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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
90 Comments
View All Comments
spudit99 - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Because these drives are so new and right on the cutting edge, this is probably not going to happen. The enthusiast community is going to do be doing this job for them, letting them both sell drives and fix issues along the way. I'm still mucking around with a year old CS300 that took months to get running as desired....Anand went through the same debacle.if you are looking for a super stable SSD with a wide compatiblity range, the OCZ Vertex 3 probably is not the best choice. I would suggest either Samsung or Intel SSD's if stability is key.
sor - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Unfortunately there seems to be some sort of incompatibility between Linux and the Vertex 3. Specifically newer kernels, such as most recent versions of ubuntu. Symptoms include the disk not being found on boot about 80% of the time.From the logs and reports, it looks like the disk doesn't return from the ATA 'identify' command the way linux expects it to. It's a real bummer for me since Linux is more than just a hobby, at this point I've got a 240G Vertex 3 that I can't return for anything but a replacement. Wish I would have just gone with a C300/M4, or 520.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+b...
sor - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
I should add that we use hundreds of SSDs at work. We deploy maybe 8-10 a week. We've been eagerly awaiting the new Sandforce controllers to come out in order to try to use them in our servers, but since they don't play nice with Linux it's out of the question. Maybe another brand would work, but my impression was that the firmwares are mostly the same and come from Sandforce.DanaG - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
If the Vertex 3 is anywhere near as buggy as the Vertex 2, I don't want one.It seems the drive can't handle ATA Security, even though it claims support for it. The drive fails to respond if given non-data (such as "unlock") commands after resume from suspend!
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread...
jcompagner - Saturday, May 7, 2011 - link
ah, then this is what i had with an older driver of intelBSOD always when resuming
The latest driver of intel i don't have that problem anymore but i guess that now doesn't send that command or something
But yes i already told OCZ at there forum that they really should look into this, that it is not a real driver issue (yes the driver can fix it by not sending those commands) but it is really an issue that the Vertex 2 or 3 doesn't really work well with all the sata commands, i think many problems reported by many peoples are all coming down to that.
OCZ/Sandforge should really really be looking into that!
DanaG - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
For me, it's not the driver doing it -- the same happens in both Windows and Linux. It's my laptop's firmware that's sending "non-data commands".How can you claim to "support" ATA Security if the drive becomes unresponsive when told to unlock? If you suspend with drive locked, you can be nearly 100% certain you'll want to unlock the drive at resume.
For some people, it doesn't even take lock/unlock to make the drive crap out -- perhaps the BIOS calls an IDENTIFY command, or such.
Anand, can you please try to get OCZ and/or Sandforce to do something about this buggy firmware? My old Indilinx drive handled suspend/resume (while locked) perfectly fine!
Check out that forum post for info on how to reproduce the issue.
danjw - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
I am considering switching to an SSD on my desktop. Currently, I have a regular defrag scheduled via windows scheduler. Should I get rid of this for an SSD?evilspoons - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Yes, definitely. The Intel SSD toolbox actually does this automatically if it detects a scheduled defrag.Spacecomber - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
I know that you've got your hands full with keeping up with reviewing the individual SSD models that are being released, Anand, but I think it would be helpful if you or another writer could put together a guide or overview of this hardware segment for someone thinking to take the plunge into a SSD for their system.Things that I would be interested in are bang for your buck comparisons, which types of drives would be the best match for particular usage scenarios, and which drives are likely to be the easiest to adapt to and most trouble free to use.
As I think you suggested in an earlier comment (re: vertex 2 vs vertex 3), a lot of the differences between these drives covered in these detailed reviews are not necessarily differences that can be readily detected in actual use, and the big difference is between a normal HDD and a SDD. Yet, I don't think that this means we are at a stage where you simply look for the least expensive SSD that has the capacity you want (which seems to be pretty close to the case when it comes to HDDs, these days).
I've read these SDD reviews with varying degrees of scrutiny, since I'm not necessarily ready to buy one right now. If I had to simplify what I've taken away these reviews, so far, into a rule of thumb, it would be to buy the largest capacity Intel drive that I could afford. Of course, I may be way off base in reaching that conclusion, which is why I would be interested in a guide.
spudit99 - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Company I work for has deployed several SSD's in laptops especially. Samsung and Intel drives have been trouble free, although not always at the very top of speed list.Best advice I can give is find a good buy and try one out. My personal experience is extremely positive, even with the 2+ year old SSD drive in my laptop. Yes, the cost is high, but IMO the performance gain is hard to beat.
They are fast, quiet, and as long as you aren't trying to be the first to have the latest product, very reliable. The only SSD trouble I've had was with a personal purchase (CS300), which took a return and several firmware updates to fix. Reading about this stuff is great, but unless you want to pave the way, I would be at least somewhat conservative.