OCZ Vertex 4 Review (128GB), Firmware 1.4/1.5 Tested
by Kristian Vättö on August 4, 2012 10:00 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).
We 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.
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Neither the 1.4 or 1.5 firmware promised any improvements regarding random read/write performance.
As for the 128GB model, which is new in our tests, its random read/write performance is actually on-par with 256GB and 512GB capacities. This is a pleasant surprise the difference between the 128GB and 256GB capacities in many families can be quite substantial (e.g. Samsung's SSD 830).
Sequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance we ran a one minute long 128KB sequential test over the entire span of the drive at a queue depth of 1. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length.
It's relieving to look at the graph above. It's now a fact that the 1.4 firmware fixes the sequential read speed at low queue depths issue. Not only does the firmware fix the issue, the sequential read performance is also very good.
OCZ was promising increased sequential write performance for all models with the 1.5 firmware but at least in Iometer, at low queue depths, the difference is negligible. We'll take a look at AS-SSD and ATTO at higher queue depths next.
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TGressus - Sunday, August 5, 2012 - link
Whatever the cost of doing business will always be passed on to you the consumer.FunBunny2 - Sunday, August 5, 2012 - link
Only by monopolists and oligopolists. Adam Smith was right.Alexvrb - Sunday, August 5, 2012 - link
You're probably confused - weed does that to people. If costs go up, whatever the cause, the cost of the final product goes up too. Doesn't really matter who the company is or what the product is.FunBunny2 - Monday, August 6, 2012 - link
wrong. read up econ 101.B3an - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
I'm about to upgrade my Crucial C300 SSD's and wanted to know what people would recommend for my usage... gaming, heavy Photoshop, video editing and 3DS Max work. What would be best for this?I'm guess the Vertex 4 would be one of the best options? But i'm a bit worried about the pretty poor read performance under heavy workload.
What would people recommend?
charleshoskinson - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I'd highly recommend the Samsung 830 or the Crucial M4. I've used both lines of SSDs in my laptops and business computers and never have had a failure. I realize it's anecdotal, but I respect the engineers at Micron and Samsung and like the vertical integration they've built in their product line.charleshoskinson - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Also you may want to consider springing a little money for a sandy bridge E motherboard and 64 GB of RAM. At current prices, you'll pay about 400 for the RAM and you'll be able to mount a software based ramdrive running at speeds around 10-15 times that of a normal SSD. I use my setup to run a linux distro entirely in RAM saving anything I need from my work session encrypted on a dropbox account. I get read speeds around 2.5 GB/s and Write speeds around 2.0 GB/s. On a windows 7 setup you can expect similar speeds.mayankleoboy1 - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
the 50% issue affects the drive temporarily only. when it is more than 50% full, it rearranges the data in a few minutes and you get the old speed back. then when you fill it again some more, you get reduced speeds, till the data gets rearrannged.jwilliams4200 - Sunday, August 5, 2012 - link
That seems unlikely. I mean, sure the drive will slow way down while it is doing its reshuffling once it crosses 50%. But after it finishes that housekeeping, it would have to be slower at >50% full than it was at <50% full. Otherwise, why go to the bother of having a "performance mode" and a "storage mode", if both modes are the same speed?Alexvrb - Monday, August 6, 2012 - link
No. Speeds drop DRASTICALLY while it is rearranging, making you briefly wonder if you're using a 5400 RPM HDD from the late 90s. But even after it finishes, speeds are reduced to firmware 1.3 levels. Permanently, unless there is some way to force it to return to performance mode (rearranging things again) after you delete files to bring it back under 50%. It's just silly, modern SSDs should have no need for this sort of nonsense.Anyway, this trick allows them to advertise ever-higher speeds, and even show off reviews of these speeds. I mean who buys an SSD with more than twice the capacity that they need? You're just going to replace it with a newer, better SSD in a couple of years. It's not worth the money. Better off getting a Samsung 830 or an Intel 520 that's the right size.