the vertex 3.Thanks for all your hard work in analysis, Anand!
jharmon - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
Maybe also address the issue with the hardware limitation from the Marvell controllers 91xx. If I understand it correctly, these will be be able to achieve the 500 MB/s. If that performance cannot be achieved, is the vertex 3 worth the premium?mrkimrkonja - Wednesday, May 4, 2011 - link
From these SSD articles I learned that TRIM is very important with SSD.I read somewhere that when you use SSD in RAID you lose TRIM support and some other things.
Is this true?
I now have 2 old ADATA SSD generation 1 in RAID0 they have 2x the performance comparing to a single drive bud they do not have TRIM anyway.
I already bought one VERTEX 2 60GB and thought buying anther one.
Always thought better more smaller disks in RAID than one big one.
If this is true I an thinking I would lose more over time without TRIM support than gain with RAID0.
Can you hal me with some info or first hand tests?
Foochey - Wednesday, May 4, 2011 - link
I would be very interested to see how the 480GB stacks up to these drives. Since these are parallel processing devices, you would think that the 480 would perform even better than the 240. Anand, any way you can get a 480 and test it? OCZ's specs look the same, so I'm guessing that they are using the smaller die chips or doing something with the way they write to the array. Any ideas? Price certainly makes the 480 out of the question for most of us, but I sure would be interested in its performance.jeffburg - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link
OCZ Just launched the Max IOPS Version. Is that worth the extra $10? Whats the difference between the two?Palen - Thursday, June 2, 2011 - link
Thank you for another great article.In the conclusion of this article it's advised to wait for a couple of weeks to see how the vertex 3 120 GB goes againts the other 3rd generation 120GB SSD's. Is there any indication that Anandtech will be recieving / testing any of these drives in the near future?
Another thing is RAID: I've been doing some digging on SSD's, since I didn't know much about them untill last week. The general picture is starting to make sence now. Bigger is ussually faster (within certain parameters). However i'm getting conflicting information about RAID. According to some it's worth it, while others urge to stay away from RAID (no TRIM support, etc). It would be nice to have a well respected opinion in the mass of conflicting information. How would for instance 2x 60 GB SSD's do against a same type/brand 120 GB SSD? and how does the raidcontroller fit into this equation? On-board vs. professional solution?
My gut says "stay away from raid!" because the SSD's allready scale in performance depending on their storagesize. Next to that the strain that an onboard controller will put on your CPU. And paying for a professional raidcard just seems silly, with the range of SSD PCIe storage solutions. But than again, what do I know?
paul-p - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
After 6 months of waiting for OCZ and Sandforce to fix their firmware from freezes and BSOD's, I can finally say it is fixed. No more freezes, no more BSOD's, performance is what is expected. And just to make sure all of the other suggestions were 100% a waste of time, I updated the firmware and DID NOT DO anything else except reboot my machine and magically everything became stable. So, after all these months of OCZ and Sandforce blaming everything under the sun including:The CMOS battery, OROM's, Intel Drivers, Intel Chipsets, Windows, LPM, Hotswap, and god knows what else, it turns out that none of those issues had anything to do with the real problem, which was the firmware.
While I'm happy that this bug is finally fixed, Sandforce and OCZ have irrepairably damaged their reputation for a lot of users on this forum.
Here is a list of terrible business practices that OCZ and Sandforce have done over the last year...
OCZ did not stand behind their product when it was clearly malfunctioning is horrible.
OCZ did not allow refunds KNOWING that the product is defective is ridiculous.
OCZ nor Sandforce even acknowledged that this was a problem and steadfastly maintained it only affected less than 1% of users.
The fact that OCZ claims this bug affected 1% of users is ridiculous. We now know it affected 100% of the drives out there. Most users just aren't aware enough to know why their computer froze or blue screened.
OCZ made their users beta test the firmwares to save money on their own testing
OCZ did not have a solution but expected users to wipe drives, restore from backups, secure erase, and do a million other things in order to "tire out" the user into giving up.
OCZ deletes and moves threads in order to do "damage control and pr spin".
But the worst sin of all is the fact that it took almost a year to fix such a MAJOR bug.
I really hope that OCZ learns from this experience, because I'm certain that users will be wary of Sandforce and OCZ for some time. It's a shame, because now that the drive works, I actually like it.
paul-p - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
I just want to thank Anandtech for being the ONLY site out there there called out OCZ and Sandforce for having defective products. While every other hardware site out there were kissing OCZ and Sandforces butt and saying that the Vertex 3 SSD was the best thing since sliced bread, Anandtech actually was one of the only sites that actually acknowledged that there was a major bug with the sandforce controllers.I can't believe all the review sites out there were praising the Vertex 3 for almost a year when the drive had major BSOD and freezing issues. A review should be more than running a benchmark on the drive, but checking to see how the drive performs and making sure it is stable. In my eyes, every other review site showed me that they care more about the sponsors and advertising dollars than the users that visit their site. So, once again, thanks Anandtech for speaking the truth when others wouldn't.
danwat12345 - Sunday, November 13, 2011 - link
I think I'll keep my 80GB Intel X25-m G2 SSD. From your benchmarks it looks like the 120GB Vertex 3 over SATA 2 isn't that much better with random read operations than my trusty ole' 80GB Intel.I am curious if your Anandtech storagebench 2011 test were done on completely in-compressible data? The random read numbers of the Vertex 3 120GB SATA2 drive wasn't very impressive.
chainspell - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
you had me at page 4...tell Alex Mei (the CEO) he has my business, I just bought 2 of these on Newegg!