Powered by Indilinx Everest 2
OCZ’s Vertex lineup of SSDs are some of the fastest around and with the Vertex 3 already being one of the older high-end consumer-grade SSDs around at the moment, the company is upping and refreshing their offerings with their newest Vertex 4 SSDs.
The new Vertex 4 SSDs are significantly different from the Vertex 3 drives it replaces, mostly because OCZ has made the switch from the very popular SandForce SF-2281 controller to a brand-new Indilinx Everest 2 controller. Indilinx is a South Korean company specializing in SSD controllers and firmware and if the name Indilinx sounds familiar to you, this because OCZ acquired Indilinx back in early 2011. Also, prior to SandForce controllers, Indilinx made pretty decent performance controllers in the earlier enthusiast SSD drives that we became fond of.
The OCZ Vertex 4 is the latest high-end consumer SSD from OCZ Technology and it uses an all-new Indilinx Everest 2 controller.
The dual-core ARM-powered Indilinx Everest 2 controller is actually highly similar to its predecessor and as Anandtech discovered, it is in fact based on a Marvell controller, quite possibly the newer Marvell 88SS9187. What we do know, however, is that the controller on the Vertex 4 runs at significantly higher clock speeds compared to its predecessor - 400MHz as opposed to 333MHz. It also has 1GB of onboard DDR3-800 DRAM for prefetching read requests. As for the memory chips, the Vertex uses 25nm synchronous MLC NAND memory chips from Intel.
Vertex is OCZ’s flagship lineup of drives and as the latest iteration of the Vertex line, the Vertex 4 features all the things you’d expect from a high-end consumer-grade SSD. Apart from the new Indilinx Everest 2 controller, it also uses the latest SATA 6Gbps interface for the quickest possible transfers. The Vertex 4 will be available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. For the purpose of this review, we'll be evaluating the 256GB edition.
The drive comes with a handy bracket for installation. But that's all, no SATA data nor power cables.
Peeling the drive open reveals the Indilinx Everest 2 controller and NAND chips. The thermal pads on the housing reveals that the housing also doubles as a heatsink for the controller.
A closer look at Indilinx Everest 2 controller. It is surrounded by Intel 25nm NAND chips of 16GB density. The smaller chip to the top right of it is a single 512MB cache chip. There's another cache chip on the opposite side along with another eight NAND chips.
Flipping the PCB over, we see another eight NAND chips and an additional 512MB DDR3-800 cache chip from Micron Technology.
Test Setup
The drives tested on our new storage testbed, has the following system specifications:
- Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
- MSI Z68A-GD80 (Intel Z68 chipset)
- 2 x 4GB DDR3-1600 memory
- MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
- Windows 7
The list of SSDs tested are as follows:
- OCZ Vertex 4 (256GB) (Firmware 1.5 Beta)
- Transcend SATA III SSD720 (256GB) (Firmware: 5.0.2)
- Kingmax SATA III SSD SMP35 Client (240GB) (Firmware: L0306)
- Intel SSD 520 Series (240GB)
- Crucial M4 SSD (240GB)
- Kingston HyperX SSD (240GB)
- OCZ Vertex 3 (240GB)
- Patriot Pyro SE (240GB)
OCZ’s all-new Vertex 4 drives will be compared with the current bumper crop of high-end consumer-grade SSDs. Presently, the fastest SSDs we have tested are all using the very popular SandForce SF-2281 controller, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Vertex 4 and its Indilinx Everest 2 controller fare. The only other drive not using the SandForce controller is the Crucial M4, which has a Marvell 88SS9174 controller.
The list of benchmarks used are as follows:
- AS-SSD benchmark 1.6.4
- HD Tune Pro 4.6
- CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
- PCMark 7
- PCMark Vantage
- Iometer (version 2006.07.27)
AS SSD Results
AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. What this means is that the drives using the 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 don't gain an upper hand.
The OCZ Vertex 4 got off to a promising start, posting very competitive sequential read speed and the highest sequential write speed we’ve ever recorded. 4k read and write speeds were very competitive as were its copy speeds.
On the most important test of 4K read/writes speeds with 64 threads, which best simulates more strenuous usage with a lot of data being queued, the Vertex 4 stormed ahead with speeds that were easily 30% - 50% ahead of its next closest competitor. Without the advantage of compressible data, the Indilinx Everest 2 controller on the Vertex 4 certainly had the upper hand in this benchmark.
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 OCZ Vertex 4 exhibited slightly lower read speeds, this was apparent when testing sequential data and 512k data blocks. However, the drive continued to impress with its significantly faster writing speeds - sequential and 512k blocks writing speeds was a good 50% faster than its fastest competitors. It also managed the highest speeds when it came to 4k, 32 requests queue depth, clearly showcasing the prowess of its new Indilinx Everest 2 controller when it comes to deeply queued data operations.
HD Tune Pro 4.6 Results
On HD Tune, we noticed that the OCZ Vertex 4 had generally poor read performance. On average, read speed was around 25% lower than the competition, while random read speed was only a mere 2.8MB/s. Write performance was significantly better, as random write IOPs, random write access time and random write speed, were all comparable to the other drives. We also noticed that its poor random read performance was one that’s shared by the older Crucial M4 (Marvell 88SS9174 controller) and the older Vertex 3 drive (SandForce SF-2281 controller). Therefore, our guess is that the Vertex 4’s disappointing performance is due to a combination of the Indilinx Everest 2 controller and also its firmware.
Futuremark PCMark 7 Results
PCMark 7 is the latest 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 OCZ Vertex 4’s performance on PCMark 7 was a little disappointing as it recorded the lowest score amongst the current crop of high-end consumer SSDs. Its score was about 27% lower than fastest SandForce drives. Looking at the scores of the individual tests, it’s easy to understand why since it was consistently and significantly slower than the SandForce drives. It was only comparable on the “Adding Music” scenario.
Futuremark PCMark Vantage Results
PCMark Vantage might have been around for quite some time, but it is still a fairly accurate representation of how the drives might be used in real-world scenarios. We are focusing on the hard drive test suite which comprises of tasks such as loading of applications to media creation.
The OCZ Vertex 4 didn’t generate an overall score because it failed to complete one of the runs, which was Test 7 - Windows Media Player, Adding Music. The only other drive that couldn’t complete this particular test was the Crucial M4 drive, which also uses a Marvell controller (the Indilinx controller used in Vertex 4 is also a Marvell based controller, but with Indilinx firmware). On the other tests, the Vertex 4 was disappointing, often recording much lower speeds than the quickest SandForce drives.
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.
On Iometer, the OCZ Vertex 4 recorded lower IOPs when it came to 64k streaming reads but stormed ahead when it came to 64k streaming writes, continuing its trend of impressive write performance. IOPs performance on file server workload was class-leading, while performance on the web server workload was average.
Iometer Results (Part 2)
Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. Looking at the response times, the OCZ Vertex 4 had slightly higher than average response times when it came to 64k streaming reads. And it’s outstanding write performance can be in part attributed to its very low write response times as seen on the 64k streaming writes work load.
A Breath of Fresh Air
The OCZ Vertex 4 is an interesting addition to the current bumper crop of high-end consumer SSDs because while many are using the ubiquitous SandForce SF-2281 controller, the Vertex 4 breaks the mold by going with the Indilinx Everest 2. And judging from our results, the new Vertex 4 and its Indilinx Everest 2 fares pretty well overall.
We noted that read performance was generally below that of what the SandForce drives are capable of and performance on the two Futuremark benchmarks, PCMark 7 and PCMark Vantage, was erratic. Since this problem was already documented with the Marvell-driven Crucial M4, we suspect that the poor performance on these two benchmarks can best be attributed to the Indilinx Everest 2 controller disagreeing with the benchmarks. That said, the Vertex 4 did post very impressive write speeds, the highest we’ve ever seen in fact, far exceeding that of the SandForce drives. If your typical usage involves more writing to the drive than reading, then the Vertex 4 is sure to delight.
You gain some, you lose some. The OCZ Vertex 4 impressed with its blazing write performance, but read performance was generally poorer than equivalent SandForce drives.
As we’ve highlighted earlier in our review of the Intel SSD 520 Series, early SandForce drives were plagued by reliability issues and a persistent BSOD bug. Although these have since been rectified with firmware updates from respective manufacturers, there are still reports of drives who are still suffering from random occurrences of BSODs. Hence, for those who are cautious and skeptical of SandForce drives, the OCZ Vertex 4 is a viable alternative.
Retailing for around S$449, the OCZ Vertex 4 is rather pricey as it is priced towards the higher-end of similar drives with 256GB capacities, and while it disappoints with its lackluster read performance, its write performance was very impressive. All in all, the Vertex 4 and its new Indilinx Everest 2 controller is a breath of fresh air in a marketplace crowded with drives using the same SandForce controller. It may not impress in its overall performance, but it surely does in write-based workloads in almost all of our tests. Given these attributes, it's now up to the buyers to be mindful of their usage and choose the best drive to fit their needs.
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