Indilinx Barefoot 3 to the Fore
Earlier last month, we reported from Computex that OCZ will streamline its SSD offerings. Already, if you were to browse its website, you will notice that its consumer SSD offerings have been trimmed down to four models. Gone are the entry-level Agility 4 models, and from what we know, the Vertex 3.20 is on its way out too. This is to ensure that all OCZ SSDs are powered by their own in-house developed Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller.
Mid last year, we reviewed the OCZ Vertex 4, which was, at that time, OCZ’s flagship SSD. It uses a Indilinx Everest 2 controller, which was in fact based on a Marvell 88SS9187 and hence not at true in-house controller.
OCZ's new in-house developed controller now also sees action in the Vertex 450 SSD.
The new Vertex 450, however, is using a derivation of the Indilinx Barefoot 3 that was first seen on OCZ’s flagship Vector SSD. The Indilinx Barefoot 3 is OCZ's first truly in-house developed controller.
Specifically, the new Vertex 450 is powered by OCZ’s Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 controller. This is basically the same controller as the one found on the Vector, but with lower clock speeds. The other notable difference is that with the Vertex 450, OCZ is moving to newer NAND chips made using a 20nm manufacturing process. This should offer slightly better performance and power efficiency.
In terms of design and packaging, the new Vertex 450 is nearly identical to its Vector sibling. It uses a similar 7mm thick chassis, and has the same construction, which means it feels appreciably heavier and sturdier than most other SSDs. Also, OCZ has thoughtfully provided an installation bracket to fit 3.5-inch drive bays.
The new Vertex 450 and the Vector are nearly identical. Peel off the stickers and you can't tell which is which.
Both drives use a similar chassis, which means the Vertex 450 feels solid, much more so than other SSDs we have handled.
Peel the drives open and again, the two drives are very similar. The Vertex 450 is on the left. It can be differentiated by its Micron-branded NAND chips.
A closer look at the Indilinx Barefoot M10 controller surrounded by Micon's 20nm NAND chips. These NAND chips are of 16GB density, which means there's eight on each side of the PCB for our test drive's 256GB capacity.
Test Setup
The new OCZ Vertex 450 was tested on our updated testbed. The main changes are the faster Core i5-2500K processor and a newer Z77 motherboard which has native Thunderbolt connectivity.
- 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
A point to note is that we have also revised our testing methodology of SSDs. Mainly, we have trimmed down the list of benchmarks used and also included real world timing tests. By combining benchmarks with real world tests, we think that this will give users a more complete picture of how they can expect an SSD to perform.
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)
It will be interesting to see how the Vertex 450 will match against its bigger sibling, the Vector. Also, we are including results from some of the top drives in the market today, such as the Intel SSD 520 Series, Samsung SSD 840 Pro, and the Corsair Neutron GTX. Here is the full list of drives tested:
- OCZ Vertex 450 (256GB)
- OCZ Vector (256GB)
- Seagate 600 (256GB)
- Corsair Neutron GTX (256GB)
- Samsung SSD 840 Pro (240GB)
- Intel SSD 520 Series (240GB)
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.
Overall, the Vertex 450 performed admirably amongst this collection of very high-end SSDs. Sequential read and write speeds were amongst the best, but we noticed that read performance on the 4k and 4k, queue depth 32 workloads suffered a little. Unsurprisingly, the Vector was comfortably faster than it in all instances, though the margin wasn’t great.
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 don't gain an upper hand.
On AS SSD, the Vertex 450 held its own well against the rest of the high-end SSDs. Its performance on the Copy Benchmark was good, racking up very high speeds in the ISO and Program workloads. Elsewhere, we found it o be more than capable of going up against the current crop of high-end SSDs. Again, the flagship Vector drive was always faster than the Vertex 450.
PC Mark 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.
The Vertex 450 scored 5362 on the PCMark 7, which puts it towards the rear of the pack. However, objectively speaking, only 327 marks separate the highest (Samsung SSD 840 Pro) and lowest scoring drive (Seagate 600), so it is in fact very close. The flagship Vector drive scored 5442, a mere 80 points more than the Vertex 450.
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.
What’s interesting to note is that the shape of the graphs plotted from results of the Vertex 450 and Vector are almost mirror images of each other. The only exception is that graphs from the Vector sit higher on the Y-axis, indicating higher IOPS. That said, the performance of the two OCZ drives here are decent but a little erratic, with performance on the File Server workload being disappointing.
Iometer Results (Part 2)
Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. Looking at graphs, we can see that the response times of the Vertex 450 and Vector are nearly identical. Generally, with the exception of the File Server work load, the two drives’ exhibited very low and competitive average I/O response times, and are definitely comparable with the current selection of high-end drives.
Timing Tests
New to our evaluation of SSDs is how they 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, which includes resource intensive applications such as Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro amongst others. As a point of reference, a 7200rpm mechanical hard disk would take over 5 minutes to open all the applications.
In real world timing tests, the OCZ Vertex 450 and Vector both performed very similarly and their timings put them in the middle of the pack as they neither recorded the fastest nor slowest times.
Becoming an SSD Manufacture
With the Vertex 450, OCZ is slowly but surely achieving its goal of offering only SSDs with in-house developed controllers. The rationale behind such a move is to distinguish itself from the increasingly crowded SSD marketplace.
Furthermore, being dependent on third-party providers such as LSI SandForce and Marvell means being subjected to a host of uncontrollable external factors such as cost, supply, firmware development and other issues. By using its own Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller, OCZ can remove or at least reduce most of these variables from the equation.
Besides, as we have seen in our results, OCZ’s Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller is a very capable one. Both the Vertex 450 and Vector exhibited very good performance and was pretty consistent throughout. The only exception was on Iometer, where we found its performance to be a little erratic and underwhelming.
In many ways, the new OCZ Vertex 450 is a good complement to the flagship Vector, offering very good performance at a more palatable price.
Between the two, the Vector was, expectedly, the faster drive. It is after all OCZ’s flagship consumer SSD and it has a faster-clocked controller. That said, the difference in performance is not great. On top of that, Vertex 450 was not shabby at all and is easily one of the fastest drives in the market today.
In many ways, the OCZ Vertex 450 is really a "lite" version of the Vector. And in terms of pricing, the 256GB variant of Vertex 450 will cost around S$348. This makes it about S$20 cheaper than the flagship OCZ Vector, which is actually not a big difference. Personally, we would pay the extra S$20 for the slightly better performance and longer 5-year warranty of the Vector. Likewise, the other top performing drive, the Samsung 840 Pro also comes with a 5-year warranty, but that's priced a bit more at S$379.
That said, the Vertex 450 is a good option for those who would like a Vector-performance class drive but don't mind skimping a little to settle for a a shorter 3-year warranty. Although its performance is a notch lower than the Vector, it is still among the quickest in the market today and can easily match drives like the Corsair Neutron GTX and is quicker even than the revered Intel SSD 520 Series. Unfortunately, as discussed above, we find its value proposition a bit lacking and there are better drives like the SanDisk Extreme that are ideal for the budget conscious folks without losing much on the performance front.
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.