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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explorer007 - Monday, May 23, 2011 - link
I got exacltly same problem even after firmware 2.06! Anyone better luck?beelzebub253 - Saturday, May 28, 2011 - link
For those of you using Vertex 3 in AHCI mode with the Intel RST drivers, have you tried the LPM Disable fix discussed below?http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SS...
Check the Event Viewer (System Logs) for an error about iaStor: "did not respond within the timeout period". The entries will be at the exact time of your freeze-ups. Mine had the same problem until I applied the reg fix.
sequoia464 - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - link
I wonder how this matches up against the Samsung 470.I guess we will never know as it appears that the Samsung 470 has still not been reviewed here at AnandTech.
Hint.
tannebil - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
I just installed a 120GB IOPS and I'm seeing ~240MB/s in AS SSD for sequential write. That's 50% higher than you got in your test last month of the regular 120GB model. My understanding is that the sequential performance should be quite similar between the IOPS and regular model so there's something odd going on. My sequential read results match yours.If you look across all the different tests, the AS SSD write results seem to be an outlier since the drive is a great performer in all the rest of the benchmarks. The OWC driver had the same odd results so maybe it's something specific to the SF 2200 controller and your test platform.
My system is a Biostar TH67+ H67 motherboard with a i5-2400 processor with the SSD is connected to an SATAIII port as the boot drive (Windows 7 HP).
johnnydolk - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link
Here in Denmark the Vertex 3 retails slightly cheaper than the Intel 510, but at 25% more than the Crucial M4, which brings the latter on par with the older Vertex 2. This is for the 240/250/256GB versions.I guess the M4 is the one to get if value for money matters?
werewolf2000 - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
Hi, I'm a bit disappointed. Read all the reviews and was excited about Vertex 3.Got it recently ... but, I'm sorry to say it, it is not good. It maybe fast, but it is freezing. For a little while just sometimes, but it is. It has some consequences, for example when you play mp3, you hear some annoying sounds every 1 - 2 minutes. Seems I'm not the only one having these issues, the tricks from here http://geekmontage.com/texts/ocz-vertex-3-freezes-... help partially, but not fully.
I had Intel G1 some time ago, it behaved similarly after several months of usage, Intel G2 didn't have such issues at all. Now the "best" Vertex 3 has these problems from the beginning (I had two of them, one failed immediately, the second one still lives but freezes).
Maybe, Anand, you could test things like that? Speed is not all, freezing is VERY annoying.
zilab - Saturday, June 4, 2011 - link
Hi Anand,
Great article, just a question:
WIll having a pair of 120GB in RAID 0, make this a non-issue? in terms of speed and resiliency ?
Mohri - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
Thanks Anand for nice reviews,i got macbook pro 2011- Intel i7 2.2 - 8gb ram - 1gb ddr5 video
and i want to install a ssd for it, now i wanted to ask you to recommend me which brand is better for me?
Thank you very much
samehvirus - Saturday, August 27, 2011 - link
To make it short for you all .... OCZ rushed the drive to the market, they want you to BETA Test it, you are stuck with them the moment you buy it, they will keep you in their "RMA or wait for firmware Loop" this SSD is a big "AVOID IT" for main drive (OS+Programs/etc) it will annoy you to no end and a solution atm as of may 26 does not exist neither OCZ admit it yet even when plenty of people are reporting the same issue, they will always try to blame your other hardware or software for the BSOD and never about their own SSDIf you want to be a beta tester go ahead and buy it, OCZ got no solution to offer atm, they are basically selling a product that works 90% of the time so some users wont notice it (those who use their computer 1-2hours a day) if you leave your computer +5hours a day or on all the time prepare to a daily BSOD, Until OCZ offer a solution .
paul-p - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
After 6 months of waiting for OCZ and Sandforce to fix their firmware from freezes and BSOD's, I can finally say it is fixed. No more freezes, no more BSOD's, performance is what is expected. And just to make sure all of the other suggestions were 100% a waste of time, I updated the firmware and DID NOT DO anything else except reboot my machine and magically everything became stable. So, after all these months of OCZ and Sandforce blaming everything under the sun including:The CMOS battery, OROM's, Intel Drivers, Intel Chipsets, Windows, LPM, Hotswap, and god knows what else, it turns out that none of those issues had anything to do with the real problem, which was the firmware.
While I'm happy that this bug is finally fixed, Sandforce and OCZ have irrepairably damaged their reputation for a lot of users on this forum.
Here is a list of terrible business practices that OCZ and Sandforce have done over the last year...
OCZ did not stand behind their product when it was clearly malfunctioning is horrible.
OCZ did not allow refunds KNOWING that the product is defective is ridiculous.
OCZ nor Sandforce even acknowledged that this was a problem and steadfastly maintained it only affected less than 1% of users.
The fact that OCZ claims this bug affected 1% of users is ridiculous. We now know it affected 100% of the drives out there. Most users just aren't aware enough to know why their computer froze or blue screened.
OCZ made their users beta test the firmwares to save money on their own testing
OCZ did not have a solution but expected users to wipe drives, restore from backups, secure erase, and do a million other things in order to "tire out" the user into giving up.
OCZ deletes and moves threads in order to do "damage control and pr spin".
But the worst sin of all is the fact that it took almost a year to fix such a MAJOR bug.
I really hope that OCZ learns from this experience, because I'm certain that users will be wary of Sandforce and OCZ for some time. It's a shame, because now that the drive works, I actually like it.