OCZ ARC 100 (240GB) SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on August 26, 2014 7:00 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.
Random speeds show a small decrease in performance over the other OCZ drives, which is due to the combination of the slower M10 controller and A19nm NAND.
Sequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance we run 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.
In sequential performance the ARC 100 seems to be more optimized for read performance as that is up compared to the Vector 150 and Vertex 460, but in turn the write speed has decreased slightly.
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, but most other controllers are unaffected.
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Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
The prices were accurate yesterday as the title of the table shows. Obviously everyone should use their own judgement when making a buying decision since prices fluctuate all the time.Prodromaki - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
Ok mate. It seemed a little bit weird to me, because I read all the reviews/ssd recommendations here and the EVO 256 has been consistently priced @140$ in your tables for the past few months, so I went ahead and checked, hence the comment. It must have been an odd newegg one-day-fluctuation-thing yesterday then.KAlmquist - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
$165 is the current Newegg price for the desktop bundle. The extra $25 gets you an adaptor that lets you plug the SSD into a USB port, the Magician software that Kristian praises below, and some other miscellany.Prodromaki - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
Btw if I offered to sell you the EVO 256 and the MX100 256 at 140$/130$ respectively, which one would you have chosen?P.S. Thanks for the swift reply.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
I would go with the EVO because of Samsung's SSD Magician. Nothing in Magician is really necessary but some of the features can be handy and it is easier to use than many third party tools.As for the NewEgg pricing, there seems to be something wrong with the 250GB link because it is constantly changing (leads to NewEgg front page now). I saw this happening yesterday already, so not sure if there is a way to fix it.
Prodromaki - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link
Ok, thanks for your time Kris, much appreciated.mapesdhs - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
The one thing I don't like about Magician is the fact that it can't do a secure erase
much of the time (always says the SSD is locked) - one must do a separate boot
and erase using a dedicated boot device, CD, USB, etc. By contrast, I've never
seen this happen with OCZ's Toolbox, it's always able to s/e an SSD.
Other than the above though, I happily use both brands of SSD (I have many
of each).
Ian.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
(re Toolbox, I did of course mean an OCZ SSD, not any SSD in general)dj christian - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
doesn't Magician do triming in the background and garbage collection?barleyguy - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
I trust my data a lot more to Samsung SSDs than OCZ ones. From that perspective it's worth the extra $10. Intel is maybe worth another $20, at least.I can earn another $10 or $30 in less time that it will take me to deal with a crash. And even if that never happens, peace of mind is worth something...