OCZ Vertex 4 Review (256GB, 512GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 4, 2012 9:00 AM ESTTRIM Performance
I started out this review with a mention of estimated write amplification and how OCZ was able to significantly reduce it with the Vertex 4/Everest 2 compared to Octane/Everest 1. By reducing write amplification, OCZ should have also significantly improved worst case write performance when TRIM isn't available or before it's able to act.
To find out, I wrote sequential data across all user addressable LBAs and then wrote random data (4KB, QD=32) for 20 minutes across all LBAs. Finally I used HDTach to give me a simple visualization of write performance across all available LBAs (aka the Malventano Method):
This is a huge improvement over what we saw with the Octane. Behavior here isn't quite what we see with Intel's controllers, but again it's a huge step above what we saw in the previous generation.
The Vertex 4 does support idle time garbage collection, but at very low priority. The drive must be idle for at least an hour for the background GC to kick in. I'm glad to see that OCZ has taken a more conservative route here as I've never been a huge fan of idle time garbage collection to begin with.
If you don't leave the drive alone long enough to trigger the idle GC, as soon as 85% of the blocks on the drive are used up the Vertex 4 will automatically trigger its garbage collection algorithms. This is more of what I'd like to see, however I'd prefer it even more if OCZ lowered the limits of when it would start recycling blocks in order to try and maintain good performance under heavily fragmented conditions.
TRIM is alive and well on the drive – a single TRIM pass is able to restore performance to new:
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Freddy G. - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
I want an SSD now for my gaming system, as boot and games drive, what u guys think should be better? Crucial m4 or Corsair Force GT? BTW Im going to start with a 120gb version in the meantime.kyuu - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
Whichever is cheaper. Performance-wise, you won't notice a difference. I promise.tynopik - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
don't think you said what you meantAnand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
I think you're quite right :) Fixed.Take care,
Anand
ViviTheMage - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
I have two M4's, I find the iops to be as delicious as milk shakes.gloinsir - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
What's up with the huge variance in performance between the Samsung 830 512MB and 256MB drives? On the light workload test - http://www.anandtech.com/show/5719/ocz-vertex-4-re... - The 256MB version is 25-50% faster on all tests. That's an enormous difference.Is there a firmware difference between the two drives?
Thanks for a great review. I hope the firmware updates and reliability work out. Competition is good!
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
There is indeed a firmware difference between the drives - unfortunately Samsung's latest firmware won't install on the 512GB drive for whatever reason, so it's left with lower performance.Take care,
Anand
ckryan - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
Are you sure that's a FW difference? I didn't really notice much of a difference overall between my 256GB and 512GB 830s, but there are differences.My 512 on 01FW pulls down substantially higher QD1 4K RWs than the 256 on 01 or 03FW, but there are other differences. I think there are slightly different characteristics between the 32gbit and 64gbit dies.
ViviTheMage - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
Seriously, these are probably the most nutritious, and scrumdidaliumpcious iop looking SSD's I have seen.edlee321 - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
Im another one of those crucial m4 fans, you cannot get better bang for the buck than these drives, especially for power consumption and reliability.The difference between 4k read from one ssd to another is not important, reliability and idle power consumption is whats important.
If anand can run a one month stress test using random uncompressable data on all the current drives in his possession that would be great. I want to see what drive lasts out the longest.