OCZ Vertex 460 (240GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on January 22, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- OCZ
- Indilinx
- Vertex 460
Random 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.
In random read/write tests the Vertex 460 and Vector 150 trade punches but the differences are minor. Our Vector 150 sample was tested a few months back so minor differences in firmware could account for the increased random read/write results, or it may simply be margin of error.
Sequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance I ran a 1 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.
Same goes for sequential performance: the Vertex 460 and Vector 150 perform more or less equally.
Sequential performance gives the Vector 150 a slight edge in both read and write results, but the difference is only a few percent at most.
AS-SSD Incompressible Sequential Read/Write Performance
The AS-SSD sequential benchmark uses incompressible data for all of its transfers. The result is a pretty big reduction in sequential write speed on SandForce based controllers.
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Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
All OEMs do cherry-picking, so blaming OCZ is useless. However, in SSDs it doesn't matter that much because NAND is binned for endurance, not performance. While there can always be minor differences in performance between units, it's nowhere near as big as in e.g. CPUs.As for buying review samples, that would not be financially efficient. Consumer Reports and the like are different because they're funded by the government or other huge organisation, whereas we are private. Furthermore, we wouldn't be able to deliver reviews on time for release because we'd have to wait for retail availability like everyone else.
FunBunny2 - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
I can 'buy' the second reason, but Anand can't afford a $300 SSD? Come on.bhaberle - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
So you are telling me you would be okay with spending at minimum, tens of thousands of dollars on parts? Sure that is just ONE $300 SSD. What about about the other 15+ that they would need to get. Be realistic. If it is not a big deal, why don't you go buy that many. Sure they make money with this site, but it would take some time just to break even on the costs of the parts even for a large site like Anandtech. If you don't appreciate the effort they put in their reviews then stick to consumer reports.blanarahul - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
That's what I said.BTW, can you guys test Samsung XP941?? And if possible, a comparison with 2 840 Pros in SLI.
Uhh. RAID..
Kristian Vättö - Friday, January 24, 2014 - link
I asked Samsung for a sample a while back but they wouldn't send us one since it's an OEM-only product. However, Anand got a pair of XP941s in the new Thunderbolt 2 equipped LaCie drive... ;-)henrybravo - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
Great comment. Blame company PR, not Anandtech.PEJUman - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
I own various branded SSDs, Intel, OCZ, Corsair to name a few.Some fails some don't (yes, even my intel X25-M G2 failed me at one point).
In the end, Anandtech readers are typically smart enough to run backups so any failures like that is not a big deal.
I form my own price/performance/risk assesment:
I use newegg, amazon, slickdeals, camelx3 for price.
Anandtech, Toms and forums for performance.
and lastly verified buyer comments at newegg & amazon for risk.
I could care less about a brand or what color is the box of my CPU/GPU.
MrSpadge - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
And some people are obsessed with hating OCZ. Sure they made several mistakes, some not directly related to their technology. But that happened years ago. Sit back and see how the new drives developed in coorporation with Toshiba work out. Judge those drives by what they are, not what their grand-grandfathers were.Bob Todd - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
You make it sound like all of their problems with quality control and high failure rates happened in the ancient past. This site's Vector review sample died during testing less than 3 months ago. I'm on my 3rd Agility 4 after RMAs and this one needs to go back too. That drive only came out ~18 months ago. I'd be happy to embrace a new wave of OCZ SSDs that were reliable, but we won't know how well (or if) they've managed to turn things around until we get several models in consumers hands and have adequate time to judge reliability.Roland00Address - Thursday, January 23, 2014 - link
OCZ has made plenty of shitty ssds in the last 3 years. I will be happy to buy a OCZ/Toshiba SSD but not until they have a track record of 3 good years for their ssds.Why deal with the head ache of your computer going out or your data corrupted just to save $10 or $20 dollars?