OCZ Octane 128GB SSD Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 28, 2011 12:27 AM ESTPerformance Over Time & TRIM
In our initial Octane review I mentioned that the drive exhibited very high write amplification under a workload comprised of heavy random writes. I mentioned that this would mostly impact server workloads, however you could see issues if you were running on a system without TRIM enabled. We turn to our standard TRIM test to show how bad things could get.
The easiest way to ensure real time garbage collection is working is to fill the drive with data and then write sequentially across the drive. All LBAs will have data in them and any additional writes will force the controller to allocate from the drive's pool of spare area. This path shouldn't have any bottlenecks in it; the process should be seamless. As we've already seen from our Iometer numbers, sequential write performance at low queue depths is around 160MB/s. A quick HD Tach pass of a completely full drive gives us the same result:
The Octane works as expected here, but now what happens if we subject the drive to a ton of 4KB random writes? Unfortunately this is where the Octane falls short. Our standard test involves a 20 minute, 4KB random write across all LBAs at a queue depth of 32. Look at the drive's performance after our torture test:
Average write speed is now less than a tenth of what it was when new. The good news is that any reasonable client workload won't put the drive in this state. The bad news is that OCZ is going to have its work cut out for itself when it goes to move Everest into the enterprise space. With the drive in this state we can test the garbage collection path of the firmware. A quick format in Windows 7 TRIMs all user addressable LBAs, which should fully restore performance if TRIM is working:
Indeed it does. In reality, client workloads won't generate anywhere near this amount of random data and TRIM should help keep everything else in check. I would still like to see lower write amplification (it makes me sleep better at night) but I suspect we won't see that until we meet Everest's true successor.
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daos - Thursday, December 29, 2011 - link
I recently purchased this drive from the egg and I love it. Very reliable and not one blue screen. This is coming straight from a Sandforce 2281 Corsair Force GT 60GB that would blue screen sitting idle. That drive drove me crazy. Ill never go back to another Sandforce. So far so good. Been running this drive for abourt a month now.gamoniac - Thursday, December 29, 2011 - link
Anand,Last October, you reviewed Kingston's SSDNow V+100 128GB (with Toshiba controller) and gave it a pretty high mark. It performed admirably under both light and heavy Anand Benchmark. A couple months back, the new SSDNow V200 is out, with JMicron controller and better specs than the V+100. I personally own two of each model but the benchmarks I have taken left me puzzled as to what to think about the newcomer. The random read/write department is great but the sequential read/write department is way bad, despite of the 6Gbps specs. I personally thinkg V+100 is way better and feel quite a bit ripped off by V200.
There is no reviews out there for V200 yet and detail info is hard to find. Do you think you can shed some light on the latest from Kingston? Thanks much, and happy new year.
erple2 - Friday, December 30, 2011 - link
Wasn't there a firmware update that was released for the M4's that substantially boosted speeds? I seem to remember that happening after the 256GB drive was released/reviewed.erple2 - Friday, December 30, 2011 - link
Meep. Nevermind. I just re-read the article you linked.johnf1285 - Friday, December 30, 2011 - link
So at what point can we expect to have this SSD turn into a brick just like every other OCZ SSD that I've ever owned?chasM - Sunday, January 1, 2012 - link
Sorry to say it, but all the prices from newegg,amazon, and Compusa are for a different drive. That model is more in the $170 range.LoosCarl - Sunday, January 1, 2012 - link
Get OCZ Octane SSDs from Amazon, if you missed it: http://cl.lk/21hkw07binqq - Friday, January 6, 2012 - link
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