OCZ Vertex 3 (240GB) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 6, 2011 1:50 AM ESTTRIM Performance
In practice, SandForce based drives running a desktop workload do very well and typically boast an average write amplification below 1 (more writes to the device than actual writes to NAND). My personal SF-1200 drive had a write amplification of around 0.6 after several months of use. However if subjected to a workload composed entirely of incompressible writes (e.g. tons of compressed images, videos and music) you can back the controller into a corner.
To simulate this I filled the drive with incompressible data, ran a 4KB (100% LBA space, QD32) random write test with incompressible data for 20 minutes, and then ran AS-SSD (another incompressible data test) to see how low performance could get:
| OCZ Vertex 3 240GB - Resiliency - AS SSD Sequential Write Speed - 6Gbps | |||||
| Clean | After Torture | After TRIM | |||
| OCZ Vertex 3 240GB | 284.4 MB/s | 278.5 MB/s | 286.3 MB/s | ||
| OCZ Vertex 3 120GB | 162.1 MB/s | 38.3 MB/s | 101.5 MB/s | ||
The 240GB drive is simply more resilient when faced with the same length of workload than the 120GB drive. It's possible that the extra physical spare area the 240GB drive has is responsible for its better behavior after torture. The larger drive may simply have to be tortured for longer in order to see a similar drop in performance. However 20 minutes of incompressible 4KB random writes would still fill up all of the drive's spare area and force the SSD into block recycling in only half that time. SandForce's block cleaning algorithm might do very well on the first pass of filling the drive but fall short after multiple passes where the spare area is overwritten. Either way, a desktop user is highly unlikely to ever encounter any serious slowdown with the 240GB drive.
Power Consumption
Power consumption is in line with the 120GB Vertex 3. Our earlier sample had issues with idle power consumption which have since been resolved in the final shipping firmware. Note that all of our tests are conducted with LPM disabled, a feature that seems to be problematic on some combinations of chipsets and SF-2200 hardware.
Final Words
When we previewed the 240GB Vertex 3 it looked like game over for the SandForce competitors this round. With the final hardware tested, I have to agree with our original conclusion. If you're spending $500 on a drive, the 240GB Vertex 3 is your best bet.
There are some mild changes in the results here and there but nothing significant (other than lower power consumption compared to the pre-release sample). Intel's SSD 510 and Crucial's m4 are the closest competitors. The only reason I can see going for Intel's 510 over the 240GB Vertex 3 is the reliability aspect. Intel has typically had lower return rates than OCZ and while OCZ tends to take care of its customers very well, many would just rather not have an issue to begin with. I will say that SandForce reliability has come a long way in the past year but there's still a lot of proving that both SF and OCZ have to do with the Vertex 3 to really cement themselves as a top tier player in the SSD space.
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dagamer34 - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Yeah, I kinda addressed that with the fact that "should you pay $100 to boot Windows in 9 seconds instead of 14". I'm arguing the practical purpose of it, not the theoretical one.People don't buy SSDs for faster boot times because that's something you do only once a day. They buy them to avoid the silly 15 sec Photoshop load time and increase the general responsiveness of their system. Once you go from 6.8ms latency to 0.1ms latency, I don't see how you improve that further.
Omid.M - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
I've noticed every time you cover SSDs that you have a recommendation for OS X that's generally different from your conclusion in the article.Is that the case here as well?
How would you rank the top 3 SSDs for Macs, if each is from a different vendor? From a reliability standpoint, as I don't think the difference in speed is noticeable to the end user unless performing specific tasks:
Intel 510 (or 320)
Vertex 3
Crucial C300
What do you think, Anand?
@moids
purrcatian - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Macs don't support TRIM. There aren't too many high performance SSDs with which you can get away with using them without TRIM and expect long term speed. SandForce controllers have always been good at working without TRIM, so the Vertex 3 would likely be your best bet.The Marvel controllers in the Crucial C300 and Intel 510 are know for not working too well without TRIM, so they wouldn't be a good choice for a Mac.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
If you've got a Mac with a 6Gbps interface, then the Vertex 3 240GB is a solid recommendation. Note that some users have had issues with the 2011 MBPs and Vertex 3s but personally I've lucked out. I suspect there may be some odd issues with Apple's ribbon cable for the 6Gbps bay.If you're running a 3Gbps Mac then I'd say SSD 510 or 320. Still waiting to see how the smaller capacity drives perform though.
Take care,
Anand
Omid.M - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Anand,And I bet Apple has been silent about the ribbon cable theory?
I would hope a company with so many engineering resources (and so vertically integrated) could quickly look into something like that and rule it out.
@moids
darwinosx - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
I know why wouldn't Apple drop everything and use all their resources to investigate every theory about their hardware...darwinosx - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Many, many Mac users are having issues with the Intel 510 but have seen no issues with the 320.kasakka - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
OSX does support TRIM now, but it's only enabled for Apple branded drives. There's a hack that lets you enable it for all drives and at least on my X25-M it shows as enabled but can't say anything about performance - even without it the drive has been very fast for the year I've had it.I guess that OSX Lion will officially support TRIM for all drives.
Omid.M - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Thanks for the reply.I understand TRIM is not supported natively for non-Apple SSDs, but I also have read about the kext hack that enables TRIM for 3rd party drives. Of course, my question implies that I would enable this hack to try it out.
From what I've read on MacRumors forums (and I believe AT forums), people are having better luck with Intel 320 than the Vertex 3. The speed difference can't be that noticeable in every day use (save for niche situations?), so I'd take reliability over a marginal increase in speed, assuming TRIM would be enabled via the hack.
I think I would take the Intel 320 300 GB (280 GB usable) over the Vertex 3 240 GB.
I'd love to see a comparison of error rates (RMA rates, I guess) between the manufacturers for those specific drive capacities.
Maybe AFTER OCZ sends Anand the last batch of requested SSDs for testing? :)
@moids
darwinosx - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
But they will in a month or so when Tiger comes out. Or you can download TRIM functionality right now.