OCZ Vertex 4 Review (256GB, 512GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 4, 2012 9:00 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.
Random read performance is staggering - a good 40% higher than anything else we've tested. While the cutoff for usefulness on a client drive is likely much lower than what even the Octane could deliver, this sort of performance bodes very well for OCZ's enterprise ambitions.
Randomly write performance is also just excellent. SandForce's peak numbers come close, but throw in any sort of incompressible data and they quickly take a step back while the Vertex 4 is able to deliver. Again, I'm actually more interested in these numbers from an enterprise workload standpoint but heavy client users will definitely not be disappointed.
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:
SandForce always scaled well at higher queue depths, but again we're looking at best case performance for the SF-2281. Move towards incompressible data and the Vertex 4 is alone at the top.
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danwat1234 - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
The Vertex 4 does have a Marvell controller, with Indilinx firmwareDenithor - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
You seem to have forgotten Octane, 'the 1st time that ocz now owns the controller and firmware that goes into the product.'And, as far as I've heard, Intel was the only one to truly fix the BSOD associated with the SandForce controller. Others made improvements and reduced the frequency but Intel downright fixed it.
id_aaa - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I'm not buying a controlled, I'm buying an SSD, and they delivered a crappy SSD, why should I trust OCZ now?semo - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Yep, OCZ are smiley and I won't buy a product from them as long as there are competitive alternatives. They still haven't issued a mass recall of their first 25nm drives which did not have as much capacity as per their specs. OCZ blamed it on Sandforce's RAISE technology and waited for customers to contact them before replacing the affected SSDs. No one knows how many of those duds were sold and how many were replaced.kristof007 - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I've been using my Vertex 2 for just over 2 years now. 120GB model. Not a single hiccup. I'd call that fairly reliable.PaulSabey - Wednesday, February 27, 2013 - link
My 120gb Vertex 2 (bought March 2011) had been running without a hiccup for nearly two years. Then yesterday it just spontaneously failed (BIOS could not even see the drive as present). I guess you can think your drive is totally reliable .. until the moment it fails.Breach1337 - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
Same here.Vertex 3 owner - although a great product for months I had a unfit for purpose product, no support and no fix from OCZ and on top of that people were treated with utter condescending arrogance on the forums, asked to effectively troubleshoot the product and if you refused to do that you were not cooperating. Sorry, but never OCZ for me ever again.pattycake0147 - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
I can live with the lower read speeds, but the power consumption is too high. That said if reliability holds up, sounds like I'll be getting a new drive this year.Great review Anand!
ViviTheMage - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
If this was going in a laptop, MAYBE I would be concerned, but what's a few watts for some more tasty iops?pattycake0147 - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
A laptop is exactly what I would like to use it for. Both of my desktops already have SSD/HDD combos.