OCZ Vector 180: A decent but unspectacular high-end drive

OCZ: Life after Toshiba

OCZ is not a greenhorn in the SSD industry. Founded in 2002, the company has been involved with manufacturing SSDs from the start. And even if it did not enjoy the advantage of having its own NAND production facilities, OCZ did well to differentiate itself from the competition and made a number of key acquisitions - Indilinx and PLX's UK-based R&D team - which later culminated in the Barefoot 3, OCZ’s first in-house developed controller.

Having an in-house controller is key to differentiation in this highly competitive space. For example, a year fews back, almost every high-end drive was powered by SandForce’s SF-2281 controller. Right now, the popular choice is Marvell’s 88SS9187 and 88SS9189 controllers, with Phison’s S8 and S10 controller slowly emerging as popular alternatives. As you can see, there’s not much variety, so being able to create your own competitive controller gives not only a potentially unassailable performance advantage, it also gives a sense of exclusivity and prestige.

In 2012, OCZ finally debuted its Barefoot 3 controller in the OCZ Vector. It was an excellent drive for its time and offered very high levels of performance, though that all came at a high price. In the end, things did not quite play out the way OCZ would have liked. Some users reported reliability issues with the Vector - though its pretty much hit-and-miss - and OCZ was faced with stiff competition from the likes of Crucial and Samsung. In the end, OCZ was forced to declare bankruptcy in the later part of 2013.

Fortunately, Toshiba came to rescue and completed the acquisition of OCZ in early 2014. This move signaled Toshiba’s intent to be a major player in the SSD scene. Toshiba is one of the few brands to have its own NAND production facilities and although it has its own controller - the TC358790XBG in the Q-Series - it was not very competitive against other flagship drives. But now that it has OCZ’s Barefoot 3 controller under its umbrella, it is ready to mount a serious assault on challenging dominant players like Crucial and Samsung.

To begin, OCZ refreshed its mainstream Vertex lineup with the Vertex 460, which utilized Toshiba’s own 19nm MLC NAND. They later followed up with the AMD Radeon R7 SSD, which was a collaboration with AMD; and then introduced a new entry-level drive called the ARC 100. And now, it is ready to challenge for top honors with the Vector 180.

The Vector 180

The Vector 180 is essentially an update of the older Vector 150. The Vector 150 already used Toshiba 19nm MLC NAND, so there was no need to refresh that model until now when OCZ is ready to add more meaningful improvements to the drive. The Vector 180 continues the use of Toshiba’s 19nm MLC NAND and also OCZ’s own Barefoot 3 controller - the faster M00 variant that runs at 397MHz and not the M10 as used in the Vertex 460 and ARC 100 that runs at a slower 352MHz. Drive endurance is rated at 50GB a day, comparable to other high-end drives such as the Intel SSD 730 and Samsung SSD 850 Pro. The interface is SATA 6Gbps.

The key improvement to the Vector 180 is a power failure management feature that OCZ calls Power Failure Management Plus (PFM+). We first saw this drive at Computex last year, but that was a prototype drive that had a more comprehensive power failure protection feature that would quickly write data stored in the cache to the drive. The final version of the Vector 180, does not do that. Instead, it only protects data that has already been written to the drive and will quickly create a mapping table snapshot of the drive when it detects any anomaly to the power delivery. This reduces the risk of the mapping table being corrupted, which could end up bricking the drive.

Another new feature of the Vector 180 is the SSD Guru drive management tool. Its a nifty utility that lets users quickly update the firmware of their drives and check its health status and other details. For example, it can show users the remaining lifespan of their drives and can even allow users to determine how much capacity should be set aside for over-provisioning. Also new to the Vector 180 is OCZ’s new ShieldPlus warranty program (more on this later in the article) and the addition of a 960GB model that was made possible by using Toshiba’s high-density 128Gbit NAND.

Like all other OCZ drives, the Vector 180 comes with a 3.5-inch HDD installation adapter, Acronis True Image HD cloning utility, and the drive itself comes in a thick and heavy chassis like other OCZ drives do.

Test Setup

The OCZ Vector 180 will be tested on our dedicated storage testbed:

• Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
• ASUS P8Z77 Pro Thunderbolt (Intel Z77 chipset)
• 2 x 2GB DDR3-1600 memory
• MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
• Windows 7

Our revised benchmark ditches older benchmarks such as HD Tune and also includes an all new timing test to better evaluate the drive’s real world performance. The list of benchmarks used are as follows:

• AS-SSD benchmark 1.7.4739
• CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
• PCMark 7 (Storage suite)
• Iometer (version 2006.07.27)
• Timing Tests (Cold start, Reboot, Apps Launching)

Since the Vector 180 and Vector 150 are mostly identical, save for the former’s new firmware, it will be interesting to see how the new drive matches up against the older Vector 150. Also interesting is how the Vector 180 will fare against other high-end drives like the Samsung SSD 850 Pro, SanDisk Extreme Pro and Plextor M6 Pro.

Here is the list of drives tested:

• OCZ Vector 180
• OCZ Vector 150
• SanDisk Extreme Pro
• Samsung SSD 850 Pro
• Plextor M6 Pro
• Crucial M550
• Samsung SSD 850 Evo

Timing tests

The timing tests are our evaluation of how the SSDs will perform in real-world everyday situations, namely booting up from a cold start, reboot and launching applications. As for the applications used, we made the drives launch 11 applications from the Adobe CS6 suite of utilities simultaneously; they include resource-intensive applications such as Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and Premiere Pro, amongst others. As a point of reference, a 7200rpm mechanical hard disk would take over 5 minutes to open all the applications.

We begin with our timing tests and the OCZ Vector 180 was slightly quicker when it came to cold starts, but on a par when it came to rebooting and launching of apps when compared to the drive that it replaces - the Vector 150. Its timings were certainly decent, but not quite comparable to the Samsung SSD 850 Pro and Plextor M6 Pro, which were the two fastest drives in this test. 

PCMark 7 results

PCMark 7 is a benchmarking suite from FutureMark that evaluates the performance of Windows 7 machines. It tests a wide range workloads and aspects of the system ranging from computation, image and video manipulation and storage. We’ll be looking solely at the storage test here.

On PCMark 7, the Vector 180’s score of 5275 represented a 2.7% drop in performance when compared to the Vector 150. And if we were to look at the performance breakdown, we noted that the two drives posted similar results in all but the “Starting Applications” workloads, where the Vector 180 was about 11% slower. Its score was also the lowest, but that’s not something we would be overly worried about as the top scoring drive - the SSD 850 Pro - managed a score of 5622, which is only just over 6.5% more.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 Results

CrystalDiskMark is an easy-to-run and quick utility to use to gauge a drive’s performance. It measures sequential read and write performance and random read and write speeds of random 4KB, 4KB (queue depth 32) and 512KB data. On CrystalDiskMark, the Vector 180 exhibited disappointing read speeds, especially when compared to the Samsung SSD 850 Pro. Even against its predecessor, its read speed on the sequential and 512k workloads were lacking. Fortunately, its write speeds were more encouraging and was competitive across all workloads and was a match for the Samsung SSD 850 Pro. We can see here that the OCZ-manufactured AMD Radeon R7 also exhibited very good write speeds.

AS SSD 1.7.4739 results

AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. What this means is that the drives using the SandForce SF-2281 controller cannot compress the data first, which takes away one of the strong advantages of this controller. Therefore, this is a useful benchmark because drives that use the SF-2281 controller or similar won't gain an upper hand.

Moving on to AS SSD, the Vector 180 started quite brightly on the Copy Benchmark, recording very high “ISO” copy speeds. However, its performance dipped quite dramatically on the following “Program” and “Game” workloads. Moving on, its performance on AS SSD overall was much more promising than CrystalDiskMark as both read and write performance figures were much more competitive against similar high-end drives. However, a worrying trend here is that the Vector 180’s results are always lower than that of the older Vector 150 - though it was only really significant on the two copy workloads and 4k writes.

Iometer results (Part 1)

Lastly, we put the drives through the rigorous grind of Iometer, with different workloads and I/O queue depths. We have chosen to show results from a queue depth of 1 to 5 as this better represents the workloads a typical consumer might face. OCZ drives have traditionally performed erratically on Iometer and we noted this in our review of the Vertex 460 early last year. Sadly, the new Vector 180 is no different and despite the newer firmware, its performance is almost a mirror image of the older Vector 150’s. Streaming reads and writes were average at best, but its showing on the File and Web Server workloads were poor. The top performing drives here were the Samsung SSD 850 Pro and Plextor M6 Pro. 

Iometer results (Part 2)

Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. Response times for the Vector 180’s streaming reads and writes were in the middle of the pack, and considering its poor showing on the File and Web Server workloads, it was not surprising to see that it recorded the one of the slowest response times on those respective workloads.  

An incremental update to the Vector series

As we mentioned many times before, some form of vertical integration is crucial to succeeding in the SSD market. And out of the many brands, only Samsung and Intel can lay claim to being truly vertically integrated, meaning to say that they produce their own NAND memory and develop their own controller and firmware. Competition is always welcomed, especially for consumers, and Toshiba’s acquisition of OCZ means that there is another vertically integrated SSD manufacturer in the business.

Unfortunately, the new Vector 180 is not the drive that would challenge Samsung’s stranglehold on the high-end SSD market. Seeing that it is mostly identical to the Vector 150, we did not harbor high hopes for the drive and the results showed that we were right to be conservative in our expectation.

In terms of performance, the Vector 180 was no quicker than the Vector 150 that it replaces, as the results of both drives were very similar, if not identical. Read performance in certain instances as well as overall performance on Iometer was disappointing. This would not be such a bad thing if it was a year ago, but at this point of time, the competition have caught up and drives like the Plextor M6 Pro and even the Crucial M550 and Samsung SSD 850 Evo are just as competitive and more consistent than the Vector 180. And on the other side, the Samsung SSD 850 Pro continues to push the boundaries of SATA 6Gbps performance. Hence, the Vector 180 finds itself in an unenviable position of being stuck in the middle.

On the plus side, OCZ is still tops when it comes to supplied accessories. Not many SSDs come cloning software and also a HDD installation bracket. The bracket will definitely come in handy for users with older chassis which might not have dedicated 2.5-inch drive bays. Also, we found the new SSD Guru utility extremely informative and easy to use. The Power Failure Management Plus feature is also nice to have, but since drives bricking because of sudden power loss is not all that common to begin with, it is hard to say how useful this is. Still, the added protection is always welcomed.

The OCZ Vector 180's rated endurance of 50GB of writes a day is also on a par with other high-end SSDs, and so is the company's promise of a 5-year long warranty. OCZ also offers something called ShieldPlus, which aims to eliminate downtime for users whose drives are facing problems. The gist of it is that a replacement drive is sent out as quickly as possible so that the user can get back on their feet, without having to make a trip down to the service center or return their failed drives in first. Unfortunately, this program is presently available only in selected regions such as the U.S., E.U. and Taiwan, and not in Singapore.

OCZ’s Vector drives have always been amongst the most pricey, but thanks to cost-savings derived from using Toshiba’s new 19nm MLC NAND, the Vector 180 drive is OCZ’s most affordable high-end drive yet. The 240GB model has a recommended retail price of S$229, which means it is considerably more affordable than rivals such as the Samsung SSD 850 Pro (S$282) and SanDisk Extreme Pro (S$250), and just very slightly more costly than the Plextor M6 Pro (S$225). Here’s a table summarizing the pricing and cost per gigabyte of the drives.

As you can see, Samsung has got a good firm hold on the consumer SSD market. It has the top performing drive in the SSD 850 Pro and the most affordable mainstream to high-end drive in the SSD 850 Evo. This leaves the other brands to create niches for themselves, which is easier said than done - though we think Plextor so far has managed quite nicely.

At the end of the day, it seems like we need to wait a little while longer before the allegiance of Toshiba and OCZ can come up with something that will really give Samsung a run for their money. Toshiba recently announced that, together with SanDisk, that they are preparing to manufacture their own 3D V-NAND, and we can’t wait to see what will come out from that. For now, the Vector 180 is a decent alternative to pricey high-end drives like the Samsung SSD 850 Pro and SanDisk Extreme Pro, but users shopping in this price bracket should definitely also take a look at the Plextor M6 Pro too.

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