The OCZ Vector 180 (240GB, 480GB & 960GB) SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on March 24, 2015 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- OCZ
- Barefoot 3
- Vector 180
Final Words
From a technological standpoint, the Vector 180 is the most interesting Barefoot 3 based SSD that we have seen in a while. With partial power loss protection (PFM+) and a new 960GB capacity, it's able to bring something new to the now two and a half year old Barefoot 3 platform and most importantly it offers some long desired differentiation to OCZ's client SSD lineup.
I'm not sure what to think about PFM+ because drive bricking due to sudden power losses is fortunately quite rare, and if it was a critical issue then all client-grade SSDs should incorporate some level of physical power loss protection -- not just the high-end drives. In my mind it mainly offers an extra layer of protection and peace of mind, but OCZ would have had to go with full power loss protection in order to add real value to the end-user (although in that case OCZ would have jeopardized its own enterprise SSD sales). I think PFM+ is a nice addition and at least brings something slightly new to the market, but I wouldn't consider it to be a deal breaker because any user that really needs power loss protection will still have to look for enterprise drives.
One point I want to bring up is the performance consistency at different capacities. It really looks like the Barefoot 3 was designed ideally for 240/256GB as going above that will result in some issues with performance consistency. It's normal that companies have an optimal capacity in mind when designing a controller because optimizing for higher capacities will always require more processing power due to the additional metadata handling, which in turn results in higher cost. Back in 2012 when the Barefoot 3 was launched the price per GB was nearly double of what it is today, so it made sense to focus on 120GB and 240GB capacities since 480GB and higher were a small niche due to the high price. Fortunately the IO consistency issues didn't translate to our Storage Benches, but still there are better optimized high capacity SSDs available that don't have any consistency issues.
It's also too bad that the Barefoot 3 lacks support for slumber power states because its active power consumption is simply the best we have tested so far (excluding the 960GB model) and the difference in favor of the Vector 180 is in fact quite substantial. The Vector 180 would be a killer for mobile use if it had proper slumber power management, but since the idle power consumption is ~700mW at its best whereas other drives are able to achieve 20mW, I just can't recommend the Vector 180 or any Barefoot 3 SSD for a laptop/tablet. OCZ's next generation controller, the JetExpress, will support DevSleep and slumber power states and I certainly hope it will share Barefoot 3's excellent active power consumption behavior.
| Amazon Price Comparison (3/24/2015) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/250/256GB | 480/500/512GB | 960GB/1TB | |
| OCZ Vector 180 (MSRP) | $90 | $150 | $275 | $500 |
| OCZ Vertex 460A | $65 | $106 | $200 | - |
| OCZ ARC 100 | $60 | $85 | $157 | - |
| Corsair Neutron XT | - | $170 | $260 | $540 |
| Crucial MX100 | $72 | $110 | $209 | - |
| Intel SSD 730 | - | $144 | $240 | - |
| Samsung SSD 850 EVO | $70 | $117 | $210 | $370 |
| Samsung SSD 850 Pro | $100 | $155 | $290 | $500 |
| SanDisk Extreme Pro | - | $146 | $285 | $475 |
| Transcend SSD370 | $58 | $90 | $175 | $360 |
Since the Vector 180 is OCZ's flagship, it's also priced accordingly. The MSRPs are very close to what the 850 Pro and Extreme Pro currently retail for and it's clear that OCZ is considering the two as direct competitors to the Vector 180. The problem, however, is that the 850 Pro is better as it's faster, more durable and has longer warranty and better hardware encryption support (Opal & eDrive), so the only area where the Vector 180 can compete is the price, which isn't happening with the MSRPs (of course, actual street pricing may end up being different).
All in all, despite PFM+ and a 960GB capacity, the Vector 180 is ultimately the same Barefoot 3 that we have seen numerous times already, and it's a natural transition to more cost effective Toshiba's A19nm NAND. The performance is good and roughly on par with the Extreme Pro, but it's not high enough for the Vector 180 to truly have an advantage over other high-end drives. To be frank, there's no arguing about the fact that the 850 Pro is a clear leader when it comes to SATA 6Gbps performance. On the other hand, given that client PCIe SSDs are only a quarter or two away, I think anyone who is considering a high-end SSD should hold off their purchase for now. There is no point in upgrading from a SATA SSD to another SATA SSD at this point because the performance benefit will be marginal compared to what PCIe will bring to the table, so you will simply get far more value for your money if you wait a bit. That's also where OCZ's focus is right now and the JetExpress definitely looks promising.
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nathanddrews - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
This exactly. LOLSamus - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
Isn't it a crime to put Samsung and support in the same sentence? That companies Achilles heal is complete lack of support. Look at all the people with GalaxyS3's and smart tv's that were left out to dry the moment next gen models came out. And on a polarizingly opposite end of the spectrum is Apple who still supports the nearly 4 year old iPhone 4S. I'm no Apple fan but that is commendable and something all companies should pay attention too. Customer support pays off.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
Apple did a shit job with the white Core Duo iMacs which all develop bad pixel lines. We had fourteen in a lab and all of them developed the problem. Apple also dropped the ball on people with the 8600 GT and similar Nvidia GPUs in their Macbook Pros by refusing to replace the defective GPUs with anything other than new defective GPUs. Both, as far as I know, caused class-action lawsuits.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
I forgot to mention that not only did Apple not actually fix the problem with those bad GPUs, customers would have to jump through a bunch of hoops like bringing their machines to an Apple Store so someone there could decide if they qualify or not for a replacement defective GPU.matt.vanmater - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
I am curious, does the drive return a write IO as complete as soon as it is stored in the DRAM?If so, this drive could be fantastic to use as a ZFS ZIL.
Think of it this way: you partition it so the size does not exceed the DRAM size (e.g. 512MB), and use that partition as ZIL. The small partition size guarantees that any writes to the drive fit in DRAM, and the PFM guarantees there is no loss. This is similar in concept to short-stroking hard drives with a spinning platter.
For those of you that don't know, ZFS performance is significantly enhanced by the existence of a ZIL device with very low latency (and DRAM on board this drive should fit that bill). A fast ZIL is particularly important for people who use NFS as a datastore for VMWare. This is because VMWare forces NFS to Sync write IOs, even if your ZFS config is to not require sync. This device may or may not perform as well as a DDRDRIVE (ddrdrive.com) but it comes in at about 1/20th the price so it is a very promising idea!
ocztosh -- has your team considered the use of this device as a ZFS array ZIL device like i describe above?
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
PFM+ is limited to protecting the NAND mapping table, so any user data will still be lost in case of a sudden power loss. Hence the Vector 180 isn't really suitable for the scenario you described.matt.vanmater - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
OK good to know. To be honest though, what matters more in this scenario (for me) is if the device returns a write io as successful immediately when it is stored in DRAM, or if it waits until it is stored in flash.As nils_ mentions below, a UPS is another way of partially mitigating a power failure. In my case, the battery backup is a nice to have rather than a must have.
matt.vanmater - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
One minor addition... OCZ was clearly thinking about ZFS ZIL devices when they announced prototype devices called "Aeon" about 2 years ago. They even blogged about this use case:http://eblog.ocz.com/ssd-powered-clouds-times-chan...
Unfortunately OCZ never brought these drives to market (I wish they did!) so we're stuck waiting for a consumer DRAM device that isn't 10+ year old technology or $2k+ in price tag.
nils_ - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
Something like the PMC Flashtec devices? Those are boards with 4-16GiB of DRAM backed by the same size of flash chips and capacitors with a NVMe interface. If the system loses power the DRAM is flushed to flash and restored when the power is back on. This is great for things like ZIL, Journals, doublewrite buffer (like in MySQL/MariaDB), ceph journals etc..And before it comes up, a UPS can fail too (I've seen it happen more often than I'd like to count).
matt.vanmater - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
I saw those PMC Flashtec devices as well and they look promising, but I don't see any for sale yet. Hopefully they don't become vaporware like OCZ Aeon drives.Also, in my opinion I prefer a SATAIII or SAS interface over PCI-e, because (in theory) a SATA/SAS device will work in almost any motherboard on any Operating System without special drivers, whereas PCI-e devices will need special device drivers for each OS. Obviously, waiting for drivers to be created limits which systems a device can be used in.
True PCI-e will definitely have greater throughput than SATA/SAS, but the ZFS ZIL use case needs very low latency and NOT necessarily high throughput. I haven't seen any data indicating that PCI-e is any better/worse on IO latency than SATA/SAS.