Benchmark Results: 4 KB Random Performance
An overall metric like Storage Bench or PCMark is informational, but it doesn't give us enough data about a drive's more specific performance characteristics. That's why it's still important to examine random reads, random writes, sequential reads, and sequential writes. If you're unfamiliar with those terms and what they represent, you can refer back to page three of SSD Performance In Crysis 2, World Of Warcraft, And Civilization V.
At a queue depth of one, our 512 GB Octane has a random read rate around 120 MB/s. That's faster than many competing drives. But once you move up to higher queue depths, OCZ's latest SSD delivers performance more similar to a 64 GB Crucial m4. This is fairly slow. In fact, a 120 GB Vertex 3 outperforms the 512 GB Octane at every queue depth.
Keep that information in context, though. We already know that this is intended as a more mainstream drive than the enthusiast-oriented second-gen SandForce-based SSDs. With that in mind, and with the above chart reflecting Octane's least-attractive specification, this could be a nod in favor of good-enough performance and lower cost-per-gigabyte. There are just two issues: right now, the 512 GB Octane doesn't present us with an attractive price tag, and we still don't know how the smaller drives perform.
The Octane’s random write throughput doesn't come as a surprise, either. Most operating system installs take up about 16 GB of space. And, testing over a 16 GB span, the Octane is about 10 MB/s slower than a 300 GB Intel SSD 320. That's a fairly unrealistic setting, though, so long as you're using the Octane in its intended desktop environment. Scaling all the way back to a queue depth of one, then, our 512 GB Octane drive is 7 MB/s faster than the same Intel drive, but still behind most other SSDs. If your workload depends on random write performance, the bottom line is that Octane ends up quite a bit slower than the SandForce-based competition. Then again, you would have already guessed as much based on the Octane's cited specs.
