The OCZ Octane Review (512GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 23, 2011 12:00 PM ESTFinal Words
The Indilinx Everest is a surprisingly competent controller. When OCZ first mentioned its work on the controller to me I wrote it off as yet another low performing alternative that wasn't worth consideration. Based on its performance in our Storage Bench tests, I'd say the OCZ Octane is easily able to hold its own against SandForce based drives. The obvious benefit is you get solid performance regardless of the type of data you're moving around - everything from text to compressed movies can move at the same rate. The benefit is also a downside. SandForce drives tend to have very good average write amplification (0.60 - 0.70) thanks to their real time compression/dedupe of commonly used files. The result is relatively consistent performance over time, something that more traditional SSDs can't offer nearly as well. With TRIM enabled this should be a moot point, but it's still an advantage that no one else can duplicate without SandForce's technology.
Write amplification is a concern, although I suspect it'll only be a problem for enterprise workloads. The bigger issue is that to address these limitations, OCZ will likely have to do a significant redesign of the Octane's firmware architecture. OCZ did let me know that an even faster Octane H drive was due out in the not-too-distant future. It's possible that the Octane H may address my concerns here. I'll find out in due time.
It's clear that the Octane is a powerful competitor, what matters now is its reliability. In the past OCZ has been at the mercy of third party controller makers to fix bugs in their firmware, but now with Indilinx in house I wonder how things will change. I believe OCZ needs a good 12 months of an Intel or Samsung-like track record to really build confidence in its products. The brand definitely took a hit with all of the SandForce BSOD issues (and the wild goose chase interim "solutions" to the problem). OCZ has the opportunity to start fresh with Octane and there can be no finger pointing this time. The controller, firmware and drive are all produced in house. I don't expect the drive to be perfect in every system, but it had better be very close to it.
The good news is that if OCZ is able to deliver reliable and compatible firmware, the Octane is worth owning. It performs at the top of its class, and it's priced more aggressively than OCZ's SandForce based drives. My standard recommendation for any new SSD still applies: wait and see. Let others (myself included, the Octane will be going into a work machine starting today) be the beta testers. If the waters look safe, only then should you jump in.
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iwod - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
So while hopefully pulling Seq Read Write Further until we reach the same point of the curve as Random Write, which should be fairly easy, SSD needs to Significantly improve Random ReadChloiber - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Anand - why don't you also test Random Read with a queue depth of 32? I agree that QD32 isn't as important as below-10s, but I don't quite understand why there is no QD32 Random Read but a QD32 Random Write?mino - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
NAND 512GBUser Capacity 476GiB
I hope AT staff is aware that:
512GB (GigaByte) == 512*10^9 Bytes == 476*2^30 Bytes == 476 GiB (GibiByte)
If so, then what does "User capacity" mean in that table?
Provided a claimed 7% spare area, "User capacity" would be 512 GB*0.93 = 476.16 GB == 443.5 GiB.
In my humble opinion, the reality is such:
NAND Capacity is 512GiB
User Capacity is 476 GiB (== 512GB)
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
No, a 512GB drive should have 512GB of usable capacity. And the Octane apparently does (as do other 512GB SSDs).It also has 512GiB of flash memory on board.
512GiB / 512GB = 1024^3 / 1000^3 = 1.0737, which is about 7% reserved.
mino - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Yes, I suggest/expect the same thing.Now, please go and read the table at the beginning of the article which clearly states (as of now):
NAND 1TB 512GB 256GB 128GB
User Capacity 953GiB 476GiB 238GiB 119GiB
;)
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Anand always gets his GiB / GB wrong. I don't think I have seen him get it entirely right in any article. So I tend to ignore his mistakes now. But you are correct that his NAND flash capacity row is wrong in this article. He wrote "GB" when he should have written "GiB".I was just responding to the line where you said the user capacity is 443.5 GiB (no, it is 476GiB, Anand at least got that right). Anyway, I think we are in agreement.
mino - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
Yeah.What I do not understand why AT insists on using both GiB and GB in an article and making consistently fools of themselves by using it wrong..
If AT "named" all GiB values in that table as "GB", I would not really bother, as that is a common practice.
What always pisses me off is the smart-ass use of both *B and *iB in the same table while consistently getting it wrong one way or the other.
Why do I bother?
Because this sloppiness puts the important spare area claims into the "maybe, if they did not miscalculate" category...
Avenger762 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
I'm not sure if the OCZ name is really recovering. I have purchased many of the Vertex 30GB and Vertex 2 40GB drives for workstations in my organization as well as OCZ RAM. I had an ongoing fiasco on getting the RMA'd RAM back. In addition about 10% of the Vertex 30GB's have failed and 2 of the Vertex 2 40GB's that were purchased about 4 months ago just failed today. As soon as my supplier can get a contract with Kingston or SanDisk SSD's, I believe that I will switch over. OCZ was always good for my personal PC, but in large volumes for the organization that I work for, they fall way short.LB-ID - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
...from OCZ's 3-series drives (Vertex, Agility, etc.). They were basically inoperable for a large chunk of their client base, and even after seven months now, although their current firmware is a vast improvement, issues still persist for some. Couple that with the dismissive (and sometimes worse) attitude displayed by their 'customer service', and you have a company with a badly-damaged reputation. I'll be steering clear of them for the foreseeable future, particularly with so many comparably-priced options with far better stability available from their competitors.Beenthere - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
In all honesty OCZ as a company has never impressed me. I never found their tweaked RAM to be all that great. It was a niche product that eventually made them a lot of money when review sites hyped it but the performance gains were really more in benchmarks than in system performance.Then OCZ moved on to PSUs. As history has shown this has been a mixed bag for them too. Lots of QC and design issues from their suppliers didn't help. Then they bought PCPC to try and figure out how to produce quality PSUs. Today they still have a mixed bag of PSUs under the OCZ brand with only PCPCs stuff always be top quality.
Now OCZ is flooding the market with SSDs. Needless to say all SSD suppliers have had issues with the immature tech they have been dumping in the market for naive consumers to gobble up. There has been a pretty high price to pay for being naive and jumping on these half-baked SSDs, especially OCZ's.
It would appear that OCZ is trying to stay one step ahead of the competition with all sorts of variations in SSDs be it SandForce based, Revo or now Octane. This "shotgun approach" may work for sales but as we know, OCZ's SSD quality and compatibility resembles that of their RAM and PSUs... NOT very inspiring.
So the watch word is WAIT and let other folks be UNPAID Beta testers on these half-baked products - as Anand so rightly suggested.