Okay Geek Farm
OCZ Vertex 4 (FW 1.5) 128GB SSD review
Jason Tsay
When it comes to SSD’s, OCZ is one of the first companies that comes to mind. With their Agility and Vertex series of SSD’s, the company offers some of the best performing solid state drives combined with relatively affordable prices. Today we take a look at the fourth iteration of the Vertex series; we’ll also be comparing the performance improvements garnered by the version 1.5 firmware update. Read on for all the benchmarking goodness!
Features
- Up to 550 MB/s Sequential Reads
- Up to 85,000 Random Write IOPS
- Up to 120,000 Maximum IOPS
- Available in 64GB to 512GB Capacities
- Access Latency as low as 0.02ms
- Strong performance at lower queue depths
Our Impressions
The Vertex 4 comes with a 3.5” adapter for larger bays, a warranty slip, and a tiny OCZ sticker.
The NTFS formatted volume will come out to 119 GB in Windows Explorer. Our drive shipped with FW 1.4 but after a 2 step upgrade process through OCZ Toolbox, we upped the firmware to 1.5 (this version promises faster benchmark speeds). Thanks to the older firmware our drive shipped with, we were able to put these claims to the test as well.
Our install of Windows 7 booted up in a mere 13.7 seconds when the drive was put in AHCI mode. Not bad at all. For our first round of software benchmarking, we ran the Vertex 4 through CrystalDiskMark.
CrystalDiskMark Benchmark
With 5 passes of a 1000 MB file, the Vertex 4 improved dramatically from the ratings of FW 1.4:
Seq - 385.0 read, 172.5 write
512K - 277.2 read, 155.5 write
4K - 23.53 read, 42.53 write
4K QD32 - 105.5 read, 149.6 write
HD Tune Pro (File Benchmark)
The FW 1.5 update also significantly benefits HD Tune Pro benchmarks across the board, compared to 1.4 results -
Sequential - 349169 KB/s read, 169790 KB/s write
4 KB random single - 5849 IOPS read, 11363 IOPS write
4 KB random multi 32 - 19592 IOPS read, 36106 IOPS write
HD Tune Pro (Benchmark)
The HD Tune Pro benchmark out[uts speeds between 462.1 MB/s and 489.4 MB/s, which averages out to 478.0 MB/s. Firmware 1.4 only maxed out at 364.1 MB/s and averaged 360.6 MB/s.
HD Tune Pro (Random Access)
AS SSD
And finally, we fired up AS SSD for a third round of benchmarking. The default AS SSD benchmark rated the Vertex 4 at lower speeds than CrystalDiskMark did but this was to be expected due to the uncompressed data it uses. We saw vast improvements in sequential read/write and 4K-64Thrd, which brought the score up from 514 to 796.
The same test, displayed in iops.
Test Machine Specs
CPU - Intel i7-2600K
Mobo - MSI P67A-GD65 (B3)
Memory - G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB DDR3 1600 (2 x 4GB)
Video card - EVGA superclocked GTX 570
PSU - NZXT HALE90 850W
Case - NZXT Phantom
OS - Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Monitor - Asus VH238H 23”
Overall
All in all, the OCZ Vertex 4 offers some pretty impressive speeds in an affordable package. The Vertex 4 blows away last year’s Vertex 3 Max Iops model and is without a doubt a worthy successor in the Vertex product line. You won’t quite get the claimed 550 MB/s sequential read speeds but our benchmark tests and real world usage brought us pretty close to that figure. The comforting part is that with each firmware update that OCZ releases, the Vertex 4 just keeps getting better and better, as demonstrated by the version 1.5 drive we tested.
Pro’s
- Fast
- Great 128 GB model pricing
- Firmware updates improve performance
Con’s
- None
Where to buy
OCZ — MSRP: $129.99
