OCZ Vertex 3 Preview: Faster and Cheaper than the Vertex 3 Pro
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 24, 2011 9:02 AM ESTRandom Read/Write Speed
The four corners of SSD performance are as follows: random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speed. Random accesses are generally small in size, while sequential accesses tend to be larger and thus we have the four Iometer tests we use in all of our reviews.
Our first test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). I perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time. We use both standard pseudo randomly generated data for each write as well as fully random data to show you both the maximum and minimum performance offered by SandForce based drives in these tests. The average performance of SF drives will likely be somewhere in between the two values for each drive you see in the graphs. For an understanding of why this matters, read our original SandForce article.
Many of you have asked for random write performance at higher queue depths. What I have below is our 4KB random write test performed at a queue depth of 32 instead of 3. While the vast majority of desktop usage models experience queue depths of 0 - 5, higher depths are possible in heavy I/O (and multi-user) workloads:
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j.harper12 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
I'm just happy that this far along, my Agility 2 is still holding up well. Thanks for all of the great reviews!Dug - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Anand,Could you please run the Anandtech Storage Bench 2011 with 1 standard hard drive, even if it takes forever to run? I always like to see a reference as many of us don't have SSD yet.
Denithor - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Seconded! Just run using like a Caviar Black drive so we can see how much better SSD is versus a top-of-the-line mechanical drive.Would be appreciated!
mckirkus - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Thirded. Perspective is a good thing.cactusdog - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link
Fourthed, and i know a guy who wants fifthed.pandemonium - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link
Would be nice for technicalities, but you can see the comparison on the 2010 version with WD's Velociraptor.Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
I would like to know how the 60GB version performs. Especially if they are cutting the number of chips in half vs the 256GB version.DarkKnight_Y2K - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
According to the press release on OCZ's website the Vertex 3 will be available in 120GB and 240GB capacities. The Vertex 3 Pro wil be available in 100GB, 200GB, & 400GB capacities.Hopefully they will eventually release 60GB version. I would love to have two in RAID 0.
Per Hansson - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Hi, has the much talked about hibernation problem with the Sandforce drives been solved in the 2xxx series?Loosing Hibernation is pretty much a deal killer for me in a laptop :(
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&am...
douglaswilliams - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Will these faster drives speed up virus scans?Currently, when a virus scan is running, my laptop performance is crippled.