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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Flashfir - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
A little correction to your claim that OCZ is becoming jack of all trades, practically failure at all of them.Almost ALL of OCZ new lines of PSUs have been garnering really great reviews over reputable review sites like Jonnyguru and Hardwaresecrets. Personally I'm running an OCZ StealthXStream II 600w and I did my review searching, seemed good, it's running my rig excellently. 80+ Cert which actually meets bronze level!
Newest lines: ZX, Z, ZT, ZS series. I recall seeing ZS reviews, ZX reviews and ZT reviews all glowing, >9/10 ratings on Jonnyguru!
PSUs doing well, their SSD lines are suffering granted. The particular Vertex Plus line got crippled by data corruption issues when used with SATA I, instead of Sata II or III aka, lower than Sata 3GB/S standard.
They didn't loudly warn people about it nor did they loudly advertise the fix which was included in the 3.55 firmware update. I helped my roommate get one and it works great but I had to research and double check to see if all the 50%+ negative reviews on NewEgg were because of a controllable issue. It was true! And now his netbook is lightning fast.
Beenthere - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Just because of late OCZ's PSUs have improved, doesn't mean that they have resolved their QC/design issues any more than fixing one SandForce BSOD issues means SSDs are now free of reliability and compatibility issues. I just call it like it is and OCZ has and continues to have a very checkered history on product quality.Corsair has also had issues with their PSUs, SSDs and closed loop coolers. This is what happens when companies rush crap out the door for quick profits without doing proper qualification of the goods. As long as "enthusiasts" buy this half-baked crap and make these companies huge profits, that's what they will continue to deliver - crap.
Flashfir - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
True. Everything you say is true. You know how emphasizing the bad without talking about anything good tends to give people the wrong ideas about how things really are.If OCZ's PSUs continue to be good from here on out, then their past is still checkered but they've spent enough effort to show they're good. Which we're seeing if they will do.
It's not about being right or wrong but whether or not if people who don't know much who read in can really get the same sense of "it as it really is". I wanted to correct you a little bit to clarify that PSU lines can possibly be improving.
Beenthere - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
To be perfectly fair OCZ would not be at the top of my list for any product at the moment. Maybe five years down the road they will be selling reliable, trouble-free products, but right now I wouldn't touch their stuff. Same goes for Corsair other than their RAM. You couldn't pay me to use a half-baked Asus mobo either. All of this stuff is rushed out the door for profit before it's ready for prime time, IME.Unfortunately the PC industry is rifle with crap products - because people are naive enough to buy them.
jleach1 - Sunday, November 27, 2011 - link
Oh yeah? My stealthxstream blew in a spectacular manner 6 months after I purchased it and it filled my whole house with that burnt electronics smell that you can never seem to get out of your nose.That combined with the nonexistent support I received for a set of DDR3 dims that required lowering the speed and upping the voltages every few months has me avoiding OCZ for the 12 months Anand spoke of at all costs.
I didn't even attempt to rma my power supply.
How many people have decided just to junk their hardware after being nickeled out of a manufacturers rebate or hounded on by ocz support for months with useless questions, I don't know. And we'll probably never know.
jimbowdang - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Great review Anand, reading your comments on passing up on this drive for use on OS X makes me wonder if those hacks that supposedly allow non-Apple SSDs to use Trim actually work. I've been using an Intel G2 160 GB SSD in my 2010 13" MBP for over a year now and I've done the hack but I've never seen any testing to confirm that it actually works. I would love to see some testing on this as real Trim support would open up a lot of SSD options for OS X.NCM - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Surely you'd notice if your enabling OS X TRIM on a (non-Sandforce) SSD wasn't working, at least unless you had a quite large amount of spare capacity to start with. Even then you'd eventually start reusing storage and would see a slowdown.I think it's worth making clear that although OS X only turns on TRIM by default for Apple supplied SSDs, it's trivial to enable it for third party units. It also seems reasonable to suppose that anyone motivated to install their own SSD on a Mac would also know to do that.
We're currently running four of our Macs with SSDs, two laptops and an Xserve that I ordered that way, plus a Mac Pro that I retrofitted.
Peroxyde - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Did the new CEO also setup un-honored Mail In Rebate as a business? If so it is quite successful.geddarkstorm - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Had that happen to me with two different kingston products. Don't trust mail-in-rebate to begin with, no matter who is peddling it.krazyderek - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Would have really liked to see a throughput vs transfer size for this drive :( some of us move around large compressed movies for editing and i'd like to know how the octane fairs against the m4 in such cases.also, where is the avg access time, and max latency?? could also be good points to have about a new controller!