The OCZ Octane Review (512GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 23, 2011 12:00 PM ESTPerformance Over Time & TRIM
Testing TRIM functionality is important because it gives us insight into the drive's garbage collection algorithms. OCZ insists the Octane has idle time garbage collection, a remnant of the original Indilinx drives, however in my testing I could not get the idle GC to do anything once I put the drive into a highly fragmented state. Let's start at the beginning though. The easiest way to ensure real time garbage collection is working is to fill the drive with data and then write sequentially across the drive. All LBAs will have data in them and any additional writes will force the controller to allocate from the drive's pool of spare area. This path shouldn't have any bottlenecks in it; the process should be seamless. As we've already seen from our Iometer numbers, sequential write performance at low queue depths is around 280MB/s. A quick HD Tach pass of a completely full drive gives us the same result:
The Octane works as expected here, but now what happens if we subject the drive to a ton of 4KB random writes? Unfortunately this is where the Octane falls short. If we just throw a few minutes of random writes, constrained to a small LBA range, at the Octane its performance hardly varies:
However once the Octane passes a threshold of fragmentation, the performance drop is considerable. Our standard test involves a 20 minute, 4KB random write across all LBAs at a queue depth of 32. A sequential write pass across the drive afterwards took place at between 2 and 7MB/s. Since our test drive was a 512GB model, there simply wasn't enough time to conduct a full pass in the course of preparing this review. Instead I did a shorter test with HD Tach to give you some indication of what happens to the Octane under a highy random load without TRIM:
Performance drops considerably. A single TRIM pass restores performance to new. I did have one TRIM test where only the latter half of the drive seemed to TRIM but I couldn't get the same result more than once. Now the question is, what does all of this mean?
If you have TRIM enabled on a desktop platform with a client (read: non-server) workload, none of this should matter to you. TRIM works and there doesn't appear to be any weird lag or bottlenecks in the GC path. If you don't have TRIM enabled (read: OS X) with a client workload, this could warrant a pass. The only reason I'm hesitant to recommend the Octane for use with a TRIM-less OS X installation is because I'm not entirely sure the drive will recover from this ultra low performance state without TRIM. Sequential writing alone may not be enough to adequately restore the Octane's performance. Normally idle GC would be enough, but it seems as if things get slow enough the drive's idle GC can't do much. I suspect all of this is stuff that OCZ can tweak via firmware, but I need more time with the drive to really be certain.
Finally if you're deploying a server with lots of random writes, the Octane isn't for you. OCZ will eventually release an Everest based drive for the enterprise, but the Octane is not that drive.
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pandemonium - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Thanks for the article. That was quite interesting hearing about your personal interactions with OCZ and your perceptions. Of course, the number crunching data is always appreciated as well!Locut0s - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
IMO they really only turned a new leaf with their SSDs and their decision to abandon memory sales. All of which was in the last few years.Beenthere - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
I'm not sure they've ever "turned a new leaf"... ? Their SSDs also have issues which is why people should WAIT for 6 months or so to see how many firmware updates are required and if they actually fix all of the OCZ SSD Octane issues discovered.FunBunny2 - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
Yeah, and then get a huge discount at Newegg!!lancid81 - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Which SSD do you use for your personal computer at home Anand ? or i guess thereal question is if you had to purchase an SSD with your own cash..which would you go for?
Thanks for all the great reviews
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
My personal system(s) all use SSDs I recommend. It's a part of the review process to be honest. I put in months of use case testing on top of the normal review to help me formulate exactly these types of opinions.I've got both the Intel SSD 510 and Samsung SSD 830 in my main work computer at this point. If I had to spend money on one right now it'd probably be the Samsung.
Take care,
Anand
jihe - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
OCZ, now that's three letters I'd like to avoid at all costs.ppro - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
I just post a link to this anadtech post and they removed the post on ocz forum... go and try... they even ban your account.NO OCZ anymore... awful customer support + BSOD on all series 3 OCZ drives
Beenthere - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
There have been lots of issues in both the OCZ and Corsair forums when they get over-protective of even mentioning a competitors brand/product. I understand the challenges and bickering that can occur in these forums but the moderation of these forums leaves a LOT to be desired IME and is often counter-productive to supporting the brand.TinHat - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
BeHardware - by Marc PrieurPublished on November 16, 2011
http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-1/component...
Components returns rates - SSD's (page 7), Memory (page 4)
If i'm reading this article right, I see from the stats provided by Behardware that OCZ still have very poor return rates for their SSD drives currently at 4.2%. In contrast Intel has a ultra low 0.1% return rate whilst Corsair (their nearest competitor) has only 2.9% fail rate. I appreciate this could be attributed to the controller bug nightmare that seemed to drag on forever but how do they explain why other competitor brands, using the same chip, seemed to have no problems at all? In addition to this why their memory return rates are the highest to date at 6%?
If these stats are to be believed then OCZ product failure rates are still not very reassuring, especially when you consider the prices of their products and all the consumer hasstle when dealing with component failures. Intel and Kingston seem to be the better bet at this time.