OCZ's Vertex 3 Pro: Second-Gen SandForce Perf Preview

Features
By Andrew Ku
published

Intel's X25-M revolutionized the SSD market. But then SandForce turned it upside down, coming out of nowhere to establish a dominant position. Today we see the company preview its second-generation controller, unleashed over a native 6 Gb/s interface.

Test Setup

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Test Hardware
ProcessorIntel Core i5-2500K (Sandy Bridge), 3.3 GHz, LGA 1155, 8 MB Shared L3, Power-savings enabled
MotherboardGigabyte GA-H67MA-UD2H
MemoryKingston Hyper-X 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1333 @ DDR3-1333/1066, 1.5 V
Hard DriveIntel X25-M 160 GB SSDSA2M160G2GC, SATA 3Gb/s (System Drive)
Row 4 - Cell 0 Kingston SSDNow 100 V+ 120 GB SVP100S2/128G, SATA 3Gb/s
Row 5 - Cell 0 OCZ Agility 2 120 GB OCZSSD2-2AGTE120G, SATA 3Gb/s
Row 6 - Cell 0 Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500 GB ST9500325AS, SATA 3Gb/s
Row 7 - Cell 0 OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G, SATA 3Gb/s
Row 8 - Cell 0 Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB WD3000HLFS, SATA 3Gb/s
Row 9 - Cell 0 G.Skill SATA II 64 GB FM-25S2S-64GB, SATA 3Gb/s
Row 10 - Cell 0 OCZ Vertex 3 Pro 200 GB Beta Sample, SATA 6Gb/s
GraphicsIntel HD Graphics 3000
Power SupplySparkle 1250 W, 80 PLUS
System Software And Drivers
Operating SystemWindows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
DirectXDirectX 11
Graphics DriverIntel Display Driver 8.15.10.2266
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Benchmarks
Performance MeasurementsCrystalDiskMark 3.0 x64, set to read and write random data to drivePCMark Vantage 1.0.2.0
I/O PerformanceIOMeter 2008.08.18, default configuration, not reading/writing random dataFile server Benchmark, Web server Benchmark, Database Benchmark, Workstation BenchmarkStreaming Reads, Streaming Writes4 KB Random Reads, 4 KB Random Writes

If you have been paying attention to the news, you already know about the SATA degradation problem in the H67 and P67 chipsets. As you know, this only affects the 3 Gb/s ports. We're only testing on the 6 Gb/s ports here, so our results are unaffected.

Andrew Ku
35 Comments Comment from the forums
  • karma831
    Performance looks great but I don't think the price will be.
    Reply
  • Bigmac80
    This is why i haven't bought a SSD yet. One it's freakin expensive 2 not enough capacity 3 it's freakin expensive! It'll go down next year when the world ends in 2012.
    Reply
  • falchard
    Price is lower then last generation. A shrink in die size means cheaper manufacturing costs, lower power usage, and better performance. Thats what happens when every hardware company shrinks their chips.
    Considering this is going to have the same amount of space, its going to be a cheaper SSD.
    Reply
  • Scanlia
    500MB/s... wow
    Reply
  • aaron88_7
    These are for enterprise use, that's why they are priced so high. They have features average consumers don't need. In other words, you're wasting your money if you are putting these into your home computer.
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    OCZ Vertex 3 Pro MSRP Pricing:
    100GB: $525, $5.35 per GB
    200GB: $775, $3.88 per GB
    400GB: $1350, $3.38 per GB

    Getting cheaper, but still far outside my price range given their relative capacities. Even taking their amazing performance into account, it's still going to be a difficult sell for all but the most passionate enthusiasts, pros with heavy server workloads, or hardcore idiots. You're definitely not going to be getting your moneys worth putting one of these into your gaming rig. Enterprise type applications experience the largest benefits from these types of drives, and it's probably the only application where the performance benefits balance out the higher costs.
    Reply
  • JohnnyLucky
    The article made it perfectly clear the drive is not a drive that will be offered to consumers, gamers, and pc enthusiasts. How is OCZ going to reduce prices for consumer drives? Reduce features? Cut corners? Replace high quality components with lesser quality components? On answer is OCZ will reduc features. I'd like to know what else OCZ is going to do.
    Reply
  • Please add a TrueCrypt benchmark to your SSD evaluations, for two reasons. First, the difficulty of truly erasing data on a flash drive makes data security more important. Second, there are drives (like Sandforce) that use compression and may behave differently when storing encrypted (high entropy) data.
    Reply
  • nikorr
    About time
    Reply
  • Miharu
    Presently Plextor M2-M2S offer 370-420MB/s read for what... (64gb)150$-(128gb)250$. Vextor 3 price is out of the loop, it's too expensive. At this price I can buy 2 Plextor and put them in RAID 0.
    Reply